Green Cheek biting issue

[gophynna]

I feel like two steps back have been taking with my conure. I had to fix my dinner and wash up the pans after, so I left her alone on her play gym in the other room for a bit. The meal was done cooking and I was washing up the pans and she came running up biting at my feet. She then climbed up my pants and onto my shoulder and bit my over and over again. Quite painful and it is bruised today. A couple hours later in the night, I let her sit with me and she bit my chin very hard and left slight marks on it. I feel like she is mad at me for not giving her my full attention yesterday evening. My boyfriend "rescued" me by getting her off my shoulder during the chin biting incident. She hadn't bit like that in well over a week and a half.

My questions are... is it something that be worked back to her nice self again? I don't want to be bitten every time I have her near me

and when she is on the floor, how do we teach her that feet are not okay to bite on?

I have very thin skin for my age (late 20s) so her biting ends up with blood or bruising when it's that hard.

[Wolf]

Well, I must say that as far as biting feet and especially toes, I run into the same problem with my Senegal, Kiki and the only thing that I have found to stop her is either to keep a watch on her so that she never gets to my feet or to wear shoes. Most of the time, I wear shoes if I am busy doing something so that she can't sneak up and get in a nip or so.

I wonder if the chin biting is really biting or if may be either an attempt at preening you, which simply means that she is trying to show affection and do you a favor by grooming you or if she is trying to get you to open your mouth. Both of these are possibilities and just as likely as an actual attempt to bite. There are many people that find a birds attempts at preening to be painful, especially when they have not yet got their bird to understand that it needs to be very gentle with its beak. It takes them a while to understand that as birds we are defective and they have to be very gentle with us. Many birds re fascinated with our mouths. This may be due to the fact that birds feed each other with their mouths and this is something that we should not be doing due to the differences in out oral bacteria. It may also be due to the differences in the way our mouths are built, I mean we don't have hard beaks and they don't have soft fleshy lips and they may be fascinated by the difference.

Parrots as a general rule are not mean or born with some desire to cause others pain. Yes, all parrots bite, but it is usually in response to being afraid although we may inadvertantly teach them that they can discipline or manipulate us with a well timed nip or bite.

My Grey, Kookooloo is normally very gentle but when she is in the mood to preen me she tries to pull the hairs of my moustache out which is rather painful. She also has periods of time when she wants to get into my mouth and she will grab my lip and pull it this way or that to try and get my mouth to open or she will actually bite down on it to see if that will cause me to open my mouth. both of these actions are also painful. Most of the time now, all I have to do is turn my head a little and tell her " No!". There was a time when I had to open her beak and put her down for a few minutes and tell her " No Bite". These events rarely happen any more as I have learned to read her well enough to know that she is in that type of mood and to keep her away from my face.

While it is good and often required to teach them to be gentle and to know what " no" and " be gentle" or " no bite" means the most effective way to keep from receiving either a painful nip or a bite is to learn to read your bird. The old adage of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is very appropriate when it comes to parrots and their biting.

[Pajarita]

Well, it seems to me that at least part of the problem might be hormonal. She is two, which is a very difficult age for them as this is when they become sexually mature and ready to breed and, if you are keeping her up hours after dinner, it means that she is been kept at a human light schedule, something that will make her overly hormonal and aggressive - especially at this age.

[gophynna]

I will try to the practice the power of "no". We try to get her in her cage by 8 which may still be too late, but she will often scream even after we cover it. She seems to know we are not going to bed, yet. Her cage is not in the same room as our hangout areas, so she must have very amazing hearing to know we are still up. Her screaming can be relentless. She will go for half an hour or more sometimes.

[Wolf]

The bird is alone and for any parrot this is a scary thing as they are dependent upon the proximity of their flock for emotional support and derive a fair amount of their feelings of security and well being from their flock. In this situation you are the birds flock so at the very least answer the bird when it calls to you so that it is aware that you are not abandoning it. It might be better for the bird if you moved the bird to your hangout area and covered the cage with a blackout cloth, keep the noise level down and the bird will get used to the normal noises and probably go to sleep fairly quickly. Other than getting another bird for it to talk to, these are the best two options that I can think of in your situation.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is correct, they do get used to the 'normal' noises in the household and as long as they are not overly loud or have aggressive tones to them (like when two people argue, for example), they will actually feel comforted by them and go to sleep. BUT the key is not only to cover the cage with a blackout material but also allow the bird, at the very least, an entire hour of twilight because if the bird goes from normal activity under bright light to a dark cage, it will scream its head off. You need to allow their bodies to start producing melatonin (which makes them drowsy and triggers the roosting behavior) before they are put in the dark (which has to be reached gradually and not sudden-like).

[gophynna]

Can you explain how best to simulate twilight for my gcc? I am wondering now if this is what was bothering her. Going from lights on to lights off and covered.

[Wolf]

Since the twilight periods that they require occur naturally once just as dawn is breaking and once again in the late afternoon and turning into full dark and they need both of these periods I have never thought about how to try and simulate it, but I am not sure that you can simulate it effectively as it gets its special properties from not only the change in the light spectrum from a red or yellow to a bluish part of the spectrum in the evening and back in the morning but to the additional changes caused by the earth's curvature and gravity. It is all rather complicated to fully understand. It is much simpler to just use it.

[gophynna]

Thanks. So basically already have her settled into her cage as light outside is waning to night?

[Wolf]

What I would be doing if I covered my birds at night is to remove the cover when I went to bed after turning off all of the lights, provided that there is no light coming in from artificial lights outside. This will allow the bird to get the twilight period at dawn without my having to get up and uncover the bird in time for dawn. Then what I do in the evening is just as soon as the outside light starts to dim, usually about an hour or two before dark is I put my birds in their cages and feed them their dinner. I do this with the inside lights turned off. This allows them time to eat and relax during the twilight period of dusk in the evening and since they are already in their cage they go right to sleep as it gets dark. Then if I need to cover the cage I do that and then turn on whatever lights I need for me to function.