GCC bites while on my hand?

[Iky18]

Hi. My GCC Zoey bites me every time its on my hands. I finally made it come on my hands by holding my hand out. She will look at my hand for a min and then fly to it. But once she's on my hand she starts biting me. I put her back on the perch evert time she bites but she keeps doing it. Today, every time she came on my hand I gave her a seed and when she finished the seed she would start biting my hand. I put her down again when she bites. I did this a few times but she bit me every time she was done with the seed. I don't know if she is still getting used to me because I've had her for about a week. How can I make her stop biting me?

[Wolf]

How old is your bird? If it is still young it is braking, which can be confused with biting and they do it for a variety of reasons with security being the biggest one.

[Iky18]

It's a little over a year old. Exactly what is breaking? Sometimes it wants to bite my finger through the gaps in the cage as well.

[gccamateur]

I bought a six-month-old about a week ago and I am having the same problem.

It loves people and shrieks when they leave the room, and follows me all around its cage. It will gently take food from my hand, and did great with targeting. While it's preening it will let me pet it.

However, if I get my fingers close to the bars or put my hand in the cage, it's a certainty that it will bite. I taught it targeting and tried targeting it across my finger, but biting my finger was more appealing to it. It will CHASE my hand just to bite it. It likes sitting on shoulders and preening hair, but even then nips my neck sometimes. It seems to honestly enjoy biting.

I have tried just taking the bites to show I don't care (it never stops biting), leaving the room (which it dislikes but not enough to not bite again), making a very angry expression (which seems to make it aggressive), wavering my hand (which worked for a few times, but then it got furious and bit very hard without letting go)...

I feel at my wit's end. I tried opening the cage door and quietly sitting on the bed today. It came out and climbed into my lap, and tried to climb onto my shoulder, so I blocked it with my book, which made it gnaw my book. I started typing on my laptop on the side to distract it, but it raced over and tried to bite my fingers. It bites everything. It bit the end off the target stick, even though I tried to pull it away immediately.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!?! I am willing to do anything, but a lot of methods require getting bitten, which hurts. I only want to take more little digs out of my precious flesh if it's got a very good chance of success...

[Iky18]

My gcc bites everything too. It learned to fly to my hand and once it's on my hand it will start biting my clothes. It loves to bite clothes!! If I stop it from biting the clothes it bites my hand. I've tried many things and it keeps biting. The only time it won't bite is when I pet it.

[Wolf]

First of all I want to apologize for dropping the ball on this, Iky18 , totally my bad.

All of the parrots that I know of bite, some more than others but all bite occasionally and they all go through what is called beaking. Beaking is the process that the bird goes through while learning how to use their beak without hurting you. There is more to it than that but it will suffice for a working definition for now. Look at your bird and one of the things that stands out is that it has no hands, so for it to do the amazing things that it does it must make use of its beak. It uses its beak in unison with its feet much like a hand. It holds things and turns things just as we do but it uses it beak. rubbing its beak on our body or hands can clean it off, nibbleing with it can tell us that it is happy or hungry or annoyed at us. It is a very useful and variable tool for the bird but, it has one notable drawback and that is that it can also inflict pain and severe damage. The young bird has absolutely no idea as to how hard it can bite without causing us pain so we must help it to learn this.

Most simply it is just a matter of letting the bird know when it puts too much pressure by telling it " no bite " or " gentle " or something similar and removing the hand from reach for a minute or so. This takes a lot of repetition and varying amounts of time but unless you have an overly aggressive bird it will achieve the desired results.

Go to the General parrot care section and at the top you will see a topic on Senegal parrot biting and aggression issues. Take the time to read the topic and I believe that you will be able to change your birds biting behavior to a more accomadating action.

[Pajarita]

A week is nothing to a parrot... it bites you because it doesn't trust you yet. Just keep on letting it out and loving it and it will stop soon enough. GCCs love to ride shoulders, they just adore it and can do it all day long. They also need quite a lot of handling and out of cage time or they get bitey. I took in four 'bitey' ones and they all stopped in a matter of a couple of weeks.

[jparrothead]

I totally sympathize with Ilky and gccamateur.

Would folks say that this is mostly a case of 'biting' rather than 'beaking', or a bit of both (pardon the alliteration ) ? It seems that the bird 'bites' when she does something with the bird while it is in the cage/playpen/territory (tries to take it out, pets it, etc) and 'beaks' when it just 'bites all over her hand'.

My 4.5-month old GCC Darwin definitely 'beaks', as in chews on my skin with great pleasure. Most of the time this doesn't hurt too much and I tolerate it fairly well, but sometimes it does feel like I am being sliced--especially when she 'gently nips' on the front side of my neck (a much more tender part of the neck than the back or side I have learned!!).

She 'bites' at me sometimes when she doesn't want to be petted while on my chest (and more than happy to be scritched for 15 minutes at a time, rather blisffuly too!). A few times she has tried to 'bite' when I had trouble removing her from my shoulder--usually she just clings to my shirt as if holding on for dear life!

It is the beaking that I just don't want to get out of hand--and I am worried that I may not be doing enough, or am accidentally reinforcing bad behaviors.

Just keep on letting it out and loving it and it will stop soon enough.

Pajarita, I spend 3-4 hours a day--at least--with my bird, at least two of which is either on my body, shoulder or hands-- the rest she is within a few feet of me and out of her cage. She gets her nap time (thanks to your tip!). But it CAN'T be as easy as you say! Surely, you must have 'said something', held the beak gently during a beaking incident, walked away, put the bird back in its cage, or some other approach? Or maybe you didnt!

This is such an issue with GCCs, we ought to have our own forum! Though I absolutely love him and he is otherwise really well behaved

[Pajarita]

I really don't do much. My thing is to avoid getting bit and that's actually easier than most people think... you learn their body language, you learn what they like and what they don't, you interact at the right times of the day, and you don't ask them to do anything they don't want to do. For example, two of my GCCs (a bonded pair), did not like to be handled first thing when I open their cage door, they like to come out on their own, climb to the top of their cage (a BIG flight cage) and, from there, they would fly to my shoulder whenever they are ready (in the meantime, I clean their cage). They will come with me (riding my shoulder) to the room where I keep the canaries and stay with me while I clean them (sometimes they would fly to the top cages, try to steal some food from them, etc). Then, it's time for their breakfast but they don't like to step up to my hand and for me to put them back in their cage so what I do is I slightly bend over, putting my shoulder at the door height and, touching the perch in front of the bowl with food with my finger, I say 'Go eat your rica papa - Look! Hmmmm, que rica papa!' and off they both go to eat their breakfast (hen goes in first and male follows her). Only one of them, an abused male (the male from the previous example), would bite me for no good reason but all I did was tell him 'No, bad bird! GO!' and make a movement with my shoulder so he would fly off. He could easily come back (and he did) and, sometimes, at the very beginning, he would bite me again so I would do the same thing again and again until he stopped. But even he did not bite me for long. If you don't pester them and learn what they like and what they don't and work your way around these things, they don't bite you.

[Grayson]

Yeah, my Ozzy does this too. He will sit on my hand, being respectful, then he picks at my finger every 10 seconds or so. It doesn't hurt, so I know he's probably just messing around. I don't think it's anything serious, he will probably stop eventually.