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I am new to having IRN's. For the last 25 years I had cockatiels. When my last one died I was so heartbroken that I expanded to a different breed. My first IRN is a beautiful green color. She loves to be hand fed and talked to but not touched. My second is grey she wants constant attention and is very comical. I am in love with her personality. So here is my question. My grey IRN Lucy loves to be on my schoulder but every single time she is on it from the very first time til today she gives me a kiss on the cheeck then goes into a trance like state. She did that in the store where I met her and the gal told me not to allow her to do that very long. My question is why? Bailey my green IRN does the same thing when my Husband visits with her. I almost forgot to introduce myself. I am Nicole from Oregon. I have 3 dogs and 2 birds. My very fist pet was a Dove that I had for 30 years then a Cockatiel I had for 25 years. I hope to have these 2 girls for years to come.

Hi Nicole

Welcome to the forum.

I might be completely wrong in answering your question (and if I am I will be gladly corrected) but my guess would be that the assistant warned you not to allow it since it sounds a lot like pair-bonding i.e. where the bird sees you as a desirable mate of the opposite sex. That could obviously lead to several undesirable issues such as the bird wanting to "mate" in breeding time (read The Adventures of Billie the Wonder Parrot for more on that) and the bird might deem certain family members as "intruders" with the result that it might not want to interact with them or that it even goes into aggressive behavior towards them.

This is my hypothesis of the situation and as I stated earlier I would gladly be corrected by people with more experience of this kind of situation.

By the way: is your birds the same sex or two different ?

Barlow wrote:I am new to having IRN's. For the last 25 years I had cockatiels. When my last one died I was so heartbroken that I expanded to a different breed. My first IRN is a beautiful green color. She loves to be hand fed and talked to but not touched. My second is grey she wants constant attention and is very comical. I am in love with her personality. So here is my question. My grey IRN Lucy loves to be on my schoulder but every single time she is on it from the very first time til today she gives me a kiss on the cheeck then goes into a trance like state. She did that in the store where I met her and the gal told me not to allow her to do that very long. My question is why? Bailey my green IRN does the same thing when my Husband visits with her. I almost forgot to introduce myself. I am Nicole from Oregon. I have 3 dogs and 2 birds. My very fist pet was a Dove that I had for 30 years then a Cockatiel I had for 25 years. I hope to have these 2 girls for years to come.

Both Bailey and Lucy are female IRN's

Oh, I somehow missed that last sentence in your post. Sorry for that.