A grass parakeet temperament, not a velcro parrot
Bourke's parakeets come from the arid interior of Australia, where they live in small, loose groups and travel between feeding grounds. That background produced a bird quite unlike the intense companion parrots: Bourke's are soft-voiced, unhurried and famously mild, the parakeet keepers recommend to people who want a bird that shares a room peacefully rather than demanding its centre. They are also crepuscular, coming alive in the low light of early morning and evening and dozing through the middle of the day, so their social energy arrives in gentle waves rather than all-day neediness. One-person obsession is a problem associated with species that pair-bond tightly and are kept singly; Bourke's social wiring is more communal than that.
What their bonding actually looks like
A Bourke's that trusts you shows it quietly. It feeds calmly while you sit nearby, answers with soft chirps, chooses a perch in your part of the room, and steps up without fuss when asked. What you typically do not get is the jealous repertoire of bigger bonded parrots — lunging at your partner, screaming when you leave, or treating other family members as rivals. Bourke's kept in pairs or small groups bond visibly to their bird companions while remaining tame and pleasant with people, which makes them one of the easier species for a household where several people want a relationship with the bird rather than one owner and several bystanders.
When a Bourke's does start to favour one person
It can happen, and the cause is almost always the routine rather than the species. A hand-reared youngster fed, handled and played with exclusively by one person through its first months learns that people means that person. The preference stays shallow by parrot standards — wariness of strangers rather than aggression — but the fix is the same: widen the circle early. Have other household members offer the favourite treat, deliver the morning feed and take a turn at the calm evening out-of-cage session while the bird is at its most sociable. Because Bourke's are not territorial defenders of a chosen human, a few weeks of shared care usually evens the trust out again.
Keeping the bond social as the bird matures
Choice-based handling keeps a Bourke's friendly with everyone. Invite the bird to step up rather than scooping it, let it watch unfamiliar hands deliver good things before asking those hands to hold it, and schedule the taming and training play for dawn and dusk when the bird is naturally alert and inclined to interact. Short sessions with different family members, each ending before the bird gets tired, build a picture of humans in general as safe. If you keep several Bourke's, rotate which bird gets the first session so no individual fades into aviary-only status unless that is what you want for it.
Reading preferences day to day without over-thinking them
A Bourke's may still have moods: keener on company at dusk, sleepy and best left alone at midday, warier during a moult when pin feathers make handling uncomfortable. None of that signals a broken bond. Watch instead for the slow trends — a bird that gradually stops stepping up for one person, or flinches only at a particular approach, is telling you something specific about that interaction, and adjusting the approach nearly always answers it. Their honesty is as gentle as the rest of them.
For a species whose trust spreads naturally, the household's job is simply not to narrow it. KinsLe's Care Teams lets you share out the feeding, cleaning and evening social sessions among the family with each duty marked off as it is done, so your Bourke's parakeet builds an easy bond with the whole home.