War of the Parakeets

We had to evict our female lutino parakeet Ginger (above) from the main cage yesterday. Her former cagemates Whitey (female albino) and Queenie/Fred (green male) have been getting amorous of late (especially in the early morning before the cage cover comes off) and Whitey has been laying eggs. This prompted Ginger to get extremely aggressive towards the couple who shared her home.

Earlier in this melodrama we had to remove a nest box and abandon the idea of raising parakeet chicks because Ginger wouldn't let Whitey into the box to lay her eggs. She stood guard in front of the box and wouldn't budge. This led to us allow Whitey to just lay her eggs on the cage floor, where she has been alternating sitting on them and ignoring them. None of the seven she has layed so far has hatched. Here's Whitey the red-eyed albino:

Yesterday we noticed Ginger grabbing onto Whitey's tail feathers and whomping her. The last straw was when we discovered her swinging Whitey around by the feathers on her head. Yes folks, we have a war-monger, red-eyed lutino parakeet on our hands, at least when breeding time is nigh.

So we removed Ginger to her own cage and that's that. She is now a solo parakeet and will stay that way until and if we decide to get her a pal. She can still see her ex-cagemates but she can't swing them around by their feathers anymore. Below there's a photo of Queenie (Fred), the focus of the females' fighting. You have to admit he IS a handsome bloke! It is sad to have to split up the dancing pair of Ginger and Fred(Queenie), but establishing parakeet peace has to be our number one priority. As of now, Ginger's only company is the fake parakeet in the photo above. Can't hold a candle to Queenie though!

(Click on photos for larger images.)