She bit me !

[liz]

I have had Myrtle for almost 4 years now. She will be 5 in April.

Rambo is up early this morning looking for something to get into. He found the wooden chair one of my Veteran buddies made for me. (Harold put wheels on a straight back wooden chair because Mom's wheelchair would not fit through the bathroom door.) Rambo was having so much fun chewing on it that he did not see me coming. Myrtle was on my shoulder. When I bent down and picked up Rambo, Myrtle bit my cheek and even drew blood. This is the same girl that preens me every day and tells me whispered secrets.

I yelled OWE and knocked her off my shoulder (I have done it before and barely touch her before she flies.) She has come back to me 3 times and each time I said owe and waved her on. Not letting her land on me is punishment.

She probably had a jealous attack because I picked Rambo up. Rambo is older and I have had him much longer. He has never bit me even when he was in season.

Is this what I think it is. Is she coming in season? Rambo is cuddly when he is in season but these 2 are opposite in personality.

Can I have a little help here? I don't want to alienate her by waving her away but she has to know that she hurt me and this is the only way I can think of to get it through to her.

[Wolf]

Well, I don't know how you bent over to pick Rambo up, but if you bent over at the waist then the bite may have been unintentional as she may have grabbed trying to hold on.
Yelling "ouch" and brushing her off the first time may work as it is done immediately upon getting bitten. The other time will do no good as she doesn't remember why you are doing it. When Kiki bites, I yell "ouch", give her the evil eye while frowning and put her down and move away. This is all done immediately upon getting bitten and that is the end of it. There are no further reactions to it than that as it must be done immediately or they have no idea as to why you are acting that way.
I don't know if that will help you or not, but I hope that it will because I don't have anything else to offer on this.

[liz]

It was no accident. When I bend over she either hangs on to whatever part of my shirt she has or walks down my back to stay level until I straighten up.
A lot of her day is on me. She travels with me to see what I am doing. When I go in a room she is not allowed in I tell her hold on and she does not let go until we are back out of that room. When I forget she is on me and go outside she will dig her nails in to remind me she is still there and wants put back.
She is smart. Even though she likes to baby blabber, she understands most of my words. This has really upset me.

Come to think of it, Rambo bit my ear once when he could not reach the man who got too close he wanted to bite.

Was she meaning to bite Rambo? I did have to break up a fight the other day. That was the only time they ever fought.

[shiraartain]

Is it possible there was something else in the room she was reacting to? One trigger for Fajr is the house phone. If you try and use it to talk he will bite you as he sees it as a threat.

[liz]

Nothing new. The house is still quiet because my aunt is not up yet.
I let her come back to my shoulder and she did her little sissy whispers.

[Pajarita]

Hmmm, hard to tell without actually been there but I seriously doubt it was aggression, Liz. I tend to agree with Wolf and Shira that something must have triggered her reaction. They can see and hear better than we do so they sometimes react to things that we don't even notice. It could have been your bending over for Rambo (have these birds been DNA'd by an independent lab -meaning not something that the breeder told the previous owners?) and her trying to tell you not to. But, even if that was the case, it's still not aggression, it's more like a wife elbowing her husband a bit hard on the ribs when she catches me eyeing a younger woman It's only that we don't have the protective plumage...

I also agree with Wolf in that the brushing her off reaction needs to be immediate and just the one although you can stretch it out to a few minutes (not more than five) because it should be meant as 'punishment', it's more like teaching them that we are not 'good' birds and they need to be gentler with us... like when we teach them not to beak us hard.

[Seth]

What I am about to say may or may not be relevant to this situation - so please take it with a grain of salt. Your issue could be purely environmental or a training opportunity and the below is not immediately relevant.

You have a bird that is just reaching egg rearing age and this is the time of year when breeding hormones start to modify behavior.

My female is doing the same thing. Normally these are not issues but I got a nasty bite on my neck the other day. It was my fault for letting her be on my shoulder doing what I was doing at this time of the year. The warning signs were there that she is starting to get a little hormonal. She has been doing mating dances in her cage in the morning and being excitable about things she normally is not. She is only at the beginning stages and is still mostly super sweet with me - but for the next two months the two of them will require more and more different kinds of care until the breeding demon exorcises itself and they go back to "normal" (quotation marks used because breeding behavior is also normal).

What was I doing when I got bit? I was changing the paper in my canary's cage. The two of them often fly over to "supervise" this wondrous event. During the breeding season she wants the paper to make a nest. So she flew over and demanded the paper with some extreme leaning and bobbing. I ignored her and she bit my neck really hard. I have a nasty vampire like wound from it. If I had remembered it was the breeding season I would have immediately dropped the paper, gotten her to step up, and put her in the cage until I had finished (for the next two months they have to stay in the cage while I clean the canary's cage).

