Item aggressive conures

hey guys,

my first bird was a mitred conure. he was older when i bought him and was abused. he was very nippy at first, so bad in fact that he drew blood quite often. i worked with him and he got alot better but he still bit...extremely hard whenever i picked up certain things next to him. like if he was on the floor and i picked up a washcloth next to him he would charge me, bite me and draw blood. he did this with pop bottles, pill bottles, washcloths and phones. now i thought this had to do with the fact that he was abused before but now that he has passed and i have my new green cheek conure who was a baby when i got him he does the same thing. he is about 10 months old and he bites me so hard whenever i pick up the remote or my cell phone next to him. he charges and latches on. alot of the time he screams while doing so and stretches his neck out. when he does this i yell NO firmly and ignore him for awhile but if i am still using the item he will run back and bite me again so i just have to put him in his cage. i just dont get it. any feedback would be much appreciated.

If you reinforce the bite in any way with yelling the bird will understand that this gets your attention and only bite more. It is hard not to react I know. One should not yell, punish, repremand or be aggresive in any way to a bird. You should redirect the birds attention, perhaps with a new toy. You could try to reduce the beaky behavior by removing something desirable such as your hand/arm. Some birds do not want to be handled. Of course the one way you can teach bird not to bite is not to give him the opportunity to do so in the first place. It will work out. There are many good books on parrot care.

As SB mentioned scolding is not a productive way to go. But a quick but short time-out can work wonders.

Conures do tend to get in that possessive mood, and it escalates if scold them. They'll bite, you'll get mad, then they'll get more mad and bite again. Best bet is to catch it before it happens and redirect them somewhere else.

You can't be scared to pick things up around him, he will notice this and feed on it. Don't reach out gently or uncertainly for something - if you ask (with body language) for permission to pick something up a parrot's answer will always be NO followed by a bite. So don't 'ask', just do. If he tries to attack don't pull away - he'll chase AND have better targets. Rather close your hand, make a fist, and don't move it. He may still try to bite, but there's much less to get ahold of, and he won't 'win' the encounter.

It sounds odd, but they need to learn that they don't win by trying to bite.

I think the problems seems to be that we have to understand "their rules"....i.e., What is theirs is theirs, what is ours is theirs, what we think is ours is theirs, anything near them is theirs.....etc.!! There really is no argument with them about this.......it just is!!