Why is she so mean!?

[mallinds]

Okay, I've had my green cheek conure for about 4 months. When I first got her she was very shy around me, but very friendly. About a week after I got her, there was an incident where my 10 year old cousin let her out of the cage while I wasn't home, and she ended up getting scratched by one of my cats. She was rushed to the vet and put on two different antibiotics. I was worried she would be traumatised by the incident, but she didn't seem scared or nervous, and I noticed she was coming out of her shell more. Every day I'd have to hold her and give her the meds, and she was always really good for me, no issues whatsoever. We were bonding, everything was fine.

Here we are about 4 months later and she is a very mean little bird. She doesn't seem to hate me. I mean, she likes being around me, she likes to get head scritches and cuddle, but she also LOVES to bite. She will rarely step up for me anymore, as soon as she sees my finger she bites it. She will often walk over and bite my hand for no apparent reason, even if I'm not moving it or trying to touch her. She hasn't drawn blood yet, but it REALLY hurts. She has been molting for the past two-ish months, but it seems to have slowed down a lot at this point. Could it be a combination of molting and age that's making her like this? I think she's about 10 months old.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to figure out what is causing this behaviour and what I should be doing to stop it.

 

[Kisota]

Ten months old could mean she's starting to reach sexual maturity. During this time birds are notorious for being difficult, bitey, moody, and just... crazy. Molting certainly doesn't help, either, and can make them kind of moody and miserable as well.

Weather the storm. She'll get better. Most suggest that you try to avoid the bites (carefully, don't yank away from the bird or it may see it as a game or see threatening to bite as a good way to manipulate people). Trying to ignore her when she's being difficult is good. Birds don't tend to respond to scolding or punishment very well.

Clicker training and things like that can be a great distraction. It lets you ask the bird to do things and bond with the bird, while avoiding a bite (basically by keeping the bird busy with things that are mutually exclusive with biting!)

 

[hacatta]

hi,i have a green cheek that behaved just like you said around that age.
First month she was a darling,then she started biting for no reason.
Now she is still moody but doesn´t bite anymore.
I learned her that when i got bitten i would push my finger right under her belly and force her to step up,at this point she will bite again so i do the same with the other hand and keep doing the same over and over until she didn´t bite anymore then i give her scratches and fuss over her.
Now she knows that biting means unwanted exercise
She was bitey for about a year i tried everything ignoring it,trying to avoid it ,giving treats when good and wiggling my hand when she tries to.
Nothing helped till one day i got so sick of it and just did this without thinking.

 

[Dinosrawr]

I swear our GCCs love playing a game with us where they convince us they love us just to get a nice nip in, haha! Kisota is probably right on the mark about hormones, but it could also just be your little fid's personality. Just like some people like being around others but don't enjoy excessive contact, your little feather baby may love being with you but may not always enjoy excessive scritches or cuddling.

My own GCC, Avery, is very hit-or-miss when it comes to cuddles. Some days she loves me so much we spend hours just cuddling. Other days I'm lucky to just get a gentle nip in place of a nasty bite. On those days, I devote our time target training and simple "hanging out" time. Your birds will always remember your reactions to their behaviour, so do your best to stay positive! Remember that you'll have her for approximately 15 to (hopefully!) 30 years... one or two rough years is nothing in the long run.

Good luck with your little baby and I hope your relationship improves!

 

[Kalidasa]

I would either out her on the floor and walk away when she bites, or put her in her cage and pointedly ignore her for about 5-10 minutes...not to punish, but to make a point, that the biting is no longer ok. When she bites, give a deep voiced "no" and then put her away or walk away. Birds are super smart and she'll figure out in no time what acceptable beak pressure is. But you must be consistent..

 

[Love_Fern]

I would either out her on the floor and walk away when she bites, or put her in her cage and pointedly ignore her for about 5-10 minutes...not to punish, but to make a point, that the biting is no longer ok. When she bites, give a deep voiced "no" and then put her away or walk away. Birds are super smart and she'll figure out in no time what acceptable beak pressure is. But you must be consistent..

