Rare nasty Gouldian

[SamDavis]

When feeding this morning I heard a nest of young squawking in the tea tree as if being attacked. Looking closer it appeared to be a star nest and there was a red headed gouldian cock with his head in the nest attacking the chicks. He was that engrossed on his deadly mission that I was almost able to grab him before he took off. I then watched from outside. The bugger continually returned to attack whilst the parents (red stars) tried to intervene. A couple of times I entered to chase him away. Anyway I've just managed to catch the bugger in the feed trap.

Has anyone else ever seen this behaviour from a gouldian before?

[finchbreeder]

Have seen a Gouldian cock chucking the chicks of another pair (feathered) out of a nest he wanted. Yes he got it, then once his young fledged was relocated to a different avairy. As he was also systematically putting down a different hen each nesting. He is a Red head too.
LML

[COUNTRY CAPITAL]

red heads cannot be trusted.... pm,s included!!
i have seen them sneak up on unsuspecting doublebars and grab a wing and give them a fair old shake, for no particular reason....
best kept with birds of similar size, personality.....like more gouldians.

[matcho]

Yes, have seen this a couple of times. Usually it is too late as the chicks have been ditched and are dead on the floor. Its amazing no matter how many nesting sites you can put in it still seems to happen when they take a fancy to someone else's nest.

[natamambo]

I had a BH YB hen very aggressive toward all other birds in the aviary while she had young, defended the entire aviary just about as "her" space.

[Greg41]

I had a r/h p/b y/b cock bird that attacked all the other gouldians, he would grab them by the wing and try to fly away with them.
He has now gone to a new home.

Cheers greg.

[djb78]

Yes I had a male rh pb sfyb cock that had a hen and nested in an old Canary nest, they were in a 3mx1m flight and he owned 2/3 of the flight, Canary double bars couldn't even go down the back of the flight as he would attack anything.

[Diane]

Ive had a BH WC YB hen that attacked and killed a couple of BFPF young in a nest. I thought after the babies had been removed that she would set up home in that box but no, she chose one about 5 boxes away, she had never before attacked nor since.

[SamDavis]

I thought it was unusual as I'd only ever seen gouldians fight with gouldians but based on all the comments it seems I've just been lucky.
Seems most comments relate to red heads - perhaps this is more anecdotal evidence to support Sarah Pryke's work about aggressive red heads.

[finchbreeder]

Last season my dominant YH cock displaced the previously dominant RH cock from the top spot. This season the RH has lost his mate, and one of the YH's chicks has a RH. That's called getting your own back. But as YH is just a mutation of RH I believe the birds do not know the difference between RH and YH.
LML