The alternate bird room was a flop. Squeebis, Henry, Elvis, Priscilla and Mims were in there for two months with a nestbox. Everybody was interested in the box but none of the boys were interested in pairing up with a hen. There was a little light courtship but nothing more than that. Now Mims is back in the main bird room making a threesome with Vlad and Snowy, and Dweezil has moved into the alternate bird room because he's charged up enough without having nestboxes to explore.

I don't have a princess bride for Dweezil so he courts cockatiel hens instead. Prissy is his favorite and Ladybug is his second favorite. So now I have three male cockatiels and one female in the same room, and she's being courted by a princess parrot instead of the tiel boys. Dweezil's courtship style is more forthright and "in your face" than what cockatiels do, so the hens seem rather taken aback by it.

It looks like the birds have settled the nest-possession issue. Teela is taking the preferred cage and Shodu is taking the other one. Shodu has raised three previous clutches in that cage, and the current location is better than where it was in the past. So she'll be happy enough with it.

Are you going to get your Princess Parrot an actual princess? I bet they would make a great breeding opportunity for you at the bird marts.

I'm not planning to breed princess parrots. They're not considered to be a difficult species to breed, but they're more complicated than cockatiels. They have the best breeding success when you have several pairs, and I'm not sure that one princess pair and several cockatiel pairs would count as a colony. It's reported that they tend to break their own eggs when they jump into the nestbox, so you have to be careful about the nestbox design.

It's possible that I might change my mind someday, even though I have too many birds already. Dweezil is split to the blue mutation, and it would be fun to get a blue hen and have a variety of normal and blue chicks.

I'm not sure where I'd find a princess hen that wasn't related to Dweezil. His breeder lives in California but comes to all our bird marts. He has a LOT of different species, and doesn't keep track of the breeding records too carefully. I'd need to find somebody else breeding princess parrots who didn't get their breeding stock from him. This is just part of his display. You can see a normal princess parrot in the middle of the second picture. I think the white birds to the left are also princess parrots. This breeder has the normal color, white mutation, and blue mutation.

The white mutation is a combination of blue (whiteface) and lutino, just like it is in all species. An interesting thing about princess parrots is that they only have the non-sexlinked lutino mutation, not the more common sex-linked lutino.

Wow how does he got time to care 4 them n make sure there all friendly.

I think you can make it work. I think people will be into the princesses. They cost more than cockatiel because they more rare.

He probably has family members helping him. With an operation that big he might even have employees taking care of the birds. The business is profitable enough for him to drive from California to Tucson (in the eastern half of Arizona) with all those birds. I haven't seen how he hauls them but he must have a big trailer or a good-sized truck.

Dweezil was sold as a handfed bird and I believe that it's really true. He's very social with humans, even though princess parrots have a reputation for being best as aviary birds not pets.

Princess parrots go for about $300 at the bird mart. Cockatiels are more like $25-75 depending on mutation. So yes there is a price difference! But there are more buyers for cockatiels too.

I love bird marts. I plan on going this year with some pionus owners. Hope they have BCCs this year.