I agree. There must be a negative consequence. Finding a negative consequence is hard. Fern is not a biter BUT when my son comes over from his dads and she has not seen him in a few days, she has nipped him. What I tell him to do is get a pillow case and if she does it, say "No" while placing her in the darkness of the case for about 5 seconds, then pull her out--she stops immediately. If she didn't, he would repeat. This has always stopped it and she wants to snuggle with him at this point. I strongly believe any aggression should be nipped in bud and not acceptable.

 

[Birdman666]

A conure who bites will draw blood.

My dusky conure, who was evil, once put his beak CLEAN THROUGH my finger the long way. As in tip of the beak sticking out the other end...

Why?! He wanted to stay with me and be cuddled. He didn't want to get set down and go to bed!

Since yours is not drawing blood, he is not biting, he is communicating rather forcefully with his beak.

"I don't wanna!" Persist and he lets you have it.

A hard molt and a lot of pin feathers will make them miserable. Which could account for this. Increased bathing helps.

 

[bostjan]

Your bird is going through bird puberty. Just like teenager adult puberty, the bird will behave differently and become more assertive.
As said before, you must reinforce the idea that biting is not okay, and probably do it regularly, until the bird is through this phase.
GCC's are very smart, so saying "no bite" and putting your bird away for a while is probably the best medicine.
This phase shouldn't last long, but as an adult, you shouldn't expect the bird to be quite as cuddly as the bird was as a juvenile. Just like people, though, adult birds come with new positive experiences, because they will have more aptitude for talking, tricks, and they will be able to interact with you on a new level.
This one year old bird phase, though, can be challenging, because the bird will be crankier, more assertive, and not show the aptitude of an adult bird, yet not really show the affection of a juvenile bird.
I hope that helps.

 

[hacatta]

I would either out her on the floor and walk away when she bites, or put her in her cage and pointedly ignore her for about 5-10 minutes...not to punish, but to make a point, that the biting is no longer ok. When she bites, give a deep voiced "no" and then put her away or walk away. Birds are super smart and she'll figure out in no time what acceptable beak pressure is. But you must be consistent..

I agree. There must be a negative consequence. Finding a negative consequence is hard. Fern is not a biter BUT when my son comes over from his dads and she has not seen him in a few days, she has nipped him. What I tell him to do is get a pillow case and if she does it, say "No" while placing her in the darkness of the case for about 5 seconds, then pull her out--she stops immediately. If she didn't, he would repeat. This has always stopped it and she wants to snuggle with him at this point. I strongly believe any aggression should be nipped in bud and not acceptable.

Indeed they have to learn that there will be negative consequence.
But putting them in the cage as punishment learns them to hate the cage,and so will not be willingly put back after a while,i tried that.
Also putting on the ground did not help,my wierd gccs love running on the ground.

You will have to find out trough trail and error what the best way is.
For each bird it is different.

 

[MonicaMc]

Reading some of these replies reminds me of the reason why I don't like forums anymore... holy crap are some of you abusive! No offense meant but I'd *NEVER* put my bird in a pillow case!


The only bite that can't be rewarded is the bite that doesn't occur. If you never put a bird into a situation that would result in a bite then you wouldn't get bitten. I know, easier said than done, but it requires learning to understand your bird and figuring out why they are biting.




Are they bored? Do they feel ok? Did something spook them? Are they trying to tell you something? Do they need some time alone? Are you wearing something different? Did you change your appearance? Is there something different in the room? *WHY* are they biting?



Once you can figure out why the behavior is occurring, you can then take steps to prevent the behavior from occurring.

 

[JerseyWendy]

...Fern is not a biter BUT when my son comes over from his dads and she has not seen him in a few days, she has nipped him. What I tell him to do is get a pillow case and if she does it, say "No" while placing her in the darkness of the case for about 5 seconds, then pull her out--she stops immediately. If she didn't, he would repeat. This has always stopped it and she wants to snuggle with him at this point. I strongly believe any aggression should be nipped in bud and not acceptable.

What? I consider this abuse. UGH...I can't even imagine!

