Parakeet Behavior

Buyer’s Guide to Parakeet Behavior

If you are thinking about purchasing a parakeet, it would be important to learn about housing, diet, health, and parakeet behavior to ensure your new pet lives a long, healthy life. Parakeets are also called budgies and just like a dog or cat, this animal has times of being happy, sad, stressed, and so on. Therefore, learning what to expect will help you address issues if they arise. For instance, knowing when your parakeet is sick by its behavior would help in getting the bird treated quickly.

One of the most important aspects of owning a parakeet is to understand that this particular bird does not handle stress well. Therefore, if you begin to see parakeet behavior such as moving about the cage back and forth, staying toward the back of the cage, or not eating it could be the bird is stressed. For this, you might want to move the bird cage to a quieter location within the house. The following are some other interesting facts about parakeet behavior to know.

Courtship – With parakeets, you will find that courtship occurs between female and male, as well as same gender with same gender. These birds love the companionship of each other and flirtatious ways are simply saying, “I love you”. You will notice that the way the parakeet acts when flirting is to eat seeds and then regurgitate it for another parakeet. While to humans this sounds a little disgusting, remember this is the way a mother bird feeds her young so this gesture is endearing.

Preening – Another parakeet behavior you will see on a daily basis is preening. Using beak and feet, this bird will reach under the top layer of feathers to get to itches, pull out feathers that are bothersome, and stay clean. Often, parakeets preen one another but they can get a little rough, at which time you would hear a distinct “ack ack” sound.

Chasing – You will also notice the parakeet behavior of chasing each other around the cage. If you have more than one bird, sometimes one will move away from the others for some alone time, which is normal. However, if one of the other parakeets does not want to be alone, it will keep chasing the bird distancing itself, trying to draw it back to the others.

Pecking – Parakeets also peck at each other as a subtle warning to be left alone. If one parakeet is bothering another too much, the parakeet behavior would turn more aggressive as one bird tries to get the message across to the other. Although this type of bird is sweet and has a nice personality, they can get irritated when they do not want to be bothered.

Remember, as long as you provide your parakeet with an adequate size cage, keep the house clean, provide a varied but appropriate diet and fresh water, and provide some human to bird contact, all you should see is positive parakeet behavior.