Cocketiel shrieking

Question
Me and my girlfriend have 2 Cocketiels. A male grayback and a female yellow lutino. The female is a dream. She doesn't make a sound and is very well behaved. The male however (we sarcastically nicknamed him "Satan's Cocketiel") shrieks his head off all the time. We bought the female for the sole purpose of trying to calm him down but the plan backfired. In addition to this. He bites everything that moves and in some cases draws blood. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks. Lenny

Answer
HI Lenny,

Female cockatiels are not know for being vocal. Male cockatiels are vocal (as you have found out it sounds like).

As far as the biting, he probably is trying to "defend" his nesting site (aka: the cage) and his mate (the female cockatiel).  If you seperated him from the female and placed him in a different cage, you would probably find that his bitting problem would improve. The screaming probably wouldn't change due to seperating him from the female though. If you do decide to seperate the birds, just remember that they will need daily attention from you (if they do not have each other).  I recommend at least one hour out of cage time daily for a cockatiel.

Here are some articles on screaming and biting that you should find of interest:

http://www.cockatiels.org/articles/behavior/screaming.html

http://www.parrothouse.com/sf3.html

http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww12eii.htm

http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww15eii.htm

I hope this helps.

-Maggie