Baby conure biting

Hi guys.
I've got a green cheek that's a few months old. I'm not sure if its something he'll grow out of but he bites a lot not hard but when he's over stimulated with Pat's and the part that concerns me is when he doesn't want to do something, like step up off my shoulder or go back in his cage. He bites and makes a noise like hes upset. If anyone have thought or advice to help me discourage this behavior I'd appreciate it. Cheers

Welcome to the community! And congrats on your new Green Cheek!

I don't know how long you've had your new baby, but I'm assuming not long...First of all, you need to realize that owning a pet parrot is not at all like owning any other type of pet, especially not like a dog, cat, etc. They have the intelligence of a 3 year-old human child, and they use logic and reasoning. So you need to approach training from a "Positive-Reinforcement" point of view and NEVER using any forms of punishment or Negative-Reinforcement...So that means instead of scolding or yelling at your bird when he displays a behavior you don't like or that he shouldn't do, you instead need to reward him with lots of verbal praise and his favorite treat every time he displays the behavior you want him to display...That's the first key to being successful in training your Conure, because if for example someone mistakenly tells you to "Flick/hit him on the beak every time he bites you", and you listent to them and do it, you're going to lose all of your bird's trust, and the biting is going to only get worse and worse and he will literally become scared of you and not bond at all with you. So keep that in mind.

***This is going to be a marathon, not a spring...You need to always keep this in the front of your mind as well, because there is no "quick-fix" to stop a behavior in your bird, nor is there anyway to speed-up the bonding process...If you've only had your new baby for a few weeks or even for a couple of months, that's no time at all and you've yet to earn your bird's trust. That's the first step in building a relationship with your new baby Conure, earning his trust, and this can take quite a while to happen. But once you earn his trust, then the real bonding between the two of you will start.

Also, you need to remember that if your Green Cheek is only a few months old, then he's just a little baby and wil be "nippy" and "beaky", that's totally normal. So you need to figure out what his favorite treat is, and you need to make that his "Training Treat", which you can only give him when you are rewarding him for behaving in the way you want him to. It needs to be something he loves and also something small that he can eat quickly, such as a Sunflower Seed kernal that is out of the shell (he should be eating any seed-mix that contains Sunflower Seeds at all, nor any Peanuts/Nuts or Dried Corn of any kind, these are all ultra high in fat and will result in Fatty Liver Disease if they are eaten in their regular food)...So you need to keep his "Training Treat" in your pocket or within arm's reach whenever you're at home, so you can reward him both verbally and with a Training-Treat whenever he does what you want him to do...

For example, instead of "punishing" him when he nips at you when you ask him to step-up onto your finger, you instead just need to completely and totally ignore the fact that he nips you when he's stepping-up or at any other time. Don't say anything about it like "Don't bite" or say "Ouch" or anything else, you need to totally pretend like it didn't happen at all, because to your bird, even Negative-Attention is Attention, and that's what he's trying to get...So whenever he bites you, no matter how hard, no matter if it hurts, regardless of anything you say and do nothing. Do not react to him biting you in any way....

***In-contrast, every time he does something WITHOUT BITING YOU, like stepping-up onto your finger when asked with no bites, you give him lots of verbal-praise and a Training -Treat immediately after he does it. This is reinforcing the good behavior, and totally ignoring the biting is telling him that it will get him nowhere to do the bad behavior...And this is how you train him to stop any and all bad behaviors and rather do good behaviors, by totally ignoring all of the bad behaviors and pretending like they never happened, and by immediately rewarding the good behaviors or the "right way" of doing things like stepping up without biting with verbal praise and a Training-Treat...