What Happened To My Babies: Spring Fever Part II

When it comes to seasons, spring is among one of my favorites!  However, as a toucan mom, I like it much less!

This spring brought about a new challenge for us.  Niko is approaching two years old, and Bella is 5 years old, and the hormones are soaring!

Niko and Bella have been a mated pair for about a year now.  They display regular courting behaviors and while it appears Niko is more invested, Bella certainly doesn’t pass up his advances!

Then Spring came!  Niko, a young boy who didn’t receive his dad’s training on appropriately courting his lady, started pulling at Bella’s tail.  It wasn’t aggressive at all, it was more of a look-at-me behavior.  I equated it to a boy pulling a girl’s bra strap!  Certainly not appropriate, but a definite attention-seeking behavior!

At some point, I started to see pieces of tail on the bottom of the cage and realized Niko was snipping pieces off in his attempts to lure his lady! 

I thought maybe it was a one-time thing until I actually saw him do it.  He quickly would bite her tail and in one swoop snip a piece off.  Now, the interesting thing about it is that Bella didn’t get mad, she just moved away.  They continued to copulate and preen one another, at the time there was no change in their courting behavior.

I reached out to some breeders and friends who had pairs to see if this was normal behavior and to get some advice on whether or not I should separate them.  I feared that separating them would be very stressful since they were a mated pair and Bella didn’t seem to be bothered by it, however, her tail was getting shorter and shorter and looked horrible!

I had already increased their foraging a lot!  Added way more toys than normal, especially foot toys that Niko seems to enjoy.  It helped slightly but he just couldn’t resist that tail!

A good friend and very knowledgeable aviculturist advised me to switch things up to try to distract Niko.  Add some plants, move the cage, perches, etc.  Pretty much try to create something that will get his mind on something else.

I went out and bought some new bird-safe plants that I intended to put in the cage as a distraction.  However, I think I was too late.  The next morning I woke up to Bella making a scream and then her chasing him around the house aggressively!  It was really bad, she was growling, chasing him, and going after him.

I was devastated and what was worse, I had to go to work and didn’t have time to watch and let them work it out!  In order to keep them safe I separated them that day, part of me feels like this may have been a big mistake.  Of course, this happened on a Monday and I had to work all week, so they were separated during the day for 5 days!  When I would come home from work I would let them out and they would visit each other and things seemed ok.  However, at the time, I didn’t want to take the chance of anything happening while I couldn’t supervise them so I left them separated.  (Their cage has a divider that can go in and out in the middle of the cage, so that is what I was using.  It helped to keep them safe while still allowing for some interaction if they wanted it.  I highly recommend a cage that has the ability to be divided if you have a pair of any kind of toucan).

That weekend I pulled the divider out and put them back together as things had improved tremendously.  They did great all weekend, but then Monday morning back came the growling and Bella chasing Niko again!  

I couldn’t believe it!  I didn’t want to separate them again, as it stressed Niko out big time and Bella did seem to miss him.  I was torn on what to do!  Oh, Spring is so daunting with all these hormones!

I needed to take a step back and observe what was really happening here.  As a BCBA, in my classroom, it is much easier to step back and look at behaviors and figure out what to do, but when it came to my “kids” it seemed harder! 

My husband and I observed much more closely after their re-introduction and here is what we saw:  Bella frequently went to a specific part of the cage where there was a larger perch with more branches, Niko had backed off of the tail-biting but was still trying to interact.  Whenever Niko moved too quickly Bella would go after him.

My husband thought that maybe Bella was looking for a nest.  Forgive me for saying this but, she was acting like a woman with hormones raging (I can say this as a woman who has experienced this!)  One minute she loved him, the next minute she wanted to hurt him!  My husband thought maybe she had an egg!  

So we decided to put their “bed” in the cage and leave it in the cage during the day to see if that helped the situation.  (We typically put their bed in at night and remove it after they wake up for context.)  It did not!  I don’t think it made things worse, but it also didn’t help so after about a week we took it back out.  I didn’t want to take the risk of increasing the hormones even more than what they were.

Another observation I made was Niko had learned how to “get away” from Bella’s attempts to “get him”.  While I was still fearful, I decided to leave them together because I felt as if Bella’s attempts were more “warnings” to him.  

****THIS IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANYONE READING THIS POST.  YOU MAY WANT/NEED TO CONSULT A PROFESSIONAL.  THIS WAS MADE AFTER SIGNIFICANT OBSERVATIONS, KNOWING MY BIRD’S PERSONALITY, AND AFTER CONSULTING WITH MANY EXPERIENCED PEOPLE.  IF YOU HAVE BIRDS HOUSED TOGETHER YOU MUST CONSIDER THAT THEY CAN SIGNIFICANTLY INJURE ONE ANOTHER OR POSSIBLY KILL ONE ANOTHER.  I AM SHARING MY EXPERIENCE HERE AND YOURS MAY BE SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT BASED ON MANY FACTORS****

After the last separation, I was starting to consider if this was resource guarding I was seeing.  Was Bella guarding the food?  Is this something I caused by separating them?  I needed to do more observing to figure it out.  In the meantime, I provided more food bowls around the cage to see if that would help.

After further observation, what I saw was Bella would often go after Niko when he moved too quickly or flew about the cage.  The more he flew, the more she tried to go after him and growl at him.  It seemed as if it was a fear response, probably related to the tail biting in the beginning.