Well, if Missk hasn't put you off ringnecks for life I'll add my 2c
I totally agree with her that "bluffing" is a myth perpetuated by people who use forceful/coercive/insensitive handling. Unfortunately ringnecks are quick movers and can be hard to learn to read at first too.
The worst thing about "bluffing" is if you follow the advice given by those very few "articles" on it, your bird will behave like that! So would I!
There are some pretty classic examples on YouTube of how insensitive handling creates aggressive responses.
I've written a fair bit about the topic on this forum already, please search. Follow the link from my above post also.
My advice for any potential parrot owner is to go visit a breeder/pet store and hear your chosen species at full volume before getting one. That's how I realised I could never live with a sun conure! Ringnecks can be quite ear-splitting. Our 2 can say "What are you doing?" at a volume and pitch which makes your ears ring (especially if on your shoulder at the time).
Their natural alarm call is quite unpleasant. Some will do it when visitors come over, but if you pair positive reinforcers with new people this can be reduced in most cases.
My boyfriend wanted a parrot for many of the same reasons as you. We only had Nila as a single parrot for a year (that was longer than I wanted). Nila was handraised from a very early age because of a medical condition. Despite being raised with other birds, he was a bit too bonded with people. We had to work quite hard at teaching him to play and hang out independently of us, we got him lots of foraging toys and rewarded him whenever he chose to be on a playstand instead of a shoulder.
I believe that flock animals should have a same species or compatible companion. This is particularly important to prey species like parrots, a lone parrot in the wild is almost a guaranteed death sentence. Leaving a single parrot at home alone while you are at work or school is in conflict with their natural behaviour. Missk's parrot seemed to benefit from budgie companions though. Nila just went to work with my boyfriend when I was working and came with us on weekend outings most of the time.
I am very interested in natural behaviour and as we learned more about parrots we both realised that the relationship we had with Nila was not what we wanted in a pet. Nila was starting to look for a girlfriend and neither of us wanted to be that. The first spring, before we got Sapphire, Nila started displaying courtship behaviour towards me. I couldn't train him without him getting excited. I already have a boyfriend and I certainly don't want a little green one on the side!
I got a parent raised girl for Nila, because I wanted a bird's bird. She's a feisty little monster, poor Nila has some trouble keeping up with her moods! I should have got a boy as 2 male ringnecks will generally get on well and girl ringnecks get obsessed with finding nest spots over spring. I spent a lot of time removing her from our speakers every 2 seconds in an effort to prevent her from chewing a hole in them as a nest spot. She can also open the pantry door, which is a pain. When she was considering it as a nest site I had to leave the light on in there to put her off (she is looking for somewhere dark). She is currently obsessed with sea grass door mats, which is great because I can give her one in her cage and she spends hours trying to turn it into a nest by chewing it. The downside is our house gets coated in bits of sea grass, but that beats having a bird chewing holes in the walls and furniture!
Anyway, Nila is much more of a normal bird now, despite his bossy girlfriend. The birds spend quite a lot of the day doing stuff together but still like to join us if we are doing anything interesting. They "help" with cleaning and sewing. Both talk alot! Nila has a much larger vocabulary, Sapphire is pretty content to say "What cha doing?" and "Love you" all day in a few different ways and with some whistles thrown in. She contact calls wild parrots through the windows too. Nila tends to use human words to greet them. I can hear both my birds talking from the street outside the front of our house when they are in the back. Sometimes they do a really high pitched squeak when they fly around, it is really unpleasant. I think Sapph is trying to learn to sing opera at the moment, she is practicing some really weird noises!
I don't really think parrots are very suited to living as pets. It is very hard to fufil their needs mentally, physically and emotionally. We spend a lot of time every day making foraging challenges for ours and they spend less time solving most puzzles than we spend preparing them...
My birds are very trainable, they are very intelligent. This means they can open a tupaware container that has been left on the bench in the blink of an eye! The fruitbowl lives in a cupboard because we couldn't find a way to make it parrot proof. Because we have encouraged our parrots to problem solve a lot, they have all the tools they need to remove a cover from a fruit bowl etc.
Parrots are built to fly and it is hard to have a cage big enough for them to do that. Ours fly around our house most of the day, the massive cages we bought them aren't big enough for real flight.
I'm saving up for a massive outdoor aviary at the moment, to provide more enrichment and sunshine.
He is *not* spoiled.
And it would make a great cage to keep at Grandma's house, for visits...... I got this cage 