Parrot Biting

GGP: 19th Oct 2005 - 17:18 GMT

do parrot people go around "showing off" their scars and wounds to other parrot people as medals of bravery? this is a very amusing image! I must watch for this next time I am sitting in a bar.

Catherine Penfold-Waxman: 6th Dec 2005 - 05:12 GMT

Then you have a happy parrot. Well done!

keir: 1st Jan 2006 - 19:04 GMT

Sometimes its ur fault but other times its not, i mean u said if it bites u don't put it back in their cage, well won't this teach him to bite when your trying to put him back in, this way he can stay out longer.

in all a gd article

weno98@yahoo.com: 16th Feb 2006 - 01:06 GMT

I have a senegal parrot that I rescured, this bird has been abused so I was told. He does now let me clean his cage at least, where befor no one could. I also can hand him food now. But he still won't let me get too close to him without trying to bite me. I love him so much and want him to live me, what can I do

Pam

2bs2ts@comcast.net: 23rd Feb 2006 - 17:11 GMT

My neighbor has a blue fronted almost a year old. Very unhappy mean bird. I can handle him he seems to love me because I can tell when not to handle him when his tail feathers fan out and his eyes go buggy.This bird is in his cage alot and not talked to in his house like when I go and get him during the day and play and talk to him.He bites alot, like just for nothing it seems. I believe he has been more than dropped on the floor and his owner is afraid of him and I am not. But I can't take him I have small children and my five year old seems to put him in a frenzy!!! and then I get bit. I am very careful with him and don't get bite always but sometimes it's hard to tell he will just reach out and peck at you or draw back and then go for whatever body part he might get.I feel that he recieves to much time in his cage and now his owner is to afraid to handle him often and is not home enough to play with him so I has resorted in playing with him.THis bird tries to feed me though, he always wants to put his mouth in mine and makes weird noises,What is that? Frustrated part bird owner?

2bs2ts@comcast.net: 23rd Feb 2006 - 17:31 GMT

I guess I felt the need to wite more about the bird that I wrote about previously. His owner is gone all week days from seven a.m to about six to seven p.m. He drinks alot during the weekend and plays his music in the house very very loud!!!! I bring the bird to my house for awhile during the day and plsy with him and feed him good things like cooked soy beans in the pod and chicken etc. I don't think he should have gotten the bird myself and now he plans to get a dog!! What can I do other than take the bird myself? I can't tell him to get rid of the bird, except when the bird bites him and then he wants nothng to do with him.When he bites me I tell him no and give him a very dirty look? he will calm sown a little but I still need to watch myself around him he seems to want to play with my eyeballs!!! Help!!

Syed Asim Abbas: 2nd Apr 2006 - 13:57 GMT

i have a Senegal Parrot i donno how old but looks almost an year or little less. well when ever he tried to bite me i use to say "NO BOY NO UR A BAD BOY" and he use to stop but what happened last 3 days back that there were kids in the room and i think that he got scared and i tried to hold him and secure him but he bit me and i tried to take my finger out but no way and so hard that i slapped him and i feel from that time that he is scared of me. i admit that its my fault that i shouldve hit him any way but what to do now i feel so sorry and when ever he sees me growls and goes away from me. my mail ID is saaf6@hotmail.com please help me.

nicholas: 3rd Jun 2006 - 10:14 GMT

i really wanna kno how to do ur tricks if i cant get him out of her cage she bites when i put my hand in there plz tell me

anon (cache-ntc-ab03.proxy.aol.com): 7th Jun 2006 - 02:16 GMT

Nicholas-Talk to your bird softly each day, feed and water her and clean her pen often. Birds know when they are being taken care of. Eventually you should be able to stick your finger into her cage and say "Up". Be confident and patient and she will learn to love you. When you are ready to put her back on her perch, say "Up" and she should go freely. Make sure there are no distractions and loud noises. Talking to your bird daily in or out of the cage will make all the difference. My parrot loves it when I clean his pen. He sits and watches me and says "I love you". Good luck and hang in there.

jamie: 19th Jul 2006 - 23:47 GMT

lmao. i think i must have been drunk when i posted this, and when i say posted i mean cut and pasted from god knows where, and for god knows why. But look at all the comments. Chicken Oriental.

