Hello, all.

Emma, my female cockatiel decided to lay her egg and sit on it in the farthest back corner under the couch. That meant she and Silver, my male cockatiel, were spending all day back there with all the electrical wires.

I decided to give Emma a proper nestbox. I got Emma and the egg out from under the couch with a long handle feather duster and showed her the nestbox. She and Silver got very excited. I opened the top of the box and showed her me putting the egg in. She sat there all thru yesterday evening. She finally went back into the cage to eat and I shut them in for the night. This morning Silver is much more interested in the box. I have the top of the box open and I can see him in there, rolling the egg under him with his beak, just like Emma does. Emma is not keeping him away from the egg, which she did when they were under the couch.

Is this unusual behavior for a male cockatiel? I have never seen Silver mate with Emma (she mates with my male budgie), so the egg is not fertile. The nestbox did solve the problem of them hanging out under the couch.

Silver is a pearl cockatiel whose pearls are almost completely faded and he sings, so I don’t think he could be female.

With cockatiels, both parents share the incubation and chick-raising duties. The most common pattern is for the male to do most of the incubation in the daytime, and the female takes over at night. So yes, this is perfectly normal. But be on the lookout for possible fighting and resentment, since your birds are not actually a bonded pair. Even bonded pairs will sometimes squabble over whose turn it is to sit on the eggs.

Oh, thank you. Very helpful.