Biting Finger when stepping up?

[Wolf]

Indeed, you should always be watching your bird because they speak at least as much through body language as any other way, so you could avoid many bites simply by being more observant of your bird. Consider that every time that he bites to get what he wants and is successful, you have just taught him to bite you to get what he wants. If you pay attention to your birds non verbal communications, you will avoid being bitten with the result being that you do not teach your bird to bite. It also has the additional effect of showing your bird that you are listening to him and that builds trust.

[Danish]

I personally haven't had it happen, however my husband has... he kindly gets her to step up ( usually cuz she's waving her foot at him, and obviously wants to step up ) then promptly turns around and takes a bite out of his finger. She does have very obvious warning signs like puffing up like a ball and pinning and the like, but after the foot waving you'd think she would want to be picked up. I guess I don't have a lot of advice other than keep at it cuz eventually they like you, but regression and random acts of biting are kinda normal. Good luck !

[Wolf]

My Grey often lifts her foot and waves it a little as if she wants to be picked up, but in reality does not. You know many people say that their parrot baits them to get them within range to get bitten. While this may be true, I think that it is more likely that the person didn't take time to finish seeing what the bird was saying. They saw the foot raised and missed the rest of the body language, and got bit for their efforts.
Horses were really my first true introduction into the world of non verbal communication and it was there that I learned that ears pointed in a certain manner and in a certain direction usually meant one thing, but that if I did not look at the entire body and what the horse was doing with it, I was wrong as often as not about what the horse was communicating. And a little nip from a horse can hurt really bad as can s slight tap from its foot.
Well, it is much the same with my birds. The bird pins its eyes which has several meanings such as anger or interest or excitement, so how do you tell what it means? You look at the rest of the body. Is the birds head turned to the side, is its tail fanned, are the feathers puffed up, standing up, or are they flattened close to the body? These all modify the meaning of the pined eyes, as does the actual position of the body along with any verbal cues.
You can't say with any degree of accuracy that the birds wants to be picked up just because it raised its foot. You really need to see the rest of the bird to know what it is saying.

[Pajarita]

Indeed, Wolf is 100% correct. Another thing that most parrot keepers miss is that a raised foot is a sign of aggression with some species. Amazons will do it all the time when they are angry and you approach them. You do need to look at the whole body. It's the same with dogs and tail wagging. Everybody thinks that a dog that wags its tail is happy and been friendly but this is not true all the time. If the body is relaxed, the head is lifted, the mouth open and the tail goes in circles, the dog is happy and friendly. But a lower body with a low head mixed with a slow, side to side waging tail held low means the dog is worried or fearful about the situation - and dogs do bite out of fear! A dog with ears against its head, a tense body, and a slightly moving side to side tail held almost vertical is a dog telling you NOT to approach him. It's the same with parrots. You need to look at the whole picture, and you also need to evaluate the training it received because a parrot that was taught to wave or to step up by always giving them a treat, might be asking for one instead of requesting a 'step up'.

[Harpmaker]

LOL. Anybody remember the 1967 Doctor Dolittle? The Doctor's parrot is teaching him to speak animal languages, and when the first one he says "Good Morning" to doesn't answer, the parrot says "you shook your LEFT leg-that's 'Good Evening.' Shake your RIGHT leg." Or words to that effect.

Even Human body language varies from culture to culture, but it is always important.

[Wolf]

Yep, body language is influenced by many factors but the human animal, doesn't tend to use it on a conscious level any more. Most of us still pick up on it but, very few of us consciously use it. In a way that is amazing, considering how important it is to us.

[Calthesa]

This is very interesting stuff! It's true I don't have a lot of experience with bird body language so I have to learn as I go, but I think I'm making progress with target training now. I agree that it's difficult to read bird body language, but I think that's partially because not only do all species have different cues, but there is no good resource for it. I looked up body language before we got the bird and I tried to follow it, but it's like the tail wagging example. "Wagging tail" without head lifted or body lowered or whatever along with it is useless. They say "eyes pinning" is the sign for happy/angry/fearful/everything and don't give any other indicators so you can't tell without hands on experience what the rest of the body means!