Catherine Penfold-Waxman: 20th Jul 2006 - 14:18 GMT

You have to be sober to post? Now you tell me.

EvilGentleman: 21st Jul 2006 - 14:58 GMT

I honestly have to say that I have posted drunk before (maybe 2 or 3 articles), and found it be no problem whatsoever. The thing that can be truly troublesome is adding a comment to a busy thread when drunk.

Thys: 4th Aug 2006 - 19:38 GMT

We have an african grey, actually two. They both like sitting on our shoulders, but how do you stop them from biting your clothes while up there?

maj: 13th Sep 2006 - 22:16 GMT

i have aprrotlet which is ababy and is only 60 days old and is very good but it likes to chew on my finger but i dont like it so how do i get it to stop chew ing

faisal: 5th Oct 2006 - 10:29 GMT

when my loriket is on me he always nibbles on my ear , clothe . what should i do about it

geoff capes: 10th Oct 2006 - 22:44 GMT

i have one heck of a time getting my recessive pieds to stop biting me. they seem to have no respect for my authority or standing as an athlete/strongman.

WHEN I had the opportunity to acquire a small stud of Recessive Pieds I took it with enthusiasm. They were beautiful Budgerigars which, for too long, had been smaller and slimmer than Normals. I saw the chance of making improvements. My approach was to pair them with Normals of the highest standard in my stud and to acquire top quality Recessive Pied outcrosses that displayed exhibition features approximating to those of Normals.

That has been far easier to plan than to do, though I can claim to have bred Recessive Pieds that had a size and substance that I have seen only in one or two other top Pied studs. One difficulty is that as you increase a Recessive Pied’s size and feather quality, there is a tendency for the dark markings (melanin) to increase – and as the Budgerigar Society’s standard calls for only 10 to 20 per cent dark markings on the wings, such birds are at a disadvantage on the show bench.

Having said that, in my opinion, a Recessive Pied with a full set of mask spots is a far more attractive Budgerigar than one with no spots at all – which is permitted by the BS standard. When the amount of melanin increases there is also a tendency for Recessive Pieds to have 'grizzling' on the fronts of their heads. This is NOT head flecking and used to be permitted by the show standards. However, under the present standards, ANY Budgerigar that shows dark markings on its head frontal must be faulted by judges.

None of these difficulties detracts from the pleasure I get from breeding and exhibiting Recessive Pieds. With Budgerigars – as in my sport – I will always strive for perfection.

Over the past few years, Recessive Pieds have improved immensely and I am convinced that it will not be too long before we see one taking a best-in-show award at a championship show. I hope I am there to see it or, even better, that it will be one of mine.

mandl329: 10th Oct 2006 - 22:50 GMT

Me and my wife just got a 30 year old blue amazon. The bird has really taken to my wife but tries to bite me any time I get near it. Is there any hope for me. i've heard that birds will bond with one person is that whats going on here . Please help in any way thanks.

anita: 14th Nov 2006 - 00:53 GMT

i have a senegal its adult and was an avarian bird. its really nasty ive tryed everythig...... it will take food from me and let me clean its cage but if i try to stroke it............ lets just say ive had lots of bites. still trying

jamie: 28th Dec 2006 - 03:45 GMT

why is my bird biting and how can i get it to stop?

Hawkeye: 28th Dec 2006 - 04:14 GMT

bite the bird back already

anyway this is for the birds

anon (localhost): 15th Jan 2007 - 19:46 GMT

any ideas how to get a bird back in his cage?(meyer parrot) Gave me real bad bite,when trying to' now i wont let him out.

mimi: 16th Jan 2007 - 00:04 GMT

hey guyz i have a bird and i trained her not to bite me when i 1st bought her she nibled a lil but now shez ok but for all you people who need help getting it bac into the cage dont scare it cuz when i did it to my 1st bhird when i wuz young i didnt see it comming but lyk 5 dayz latter it got really swollen and fat and one night juz fell and it wuz dead from being scared inside i never hitted it though so0 that wuz im tryna figure out now

