Alexandrine working up to a bite? (long post)

Hi Everyone,

I've posted before about McCoy my Alex. Everything was - and mostly still is - going well, but my confidence is wavering somewhat at the moment! We're doing clicker training and it is going well. He'll follow the target anywhere in the cage and will fly around the room to reach the target. He takes food from my hand.

He spontaneously flew to my arm about a week ago. A few days ago I was working next to his cage and he climbed down and made it pretty clear he wanted to get closer (leaning forward, moving head, eyes not pinning) so I used the target to encourage him onto my arm. He was very happy and comfortable and would walk towards my hand or my shoulder depending on which was higher and stay for a few second or a few minutes. I kept clicking and treating to prolong the time he spent there and then just treating every few seconds, but stopped using the target. He will step up pretty consistently now, I generally start with the target and clicker, but can then offer my arm without and he steps up. I always treat.

He responds differently to my hand though. He will stand on it to take a treat, but nibbles and pokes and scrapes at it. He has been a little to hard on one occasion, although has never broken the skin. He's more reluctant to step up on bare skin than clothing too, but he doesn't "beak" my bare arm other than when he steadies himself to step up.

I'm encouraging him to stand on my hand by moving the target so he has to once he is on my arm, but while he's waiting for the treat he will be nibbling, biting (not very hard, but getting there), scraping or poking my hand. He usually just waits for the treat when he's anywhere else. I put the target down and get a treat so we're talking about a wait of 3 seconds at most.

I'm just not sure how to manage it, I don't want to handle it wrong and cause a problem to develop. Any advice!? What do I do next or do I stop and consolidate what we have already? He's moving so quickly I feel I need to do something about it now.

I don't care if he doesn't step up onto my hand, but will step up onto my wrist, but I would love to harness train in the future so I really want him to be ok with my hands.

Last night I started to touch his feet with my finger when he's on the side of his cage and he was absolutely fine with it. I haven't got the impression that he is hand phobic, I have had an OWA who was and he is nothing like that.

Any advice will be gratefully received. The more detailed and pedantic the better as far as I'm concerned!!

Many thanks

Could you post video of what he's doing? My alex nibbles my hand when he's hungry.

Hi,

I'll try and film it and upload.

Thanks

Sounds like wonderful progress!

Understand that to your Parrot, Humans and all their friends that hang around them are just really odd creatures. It can take sometime for a Parrot to put together that our heads, which is what they most commonly define as us, is also connected to our shoulders, arms, and hands, plus all the other stuff that follows us around.

Point being, they do not always connect hands to arms to shoulder to head on day one. And that all those items are safe!

So, when they encounter hands, they are not always that comfortable of hands. Also, hands can bring good things and also bad things. So trusting them is an on-going process.

Lets just take all of that as back-ground or better stated a starting point.

Bite Pressure Training becomes important at this point. Please remember that the Beak has many uses! Yes, it is a Bitting Tool and they get that fairly quickly. But, it is a tool to determine what something is; warm, cold, solid, soft, etc.. That is very important in understand why they will 'beak' something. The beck also is their tool for eating and if you watch closely they will 'beak' (test) something before they will eat it. The beak is also a very important tool for getting around.

It is very important that you determine what your Parrot is doing with its Beak and assure that your allow some beak action and correct (No Bite) others.

Congratulations, your parrot is growing and learning!

Work at, only good things happen when hands are near by.

khaiqha said:

Could you post video of what he's doing? My alex nibbles my hand when he's hungry.

Click to expand...

Hello, the filming isn't going well I'm afraid. As soon as he sees the phone he races straight to it. Don't know why!

The behaviour hasn't particularly changed, but he will happily fly to and stand on my hand now.

I do know what a bite "looks" like now, I got a clear warning yesterday that I wasn't being polite enough when I tried to take him out of his cage and there was no messing about with that!

khaiqha said:

Could you post video of what he's doing? My alex nibbles my hand when he's hungry.

Click to expand...

Hello, the filming isn't going well I'm afraid. As soon as he sees the phone he races straight to it. Don't know why!

The behaviour has reduced, but hasn't stopped, he will happily fly to and stand on my hand now though!

I do know what a bite "looks" like now, I got a clear warning yesterday that I wasn't being polite enough when I tried to take him out of his cage and there was no messing about with that!