Parakeet behaviour

Factual Questions
1

One of my budgies died yesterday (the male); as far as we know from natural causes, although he was only four years old.

We found him lying on the floor of the cage, but the female had pecked one of his eyes out.

I’m wondering if this sort of thing is very common and why it might have happened.

My WAG is that I think the eye thing happened after death (I’ve never seen them fight at all) - maybe the female saw him lying there and went down to check him out, but in the absence of all the normal cues and feedback/responses, ended up geting carried away in her attempt to make him respond (I’m trying hard not to anthropomorphise, but that last bit probably reads like I think they are just little feathered people).

Maybe the fact that they were in a cage modified her behaviour somewhat too.

anyway, is this common?, is it possible that she did kill him?

2

I’ve got a budgie, but I’m not an expert. My question would be, how long were they living together in this cage, and how big is it?

Also, just because they’re of opposite sexes doesn’t mean they’re going to get along. It’s doubtful that she actually “killed” him, in the sense of “murdering” him, but she could have harassed him and kept him away from the food. Birds’ engines run hot, and they can starve in 24 hours without food.

So were they a pair, raising young with a nest box and everything? Or were they just two budgies together in a cage? You never noticed her pecking at him before? Did he have a lot of feathers missing from the back of his neck, looking plucked? That’s where parrots attack.

Parakeets are parrots, you know, with the entire constellation of complex and sometimes neurotic behaviors that their bigger and more glamorous cousins exhibit.

But if their relationship was generally peaceful, then my WAG would be that the death was from natural causes, and the eye-pecking thing could be ascribed to natural parrot curiosity, not Sicilian-type vengefulness. :smiley:

3

First, my condolences on the loss of your bird.

Now, can and will a hen budgie kill a cock? Absolutely. Putting two birds together does not guarantee that they will get along, any more than putting two people together does. I (and my wife, who has owned budgies her entire life, a span of time that I’m not stupid enough to admit the length of) strongly recommend against keeping two budgies in the same cage unless you’re planning to breed them (and even then, you should keep an eye on them). Hens have powerful beak and jaw muscles (for their size); in the wild, the female makes a nest hollow by digging it out of a tree. A hen is quite capable of piercing a male’s skull and killing him by doing so, if she finds him in any way objectionable.

Now, the longer that the two had been together, the less likely it is that she’d take a sudden dislike to him. You don’t say how long they’d been together, but if it were the whole four years that the male had been alive, her suddenly turning on him would be most unusual. OTOH, if you’d put them together last week…well, that’s hardly unexpected behavior. The hens are quite territorial and, if there are no chicks to be fed, don’t want the cocks messing around on their turf.

You may also want to take the hen to an avian vet, as sudden behavioral changes (like killing a male that she’d previously been content with) may be a sign of tumors in the CNS or endocrine glands.

OTOH, might the male have died a natural death? Also possible. The garden or chain-store variety of budgie is actually less vulnerable in this respect than the highly-bred show bird, as the latter are bred for looks, not health. A tumor is a possibility, as is kidney failure. Unless you took the corpse to a vet (again, to a qualified avian vet) for a necropsy, the exact cause of death will likely not be known.

If the cock died naturally, the hen might have pecked out his eye trying to get a response, or out of curiosity. A bird’s eyes also collapse quickly after death, and it’s possible that it might appear to have been pecked out when it wasn’t. OTOH, if she killed him, the head is the area that she’d go for, and she might have caught his eye deliberately or by accident.

4

they were a pair that have been together since they were very young, but they were just in (quite large) domestic cage, no nest box or anything and they have always seemed very friendly toward one another (lots of mutual grooming and stuff).

There’s never been any evidence of plucking or anything like that.

They have three seed dishes, equally spaced arounf the cage perimeter, so I don’t think there would have been a problem over seed.

5

Haven’t kept budgies much, but I have had lovebirds (grossly misnamed), a conure, and a cockatiel.

Despite their reputation as seed-eaters, parrots (of any size) do display a carnivorous streak from time to time. In fact, my first lovebird used to kill mice, drag them back to his cage/nestbox and use them to feed the young’uns and the missus. After killing the mouse and before dragging it, however, he would typically eat the eyeballs (:eek: ewwww! groooooooss! Sorry, had to get that out of my system) His son - the one we kept, only killed one mouse (so far - and it’s been 7+ years) but he, too, ate the eyeballs. Oh, and the hen lovebird we had did canabalize at least a couple chicks, so eating one’s own kind is not unknown among the parrots.

I’m guessing that the eyeballs are attractive because 1) they are bright, shiny objects and 2) they are soft and 3) easily removed and 4) maybe very tasty, but I can’t speak from personal experience.

So - even if your budgie died of natural causes, the other bird, finding the deceased one totally unresponsive, might have pecked at the eye while it was still shiny and attractive. A live bird, of course, would not permit another bird to do this.