Jamie: 17th Jan 2007 - 00:00 GMT

lmao at all these comments. i truly believe that with citynoise's huge google pageranking you could post and article about anything here and get it listed top 10 on google. heh

Biting parrot: 14th May 2007 - 18:05 GMT

I live with 3 adult parrots. One, a male eclectus, will bite me for no reason that's explainable. Sometimes it's when he steps up, sometimes back into the cage, sometimes when I feed him, sometimes when he's in the shower. He has absolutely no body language before biting. He will go for weeks without biting and then bite several days in a row. How can a human determine the "Why" if the parrot bites in a certain circumstance maybe one time out of 100. He has had 2 well-bird checks in the past year. Getting depo provera shot didn't help at all. Behavior (BAS) chatroom didn't help, but the people there did make me feel like I was stupid because I couldn't recognize body language. (I've had parrots for 5 years. No other parrot--mine or any parrots I interact with--bites except this one green boy.)

Tyfoid Kid: 22nd May 2007 - 20:49 GMT

Jamie - my sister volunteers at Foster Parrots and they are really doing some very good work with almost nothing for a budget. They have taken over an entire house with the birds, trying to segregate them by species but also by temperament. The attic full of the large Parrots is something that's beautiful and scary at the same time (someone has to care a home made wooden sword the whole time your up there because if one of this big birds wants a piece of you . . . )

Some pics I took.

Peacock on the roof

Some birds get very stressed and pluck out their own feathers or cannot defend themselves from other birds that pluck them.

They also have some non-exotic birds (chickens, ducks)

The website is www.fosterparrots.com/index.html

rachel: 24th May 2007 - 13:08 GMT

okay i have had my peach faced love bird for around 3 months now. The place we got him from said that in about 2 weeks he would warm up to us(bull crap) He still will not come to us, eat out of our hand or anything. Infact my grandfather has a stray bird that comes to see him everyday and sits on his shoulder and stuff and my "pet" bird doesnt even get close. Anyways his wings arnt clipped b/c i wanted him to get to know me better before we cliped them so i let him out of his cage last night to clean it and now the next morning he still will not get in it. Any ideas would be great. I dont want to scare him...do you think he will fly into it by himself if he gets hungry enough? He hasn't had food or water in almost 12 hours. He knows where his cage is b/c he has flown to it and sat on top and infront of it.

Dan: 13th Jun 2007 - 19:55 GMT

Last year, I bought a 2 year old Senegal Parrot. It took her about 6 months to warm up to me. I tried to train her in the first month, but I decided that it was better to wait and let the relationship build. In the beginning she would be so uncomfortable that she would bite me if my hand got near. I read a couple techniques for controlling biting parrots, including this site. I found the towel technique worked best for me. I taught her the UP UP command with the towel. Then I wrapped her up in the towel and exposed her head, so that I could pet her head without fear of biting my fingers. I have read that parrots love being pet on top the head, my parrot is no exception. After a couple of times petting her in towel, I was able to pet her on her perch. Now she cannot get enough of it, she bows down her head for petting and she also opens her mouth and sticks out her claw jesturing that she wants attention. Since then I have taught her to fly to my arm or shoulder. She does not bite me anymore, because I would quickly disciple her with one of the methods I have learned. But she does bite other people. I have read that the only way to solve that is to have other people disciple her. The only problem is that the other people do not have the patience to do that. Now that I look back on it, my parrot wasn't that bad of a biter. I had only had to use a wood stick as a biting decoy once and it was not really necessary. Giving my parrot dirty looks has only limited success for me. I think that toweling, laddering, and just chirping/whistling with the parrot worked best for me.

bobbina sveena: 20th Jun 2007 - 00:43 GMT

this website is great but i only got the answers i needed from 1 or 2 people.

mjern: 23rd Jun 2007 - 00:30 GMT

I have a parrot that was given to me, she usually is a good girl and likes to climb on me and will follow me from room to room, but a lot of times after she has climbed on me she will try to bite me.I don't know what to do?She will let me pet her pick her up to put her back in the cage with no problem, and oh she likes to attack shoes.

