Parakeets Preening Each Other

A parakeet's feathers are its most important feature. Parakeets keep warm with fluffy body feathers, they fly with long flight feathers. Parakeets therefore try to keep those feathers as clean and healthy as possible. That means, since they have no hands, they have to preen them with their mouths.

Sometimes, though, a parakeet just can't reach certain feathers! That is where the flockmates come in. Here are some videos of my parakeets preening each other. It's just like if you were in the bath and your back was itchy. You would ask someone to come and scrub it for you, to help you get it clean.

Preen Video 1 - 30 seconds - 10mb MPG file
In this first video, Pinto is in the front, just hanging out. In the back, Ivory is preening Santo. Santo is VERY happy being preened, and you can see Santo rolling her head around so that Ivory gets just the right spot. In essence what Ivory is doing is gently washing each feather with her tongue, giving a little "massage" to Ivory's head and keeping those head feathers clean.

Preen Video 2 - 15 seconds - 5mb MPG file
Here's a shorter video with the same setup. I found it funny that Pinto tried to slide over to get in the way of the camera :)

Preen Video 3 - 31 seconds - 11mb MPG file
OK, now Pinto is getting annoyed. Nobody is preening her. Frustrated, she starts preening herself. So in this one you can see both regular preening and two-parakeet preening.

Parakeets Preening Themselves

Parakeet Wing Information, Care and Photos