Stimulus based aggression in Caiques, need help

Cretaal

New member
Jan 2, 2021
1
0
So the rundown is that my father has a caique, she's a real sweetheart and they've bonded well. This bird gets along with everyone, and she isn't alltogether aggressive with me. However, she's developed a habit of attacking me, but only if I have a bag in my hand.

Now, I know she can take out a chunk if she wants to, but the most she's done is latched in and dented me, and drew some blood from my cheek once. She only exhibits this behavior towards me, and I'm rather certain she's demanding what I have, no matter how inedible. I'm pretty sure it stems from me hand feeding her a few peanuts out of a bag one day when we first met.

Her method of attack doesn't leave me much room to even offer her something, she will fly all the way across the room and land beak first in to the back of my hand and just go at it. It's worth mentioning she's a spoiled bird who usually gets whatever she wants and has relatively free roam of the house. I'm rather positive that I've somehow set up some pavlovian mechanism that has her correlating the bag with treats and is essentially trying to bully me out of it. Is there anyway to deter or reverse this behavior, or somehow encourage her to be more polite in how she asks for treats, keeping in mind she's still my dad's bird. I've been catching her in a blanket and loving on her, but to no avail, and I know disciplinary action is an absolute no go with birds. So does anyone have insight as to what might be going on to cause these bag-activated homing caique attacks and how I might be able to encourage her against this. There's really no distracting at that distance, and she's pretty intent on chewing on my fleshy bits.

Thanks for any advice.
 
Last edited:

kiwi_and_emma

New member
May 22, 2020
44
2
Parrots
2 cockatiels
Hi,
Since what seems to provoke her is the bag maybe go in the room without the bag quietly and avoid eye contact site down or something spread your hands out to show the birds you don't have anything(secretly store a few treats in your pocket) if he is clam slowly get up and give him a treat, if he starts attacking you leave the room and ignore him, this is the worst punishment for a human bonded bird.
 

plumsmum2005

New member
Nov 18, 2015
5,330
94
England, UK
Parrots
Lou, Ruby, and Sonu.
Fly free Plum, my gorgeous boy.
Ask you Dad to have her in her cage when you arrive and when you are settled and comfortable let her out to come over if she wants to. She really is expecting a treat from you (please don't feed peanuts). What if you have something healthy instead? Somethings just set a bird off, it's phones here, can't even touch it LOL. Lose the bag and see if things improve? You could try and turn this into a play session, have a toy handy instead to try and break the cycle?



These are very high energy birds so am wondering how much exercise she gets to burn up some?
 

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