daniel: 28th Aug 2007 - 16:57 GMT

i bought a parrot (blue fronted amazon, it was very young) about five years ago, and have kept it in the room beside my kitchen. at first it would always try to bite me when i got near it, but i somehow trained it the up, up, technique and she would sit on my arm, but my hand or head and she would bite me. all was well for the last four years, but we went on a holiday for a month, and now she always tryes to bite me again. i can talk to her and she seems like she trusts me, but whenever i put my hand out she bites me straight up! man i got like 6 scars already in the past week! my hands all bandaged up, can anyone help?

donna: 3rd Sep 2007 - 18:50 GMT

I have a 6 year old african grey. When he is in his cage he comes up to me and perches on my finger through the bars, holding on with both claws at the same time. He also puts his head down for me to stroke him and in the mornings when i go up to him he puts his head down for me to kiss him on top of it and when i do he makes a kissing noise back. The trouble is when he is out of the cage he bites also if im close enough to the cage he will take a random pot shot at me and yet he can be so nice when he wants to be. i'm just wondering what his problem is and how to stop the biting?

not_much_cents: 12th Sep 2007 - 19:23 GMT

I've read tons of questions about biting, but have hardly seen any answers.....when do some answers get posted?

Mamabeek: 29th Sep 2007 - 06:50 GMT

Somehow I think the poster long ago abandoned this thread. LOL! But I think it's important to note that DROPPING your bird is a very bad idea. Birds are fragile and you are likely to hurt or kill your bird this way. Secondly, if the bird is not injured it may actually find the ride exciting, in which case the biting behavior is reinforced. The ideal way to curb biting, in addition to the good advice here about not pushing your bird out of its comfort zone, is to 'take' the bite. Don't react at all, if that's possible. If you say OW, or swear or do anything else dramatic (Like dropping the bird) you will actually reinforce the biting. Birds LOVE drama! If you can act as if nothing at all has happened the bird will not get anything from biting and will quickly give up doing it.

Russianblue: 11th Oct 2007 - 13:47 GMT

i have a 2 year old silver crested cockatoo and sumtimes hes a darling but then hell go crazy and bite us for no reason and jus misbehave we always give him love and get him out dispite this reason he has so many toys so i dint think thaat boredom is the reason either please help hes part of the family we jus want to stop the biting!

Kasia: 13th Nov 2007 - 22:03 GMT

thanks for some ideas of how to treat my parrot. i've had him for a week now and i can touch his feet when he's inside the cage but if gets angry or bored with this new game he bites me painfully so i even bleed. its an eastern rosella and i can't stop giving him my attention but now i know that all that hisses and strange noises he's given me so far indicate i shd be more careful ...and yes, i shdn't have shown my sadness and ...shdn't have cried ( well, bites really hurt ) cause he might like it , i mean he might like to be seen as the stronger or more dangerous.

sophie stuttard: 23rd Dec 2007 - 01:24 GMT

well my buggie is a pain in the bum he bits me.how can i stop him biting me ? . i think he need a nother buggie friend cause he looks sad and yer well i dont no how to make him stop biting

pebbles 10 jan 08: 10th Jan 2008 - 17:11 GMT

hello, well my nan has an afican grey parrot i was wundring if anyone has any tips, we have looked on loads of websits but cant find nothink that work. we have only had her 3 months so she its still young to learn new things. cos we was told she was only 18 week old when we had her if anyone can help please e-mail on pebbles19389@hotmail.com thanks.