On a side note, we don't know if bird body language is as instinctive to birds as human body language is to us. It's completely possible all animals learn body language as they grow and don't use it consciously just like people do. To use it consciously would mean they think about what they want to say and say it regardless of if they feel that way (guile basically) which I doubt is used very often just as humans can manipulate their face/body but usually don't/can't.

[Wolf]

Well, that is a good point and not entirely wrong either. to a large degree they don't think about it but they can control most of it at will. A bird can raise its feathers at will same as picking up one foot, both of these things can tell us things about the bird, the lifted foot can tell us that the bird is at ease and if the feathers are only raised a little, puffed up , then add that to the foot and you have two clues that the bird is at ease and relaxed. A good indicator that it is happy at the moment. I don't think that they always think about it they just do it. but they really have nothing to hide from each other. Humans no longer rely on body language for their communication the way that animals do. We rely on words, and while we don't always think about the exact word we are going to use at a given time, we do monitor it just before we actually say it and can and sometimes do change it to one word that we prefer at that time, animals can do this to a large degree with their body language.
Animals can tell us that they don't feel well and can tell us that they hurt and where it hurts, but they can also choose to hide these things.
To tell the truth, I don't know how much they think about what they say, using body language. I don't know much beyond the fact that they can control their body language. I guess in some ways it is like human speech, we can control what we say as well as how we say it, but I think that some of us don't think about what they say, at least until we get a reaction from it.

[Pajarita]

First of all, let me say that this is a SUPER interesting debate!

Now, my two cents. Humans do indeed observe body language in other humans, only we do it at a subconscious level (a tilted head with eyebrows slightly lifted means the person is listening to us and makes us 'open up'- crossed legs and arms means person is 'closed' to interaction or been defensive so we don't 'open up', etc) . Birds use both instinctual body language (pinning eyes, erecting feathers, fanning tail, etc) as well as learn some of the human ones and use it in context. Freddy, my LSC, would lift his leg when he says Hello or ByeBye, same as a person would lift his/her hand.

[Wolf]

On my last post on this I was lust talking of the cuff so to speak and really wanted to say more but my thoughts were getting all tangled up, so I stopped.
Humans do see the body language of others, but consciously or not, we tend to get it wrong a lot, which is a testament to how much more dependent we have become to verbal communication. It is one of the reasons that I hate talking on phones, I just miss too much. I have watched several documentaries about body language, which is where I get that we misread body language from. I really don't recall what it was called but the last one was really all about interrogation techniques used by both police and military negotiators and interrogators. I t showed a lot of misconceptions about what many facial expressions and body postures meant. It brought in people who were not trained to read these non verbal cues and asked them to respond by answering who was telling the truth or not and an overwhelming number got it wrong most of the time. Now they did this with everyday people from our industrialized societies, I would like to see how it stacks up to other people from less industrialized areas of the world. I think that I know , but would like to see it just to know if I would be right or not.
My Lady gets so mad at me because I will carry on a conversation with her without constantly looking at her. I do look, but it is more like Glancing over to see her and her body language. I am doing this because I am finding that I can hear so much more, by listening to her tones, the rhythm of her speech, it is like listening to what she says and how she says it as well as what she doesn't say and the way that she doesn't say it. The last part is hard to explain but really it just comes down to that there is actually a lot of information included in the blank spaces of what we say and how we do it.
I am thinking that it is a normal evolution of the fact that we as humans are much more dependent on verbal rather than non verbal communication. And again their are animals whose verbal speech carries more information than we can hear, but that they can. for instance a wolf can howl to another wolf and while it sounds exactly the same to us it elicits a totally different response from the other wolf, if you see what I mean.
By observing my birds I am thinking that they use both of these methods to a far greater degree than we humans do. I often hear my birds talking to each other and to me it sounds at times as if the one bird is talking with two voices at the same time, or probably to be more accurate, they are using more than one wavelength at the same time when they speak.
The more I observe them the more I am amazed at what I learn from them.