Since you have a female reaching the breeding age, I highly recommend you prepare. Please consult your vet for how to best care for your bird once she starts laying eggs.

You may have to separate the male from the female (we have to because the male becomes so aggressive he may maim her and he definitely will not let her eat [he insists on feeding her, she does not want to be fed, and he tries to attack anyone letting her eat]). They had to temporarily have separate sleeping cages and during the worst of it even be kept in separate rooms out of sight of each other during the day - not just in separate cages (she behaved and was grateful to be allowed to eat and rest but the male could not control his hormones and was one big feathery ball of rage).

Our vet recommended we supply fake eggs in a nest once the egg laying starts (I cannot seem to locate the bookmark of the site we bought our eggs from - the site had eggs of the correct sizes for different breeds and the correct number of eggs). Your bird is engineered to be in possession of x # of eggs to form a clutch - not to lay that #, just to be in possession of them. As such, you can provide a nest of fake eggs for her to possess until she grows bored with them not hatching and she will stop laying eggs once however many she already formed in her system make their way out. Then she will not have as severe malnutrition problems.

Over a couple of weeks the male calmed to the point of being able to co-habitate with his sister again. We knew it was time to take the eggs away for three reasons. 1) She stopped laying eggs. 2) She never once sat on them and sufficient time had passed to know that she was not going to sit on them and was not going to lay anymore eggs. 3) The male decided that he was going to show those baby birds who was boss while they were still in the shells by every morning picking up the nest, repeatedly slamming it down on the cage floor, and then playing soccer with the eggs.

Please consult your vet, I am not the expert on this - just conveying my vet's info and my understanding of my own research. Even if this is not why you got bit today, since your bird is reaching sexual maturity, this is something to be prepared for. The first year we were not and had to learn a lot really quickly. This is our third breeding season and the first year I feel prepared.

Following the breeding season I highly recommend taking your bird for its 6 month check up even if it is early. This is to ensure that your bird has no ill effects from having laid eggs for the first time (if all went well, at best malnutrition is still highly possible - there are other problems that could manifest themselves). Better to have peace of mind of a healthy bird than one with a severe and avoidable health problem.

By the way, Michael, if you are reading this, some of the behavior you have recently observed in your female bird at certain times of the year remind me of hormonal breeding behavior similar to what I have experienced in my flock and read about. Coincidentally, she too is just reaching the age of sexual maturity. You do not have a bonded pair like I do, but you should still prepare yourself in advance.

[Wolf]

Thank you for such an informative reply, Seth. I did not even think about the possibility that you presented although I had noticed the beginnings of hormonal behavior in my birds.

[liz]

Thank you all so much for the info. I am deeply grateful. I was afraid she was coming In season.

Wapping her off my shoulder was reflex so it was immediate. She tried to land on me 3 times after that about 4 seconds apart. I waited a half hour before I let her come back to tell me she was sorry. She bit me in the middle of my cheek. That is going to scar but I have so many scars it does not make a difference.

Rambo had a band on when I got him. I still have it. Should it tell male or female. I have been unsure of him since he insisted on sitting on Chick Chick's egg as soon as she left her nest. Myrtle did not even have a band.

[Seth]

Glad to help out. I do not know if the behavior you are experiencing is hormonal, but even still, being forewarned is forearmed as breeding behavior is something we all eventually have to deal with. Better to be prepared than have something bad happen whatever year breeding behavior manifests. It is the time of year and the correct age range for your bird.

The first time might be be different from subsequent ones, too. For example, the first time the behavior patterns in both of them were not as strong and the female only laid the one egg and just ignored it. They seemed more confused than anything else. The second time is what I described in my previous post and that was extreme. The levels were likely much stronger due to physical maturation. I am not sure what is going to happen this year. It is hoped that they will have a better idea what to do and not slam eggs around and things like that (what a father that one would make!). My pair is bonded, so when the hormones really manifest themselves they start rubbing their cloacas together with absolutely no shame or sense of decency. I definitely will never breed them as they are brother and sister from the same clutch - the babies would not survive.

Banding systems are inconsistent and thus unreliable sources of information.

If the birds lays eggs it is obviously a female (hen). Otherwise a blood test performed by your vet is the only surefire way to know. We held off naming ours until the dna tests were in.

It is good that your bird does not take offense easily. Some high strung parrots could easily harbor ill will at a wap for a long time. Mine are very forgiving about the ocassional involuntary reflex, too.