I recently wrote an article about blue and green Quaker Parrots and the differences I've noted between these two color varieties. A question popped up on the Quaker Parrot Forum yesterday about whether there are differences between male and female Quakers, so I thought I'd try to address this question here.

In my experience, I have not noticed any differences between male and female Quakers in personality, talking ability, train-ability, aggressiveness, intelligence or any other trait or skill. There are only a few responses to the question so far on the forum, but those who have responded up to this point agree with my own experience.

Now, I have to qualify this statement to say that this is true when Quakers are housed separately. When a male and female are kept in the same cage, all this can change. From what I understand, this is true of other types of parrot pairs as well. For a particular species, generally either the males or females become more aggressive when kept in pairs. For Quaker Parrots, it is the female that becomes more aggressive. But again, this is ONLY when they are kept in pairs. This extra assertiveness does not present itself when a female Quaker is caged by herself.

With one of my pairs, this female aggressiveness is particularly evident. The female will squawk and try to get a nip of me through the cage bars whenever I go near the cage. The male will actually push her out of the way and then squeeze his own beak through the cage bars. The only difference is that he is asking for kisses instead of wanting to rip my flesh apart. LOL!

So there you go. In case you were wondering if a male or female Quaker would make a better pet, I'd like to reassure you that males and females make equally wonderful companions. We have 5 females and 2 males in our household, and I wouldn't hesitate to add either a male or female to the flock if the inn wasn't already full here. ;-)