Monty & Merlin's Personalities: What are they REALLLY like?

Monty is a miligold macaw which is a 1st generation hybrid breed between a blue&gold and a military macaw. His personality pretty much reflects the parents’ clownish, loyal, yet hard headed traits. Monty was born around August 15th, 2018 making him a year and four months old around the time of this blog. Monty was raised like a dog so he’s very playful, has so many bursts of excitement he doesn’t know what to do with it. Food is ABSOLUTELY LIFE to him. A grape, some pizza, and burger are foods he’ll kill for (don’t worry, we only give him the breads on pizzas and burgers) He does tricks like turn around, high fives, and kisses. Cuddles are his favorite past time when he’s not overwhelmed with excitement because he loves to steal heat from your body. He does have his very hard headed moments where he refuses to listen and will attempt to push your buttons like a real child would. If you catch him chewing on something he’s not supposed to, he’ll stop when he’s caught.. But the moment you turn around, he’ll go right back to it. If he doesn’t like something - he’ll definitely let you know. Whenever I give him certain foods or toys he doesn’t like, he’ll block them with his feet. Sometimes when he’s mad at you, he’ll scream at the top of his lungs knowing it bothers the heck out of you. Like a real child… there are rewards and there are hard times. I have to say though - when he’s affectionate, it is the sweetest thing in the world. He’ll give you kisses and lay on your chest for you to pet him.

Meanwhile...

Merlin is a ruby macaw which is a 1st generation hybrid breed between the 2 big red birds - a greenwing and a scarlet macaw. So Merlin is relatively larger than Monty and he’s born around August 2019 making him 4 month-ish. Merlin loves cuddles and to sleep on his back. He enjoys laying on us for extra warmth. He spends all day yapping non stop. You’ll hear all sorts of incoherent blabber but it’s quite hilarious. So far, Merlin is still being hand fed, so baby formula is the only thing he’ll really open his eyes for. He eats other food too but he’s not picky about it. Whenever he works too slow on the food, Monty likes to help him out, aka steal it. We’re working on teaching him a few tricks now to keep him entertained during this cold winter season. He has a HUGE passion to fly. We got Merlin from a friend/trainer who is a huge advocate for free-flighted birds so as a part of the package, she taught him to free-fly before we took him home! He loves stretching his wings and soar in the sky. Can’t wait to let him fly when spring comes around again!

Merlin is very different from Monty. He’s a total gentle giant but since the two brothers share a cage at home, Merlin looks to Monty as his mentor and learns everything from him - good and bad stuff. He absolutely LOVES to bother Monty in the cage. He wants to be everywhere Monty is and is attached at the wing. Monty, being the older brother that he is, gets annoyed sometimes and it becomes a game of “I’m not touching youu” making Monty scream even if Merlin just near but not touching him.

They really love preening, especially when done to each other. Macaws are very vain birds and appearances matter a lot to them. Monty spends the majority of his day preening and it makes a HUGE mess for us (but that’s a story for another time) Now that there’s 2 of them, it’s 10x more work, not 2x. We won’t complain though. These exotic birds are very social flock creatures. Bringing Merlin in has made a huge difference in Monty and we’ll tell you why in our next blog! Keep your eyes out, we’ll try to post every Monday!

Thanks for reading :)