 

[Sterling1113]

I couldn't imagine doing that to either of my little conures.. I agree with some of the OTHER posts, positive reinforcement, as it is mating season(Or close to it..) and the bird is probably reaching sexual maturity and going through "puberty". but that doesn't mean they should get punished or abused for something that comes natural to a bird..

 

[riddick07]

I'm trying to remember what I did with Monkey when she was going through maturity but I honestly can't really remember... I must have blocked it out

I do remember having to just take breaks and put her back in her cage because sometimes you just get frustrated. This isn't good for you or the bird because you make mistakes or do something you might regret later.

To this day Monkey still requires that I use a perch to take her out of her cage. Any hand in her cage pisses her off like no ones business. But the perch is perfectly acceptable and she will hop right on. Then you can ask her to step up from the perch when it is out of the cage....she is so weird

Look for visible signs that your bird is about to bite. Does she ruffle her neck feathers? Monkey warns by ruffling her neck feathers and kind of arching her neck a little. If shes really ticked she will do the ruffled feathers, arched neck, and the strut....its so cute because she is barely larger then a budgie

Monkey also likes to do the psst,psst like how you call a cat. She picked it up because we have 5 cats and I constantly am calling my white cat Paige to me with a higher pitched version. Monkey thinks its our contact call and will only do it with me. If someone else tries she looks at them like they are nuts. If she does something that pisses me off I will immediately put her down and turn around and she will call me back but I just pointedly ignore her. She gets the point pretty fast. But Monkey is attention oriented. She thinks its the greatest thing when I'm focused on her and clicking my tongue and psst,pssting to her and saying her name. Makes her easy to train because I don't need to find the treats all the time!! Basically you have to find what makes them tick...observing them will give you the answer we can only give you ideas.

Sometimes you just have to push through the hard times! I wouldn't put them in a bag...if I tried that Monkey would have let me have it when she came out. A loss of trust could make the aggression worse not better. (Thinking of Folger right now and my future fun times :11

 

[jenphilly]

While I do not agree with putting any bird into a pillowcase, something along those lines that does work is to have a lightweight blanket or towel and just cover the bird... don't physically pick up and stuff it in the blanket, just pull the blanket over and the dark and quiet does help with some birds... but not every bird will respond to that, some may just be more angry and the problem increases.

I am also trying to remember exactly what we did with Monkey and all that really comes to mind was putting her on the stand and/or ignoring her, but as my daughter pointed out, Monkey craves attention and loves when you talk to her. For Monster, he was more just grumpy, and just having him out but not forcing alot of cuddly type interaction was enough with him. But, he was taught from a baby about beak pressure, so even when he hit maturity he seemed to know better...

I would like to ask how you respond when your GCC bites, cause to this day, Monkey loves to nip me. She never bites to draw blood now, but she loves to come up when I'm not looking and nip just enough to make me jump in surprise.... swear the little brat laughs. And I'm the only one she does this with, but then again, no matter what I know about responding (or not giving a reaction), it still surprises me and I jump or yelp. If you are giving your GCC a response with the bites, that might actually be a reason it keeps happening... If you can get yourself to not respond, do not yell or flinch, it helps. Monkey learned Victoria did not react, so what was the fun in biting her?? Its same type of logic about the screaming, if you don't respond when they scream, they learn another (quieter) way to get your attention. We even have my bare eyed cockatoo to where she does not scream, she does the kissing or clicking noise we make to her, or she will just say hello. We respond every time to that, even if we are in another room, so she knows that gets her attention.

With any baby bird, you have the maturity period, so its just a phase you need to push and work thru... Just please don't stuff your poor baby in a pillow case....

 

[kiwiS]

no pillow cases please!! eek!! 0.0

Biting is going to be part and parcel of your bird. Also your bird is also not being mean. There is no such thing!! But by doing abusive things you will train your bird to treat you the same way.

Live by example, avoid nasty situations, and always keep things positive for your bird, and in time you will both learn to live with each other's misgivings

 

[ZoeS]

Haha, your baby isn't so sweet and cute anymore! I have one like this - she doesn't always bite, but my husband gets bitten on a regular basis, often drawing blood. I keep telling him to use the stick (for her to step up onto, instead of our fingers) and to watch her. I can tell when she'll bite by her behaviour. I am not sure what has caused or what to do about it but since I can avoid getting bitten by using the stick, that's working for me.

