What Behavior do I Look for When Adding a New Bird?

[RubytheFierce]

Everybody has questions about introducing new birds. I was hoping we could start a thread about how to recognize the signs when new and established birds interact. I've been unlucky at finding information on what means what, and what to do in response to it on the internet, so I've joined up here. So far, this is really the only place I've found that deals specifically with parrotlets, and thank goodness for that! I can't find Parrotlet bird food, I can't find information on them... I'm beginning to think they're an overlooked species.

About a month ago, I was given my first bird, a green pacific parrotlet. I live in a house with a woman who breeds a number of different birds. She gave me Peter, and he and I bonded well right away. He never even bit me once, and is perfectly content to step up when I tell him to, and to tweet along when I sing to him.

About half a week ago, my friend went to a bird show and picked up a female for me. At my request, my new Wendy bird is a blue mutation. I've read all of the information from bird books telling you to quarentine your new bird, etc., but there literally is no place to quarentine Wendy in this house. I'm lucky we found one last cage to put her in. After just one day and night, we brought her into the room with Peter.

She's wilder than he is, but also smarter. She has learned to step up in just one day, when she has previously had no experience with the command. She's a month younger than he is. (It took Peter three days to do it regularly, and he's theoretically had the training.) She's also caused him to be jealous of her.

See, I've found a lot on what you're supposed to do when you're introducing a new bird, and I've read that you're supposed to observe them, and I do. But I don't know what to observe. I ask my friend, but she appears to think that it should be completely obvious to me, and is generally kind of disinterested in parrotlets, I think. (She's more of a conure person.)

Anyway. Here's what happens so far... and can anybody please tell me if these are good or bad things?

1) They tweet back and forth, mimicking the noises one another make from their seperate cages.
2) When Peter is out, Wendy watches us intently.
3) When Peter is out and we walk by Wendy's cage, he refuses to look at her, and sometimes hides behind my head. They DO blink at one another, however.
4) Peter has started biting at me when he never did before (I get that he's jealous and have been trying to reassure him that he's #1).
5) Whenever Wendy is out of the cage with me, Peter starts cleaning himself and ignoring us.
6) When they're out of the cage together, Peter tends to bite at her and she tends to run away, but I haven't let him get close enough to hurt her (I usually startle him and tell him "No!"), and I therefore can't tell if his biting is malicious or playful. He's usually biting at her tailfeathers, but I don't know, I would think that if he were really trying to hurt her, he'd be a lot more successful, a lot faster than I could intervene.

This is probably a "time is gonna tell" sort of issue... but is there hope that these two are going to be friends? I keep reassuring Peter by playing with him first, and I've started a few Peter-specific and Wendy-specific games to hopefully keep them both feeling special...

At least they're talking. Do I just need to be patient?