stillabirdperson

New member
Sep 28, 2022
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Parrots
Two green cheek conures— Louie and Mango
I have two green cheek conures— Louie and Mango. I’m pretty sure Louie is male and Mango is female. Louie has always been a biter, drawing blood on multiple occasions, and his favorite places to bite are my lips, nose, ears, and fingers; however, he is not always like this. He enjoys cuddling and spending time just being near me.

I work a fair bit and I feel like I’m not home enough for him to have all the social interactions conures can need, so I decided to save up and get another bird. I got Mango a week ago, and they get along great. The only problem is that now Louie is way more aggressive with me than before, and has even started to actively seek me out to attack me. He’ll fly over to me just to attack even when I try to put distance between us.

I think that it’s probably because he wants to protect Mango, or maybe he’s jealous, but I don’t know how to get him to stop. I’ve been trying to implement some suggestions for biting I’ve seen online— not reacting to the bite, putting him in a neutral place and not giving him attention, but I think that he’s just reinforced because he knows that biting makes me go away. He’s as scared of me as I am of him at this point.

If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it.
 

HeatherG

Well-known member
Apr 25, 2020
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6,966
I myself would give a wing clip so the attacking bird can’t fly at me to bite me. I think this is one of the situations where wing clips work well as a temporary grounding to a bird with a bossy attitude.

Hopefully this would give you some months to work on the problem behavior because whatever is happening now is damaging your relationship with this bird. You are both scared of each other. If you could get someone else to do the clip that would be good.

But I know people feel strongly about NOT clipping birds, so hopefully someone else has an idea. If you didn’t clip him, well a greencheek conure is a small bird so it isn’t able to remove a digit or nose or likely to send you to the emergency room. But you need to figure out how to avoid situations that induce a bite WITHOUT drama.

This thread under African Greys

“African Grey First Meet Up - Behavioural Breakdown”​

discusses a similar problem and has a helpful link to a Think Parrot educational post.
 
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