Sometimes I wondering if my other bird looks down on her, like she's abusing me... Hah. It should get somewhat better once she is sexually mature but you will learn how to read her signals as well.

When Libby bites me, I give her a consequence (shaking my hand lightly to get her to let go, telling her "NO", putting her in her cage, ignoring her etc) but it hasn't made much difference.

 

[MonicaMc]

If you only teach a bird "what not to do", then they will never know "what to do".


It's better to replace bad behaviors with good ones by teaching them and encouraging them to do behaviors that you want them to do rather than trying to punish them for bad behaviors.

 

[jenphilly]

Have you seen a group of birds interact? Either in the wild or a group in a home? I will video for you the behavior of our 4 cockatiels as they interact when out of the cage. There is one who is always causing a fuss and the other three will chase him off and then turn away from him. So, if we want to really ask the experts (i.e., the birds themselves), they tell us very clearly that punishing bad behavior is how they teach each other what is right and wrong. And the cockatiel who just caught heck, will eventually come back into the interaction, but won't repeat the behavior... why because he just was taught that behavior was wrong. When he's good, he gets groomed and shares food, etc.

Its kinda like a kid, if you only reward the good behavior, you're gonna have a major brat on your hands who thinks they can get away with temper tantrums and some other awful behavior we all have probably seen.....

 

[ZoeS]

Yeah, well, you can't always teach an absence of bad behaviour by demonstrating positive behaviour. If you can - all the power to you, but it hasn't worked for me yet (I have just accepted it at this point - easier to work around it than fight it). I am certainly not advocating any kind of painful or scary punishment, but it's ok to convey that you aren't happy with what they are doing (to you). They do it to each other and to us, and they know what biting is. I'd do the same if a kid ran up to me and bit me, drawing blood, or something (not just, oh, you bit me, here's a cookie and a toy to distract you).

 

[MonicaMc]

If you know how to speak bird and how to tell them off for doing "bad", then by all means, go for it!!!

But birds don't know human body language! They don't know what the word "No" means or "Stop that!" or "Be quiet" or anything else we say! They can certainly learn it, but they don't automatically know what it means!



You don't reward birds *AFTER* they've already done the bad behavior.... rather, you try to predict situations in which a bird will perform a behavior you don't like, and distract them *BEFORE* it occurs or teach them other behaviors.


If a bird always bites your hand when on your shoulder, one of the easiest ways to get them to stop biting is to teach them in a positive manner to step up from various locations. From their cage, from inside their cage, from their cage door, from the floor, from a chair, from other furniture, etc. Once the bird understands that step up equals good stuff, it is then easier to teach step from your shoulder.


Or teaching a parrot to recall to you on command. You don't let the bird go then call the bird back and expect them to come on command. You don't allow them to get up high, then call them from down low. Instead, you teach in increments to fly to you from a short distance and teaching them to fly straight or perhaps to fly up. A recall can even be taught using a modified step up approach! As the bird's recall strengthens, you start putting the bird in different locations and perhaps even a little higher and recalling the bird to you. As the bird shows you how well they recall, you can start putting the bird up higher and higher or even recalling from different rooms.


You don't automatically go from step 1 to step 10 immediately! There's all the little steps in between of shaping the behavior and teaching the bird what to do.




If a bird constantly screams for your attention, you can instead teach them a different behavior to get your attention... such as ringing a bell, or performing a specific trick. If all a bird knows how to do is to scream at you to get your attention or bite you to tell you to "back off", then they wont know what else *TO* do.


As far as the bird is concerned, their behavior is neither good nor bad. It simply is. Behavior serves a purpose. Lara Joseph has some great blogs about behavior training!

Changing Behavior | Lara Joseph


ZoeS, you say this...

When Libby bites me, I give her a consequence (shaking my hand lightly to get her to let go, telling her "NO", putting her in her cage, ignoring her etc) but it hasn't made much difference.

What have you done positively to try and change her behavior? As you say, "punishing" her is not working.