So like Lucy, Alex has also picked up on a new behavior. Though he learns from Lucy, Alex has a key factor in his personality that differentiates him from her, and that is his motivation. Lucy is very task oriented, and does things from her own motivation. She does things for the sake of doing them, and is motivated by play. Alex on the other hand does everything for attention. It doesn't usually matter what kind of attention. He just likes to be noticed.

So Alex's new thing is that it I'm in the room and he's in his cage, he will try to make as much noise as he can possibly make. He does this by faking a panic. He'll flap around in his cage. The reason I know that he's faking it is because he'll stop as soon as he notices that somebody is looking at him.

If I ignore him for long enough, he'll eventually give up, and start playing with stainleess steel food bowl on the bottom of the cage.

And funny enough, that it the bowl he can make the most noise with.

It's funny how smart they are! Milo is attention motivated to, and his new thing is screaming at me when I am out of the room, and of course he acts all "so what" when I come in the room he is in. Gotta love those tiels! It sounds like yours are both getting along very well too. Was that from the beginning, or was it something you had to work on?

Alex was definitely a cuddle-bug from the beginning. When I went to the breeder's house, he was the only cockatiel that actually let me pet him. Though the two others I looked at specifically were very accustomed to climbing to my shoulder and chewing on my glasses, I just took a certain liking to Alex. I think the fact that he wasn't yet weaned may have also formed a quick bond. He was fed by both my mom and myself, so he became quite used to us.

But Alex gets comfortable around people very quickly compared to Lucy. He even likes my dad, who has handled him the least (though I did make him perch on my dad's hand for socialization purposes). He's more tolerant of being around strangers than the rest of my birds, and isn't afraid to go up to anyone (especially if they're wearing anything shiny).

He's quite clingy compared to Lucy, who is very independent. I'm not sure if that has to do with him being hand fed or him still being a baby, but he just seems to flock more towards the humans than other birds. He is learning to be more of a bird through watching Lucy though, which is nice. I love how cuddly he is, but when you're trying to work with him on your shoulder, clinging to your shirt, or sitting on your hand and chewing on your ring, you start to wish that he would find something better to do.

what does Alex look like

talking about glasses, my birds managed to ruin my brand new glasses by chewing off one sequin and some paint. I had to buy same color nail polish to fix lack of paint, but polish peels off after some time. Or, they try to chew on glasses again (now I am rather strict about not letting them, plus I am worried about poisoning them by nail polish)

Here's an old picture of him next to Lucy:

Not much has changed. He's gotten a little bigger and his crest is slightly larger. heres a more recent picture, but under some crazy lighting, as the sun was just beginning to set:


I don't usually let the birds chew on my glasses either. It's kinda hard to do with Alex though, because the more you try to get him to stop doing something, the more he'll want to do it for the sake of attention. He's yet to ruin my glasses yet.

Though at one point, he decided to use my glasses to try and climb to the top of my head. I managed to get him off, but then a few seconds later he just straight up flew to my head. I guess he decided it was a better lace to be.

Beautiful tiels..... every bird has its own ways... just like us people....My 1st luv in birds is a tiel...

thanks for the picture. What mutation is he? and are you sure that he is a boy?
good that they are getting along!

After a pondering, I am pretty sure that his color mutation is "fallow"; a color similar to cinnamon, but the red eyes is what differentiates the two mutations.

I honestly don't know if he is a male or not. He hasn't gotten through his juvenile molt yet (just started actually), so I chose the gender neutral name. "He" is a pronoun I usually use until proven otherwise.
Considering that fallow isn't sex linked, I will only be able to tell after the juvenile molt
He is starting to sing though, and while this might be an indication of him being male, Lucy would "sing" when she was around this age as well (to be fair, she was the only cockatiel at the time. It's possible that she stopped because there is another cockatiel). He doesn't do it with anyone in the room though, so getting a video of it is not possible right now.

Pearl is sex linked and he's got that too. But if his mom was pearl you still won't know what sex he is until he molts.

His mom is a whitefaced Lutino, which from my understanding makes it impossible to detect pearling on. I know regular Lutinos get pearling, but that pearling is yellow, and since whitefaced gets rid of all yellow feathers, a pearling on a whitefaced Lutino would probably be invisible.