Birdperson: 14th Jan 2008 - 23:28 GMT

If your bird is biting you do need to try to figure out why in order to stop the behavior. Recently my green cheek conure decided to take a chunk out of my lip. I'm sure it was because he wanted to bite my other conure who he hates and which was sitting on my other shoulder. I think he thought my reaction was cool, because he then took to biting me at every opportunity. I finally got him to stop by going back to treating him as though I had just gotten him as a new bird. I left him in his cage for a couple days while talking to him and giving him treats. I sang songs to him. Then I started back with step up after I had let him out of his cage. My birds have never been forcibly taken out of their cages. They run out when I open the door. We had to rebuild trust with each other. Gradually I have gone back to carrying him around on my finger, but no longer allowing him on my shoulder. He has come back to normal and is no longer trying to bite. You have to remember that its a bird you're dealing with, just barely removed from being wild. Birds are really a cross between cats and dogs as far as training goes. Cats will scratch you and bite if you try to make them do what they don't want to do just like parrots. On the other had parrots are trainable as they are actually more intelligent than dogs, but you have to get them to want to do the behavior (like going in or out of a cage). You have to find out what they consider to be a treat. My blue-crown conure will do anything for one of those fish-shaped cheese crackers. My other conure likes me to sing him a song or give him a small toy or pop can that he can toss off a platform that is in his cage. Also, in general, birds don't like to be petted or to have their toes touched, so naturally they would try to make you stop that. Most do like gentle head scritches though. If you try to force a bird to let you touch before it trusts you or when it doesn't like the touch, it will bite you just as a cat would. I know this is a long post, but I hope I've helped out someone.

Mike Tess: 2nd Feb 2008 - 20:51 GMT

I agree that when parrots bite it is usually with warning and a reaction to the bitten person's actions. I just got home and had to google parrot bite in response to what happened today. I just got home from my favorite pet store in New York. I won't say which one but suffice to say the owner is a "pet celebrity". Long story short, I got bitten by THREE different parrots on my hand and forearm. First was a bite from a mini-macaw who gave all the signals he didn't want to be bothered. I put mu hand out and got a chomp on the finger. Second bite was from a military macaw on my forearm, same senario, and the third was really bad from a blue and gold macaw that was walking around on the floor. The bird room attendant said "go ahead, you can pick him up". Well, I guess he wanted to be there cause I said "step up" and got chomped through the skin on my forearm. This one really hurt, I have this giant welt. Anyway, I have parrots at home and it's not new to me. So, I just said see ya next time and left. I don't know, maybe they didn't like my aura this day.

Betsy: 11th Jun 2008 - 20:44 GMT

My Amazon becomes very agressive when he can fly...he can fly after 2 1/2 feathers grow in. He will suddenly with no warning start flying. He will fly at my hand if I am talking on the phone and give me a nasty bite, he will fly to my shoulder and bite my neck - these are nasty bloody bites. When his wings are trimmed and he can't fly he is very sweet and affectionate. I guess it is my fault for not paying attention to his feathers.........it's fun to see him fly but no fun to be bitten.

Frenchguy: 6th Jul 2008 - 10:53 GMT

This morning, I was bitten 3 cm from my eye (2 in). One of the most renown bird scientist of the XXth century said a bird would never bite your eye, but I am not so sure. I love my birds, but I would not like to loose an eye for them.
I have tried to learn a lot on parrots, and they seem to be complicated animals, none is similar to the other. Their complexity is linked to their intelligence, like it is in humans.
I try, and I think one should always try to get the maximum knowledge, and then also try to understand the specific situation.
As for my incident of this morning, after having read a lot here and in other places, I think I did not care enough of the information the parrot was giving to me that he did not agree with something.
Also, I think one does not consider enough that parrots are flock animals with dominance problems, and positioning in that way. Many things are said on that problem with dogs, and though, I think it is stronger with parrots since they are nearer from their wild genetics.

Peter: 7th Jul 2008 - 14:33 GMT

hmm. i came to this page to find information about how to bite parrots, but all i can find here is information about parrots doing the biting. to be perfectly frank, i feel a little let down...

Matt: 5th Oct 2008 - 10:24 GMT

We recently inherited a 27 year old corella. he is a fantastic talker and entertainer. He loves my wife and also the lady who gave him to us but he seems quite keen to bite the shit out of me. Apparently when he was a young bird he nipped his previous owners husband and he slapped him and he is now aggressive towards males. The frustrating thing is that he will let me give him a scratch sometimes, but i do not know when or why he bites me(the last bite drew blood and hurt for ages but I showed no reaction hoping that ignoring it may help).Would appreciate some advice coz he is a great bird.