Hi,
Getting another bird as a friend for the current bird is a common mistake that a lot of owners make. Budgies are social birds, but once they bond with another budgie, they tend to gradually lose interest in humans for companionship. It is their instinct to only have one mate, and even same sex budgies will form a mate bond, which leaves no room for a people bond. Based on behavior, I would guess Blue is actually a male. While some females can be tamed, usually the males are the better pet. It’s not as likely that a female would be tame the way you describe. My guess is Sunny is a female, again based on behavior. But also because Blue accepted her. Female budgies can get along, but usually when they are raised together. If both of these birds were female, it is more likely that Blue would see the new bird as a rival. As long as these birds share a cage, their bond will get stronger and instead of Sunny becoming tame, Blue is likely to stop being tame. So yes, separating the birds is the best option for trying to work with Sunny. Unfortunately, you are probably looking at a lot longer than a few weeks to try to tame Sunny. It’s possible that she will never tame down – again a lot of females will not. The next issue is you have unfortunately caused Sunny to have no trust in you. Budgies are a prey animal, so as you suspected, chasing her around was the worst possible thing you could do. When you chase a budgie, it thinks you are a predator trying to kill it. The same goes for grabbing a budgie, because most predators would grab it from behind. While y’all didn’t hurt Sunny, she thinks you tried to and she is now terrified of you. You can’t let a wild bird out of the cage to fly around because there is no way to get the bird back in the cage without terrifying it, unless it can be enticed by a treat.
The only way to work with Sunny is to first gain her trust. This means spending a lot of time talking to her and keeping your hands away from her. Each time you reach for her, you lose the trust you may have earned. If you let her out and have to chase her around to put her back, you have lost all trust again. She needs to trust you to the point that she approaches you, and shows interest in you. If she has Blue in the same cage as a companion, she isn’t going to have any desire to bond with you. You can try having her in her cage in the same room when you are interacting with Blue. With some birds, this can help them with trust. But Blue just might decide he only wants to be with her. So you do have a difficult situation and you could be looking at months before you see any progress with Sunny. I’m going to give you the links to our pages on behavior and training. It’s really important to have a good understanding of behavior because even though they are captive bred, budgies are still a wild species and their behavior is based on instincts. They can’t be trained like a domesticated animal. So I encourage you to read all of the behavior information before you attempt any more taming.
Pet Bird and Parrot Behavior
Teaching Your Bird
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
