My conure won't stop biting.

[SashaEllen]

I've had my conure Squid for about 2 months. He was 3 months old when I got him and hand tame. He is very tame and we have bonded well but he just bites me all the time. It has improved slightly, it's not as bad as it was but it is still a regular occurrence, and it hurts! I'm sure he likes me because he gets very excited to see me and wants to spend all his time on my shoulder, but he bites my face and ear. Is this just a phase he will grow out of? Or is there anything I can do to get him to stop biting so much? I love him too bits, I just wish he wouldn't bite so much. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Wolf]

Well I will start of by saying that Green cheeked Conures do have a reputation for being bitey at different periods of their lives. I do not know how much of this is related to our concept of how much time they should and should not spend interacting with them to keep them happy, but in many cases that I have come across this seems to be one of the main reasons for much of their biting.

There are also other reasons for a bird to be biting and one of the big ones that I have found when dealing with a bird that is biting our faces is our complexion. For instance if you have freckles on your face, like I do, then it is possible that the bird is not really intending it as a bite, but as a grooming thing in which we have spots on our faces that should not be there so the bird is trying to be helpful by removing these undesirable spots for us that might be a parasite such as a tick. Birds do not have external ears and it could be argued that their biting our ears is similar in nature to that of freckles on out faces.

In the case of freckles and my ears what has worked for me is a combination of getting my birds to step onto my hand for a while, while continuing to play and interact with them and telling them " No! No bite me" and at the same time gently pushing their beak away from where they are biting me.

Some of our birds have a different idea of how much time they need to spend with and on us to feel secure and happy that our idea of how much time they need and so because they don't feel like they are getting enough time with us they bite us to try and tell us that they are not happy with the attention they are receiving from us. My Senegal is really big on biting me a few times if she begins to feel neglected in any way, my CAG does not bite me for this infraction, instead she plucks out her feathers. I think that I would rather deal with the biting over the plucking.

[Pajarita]

Yep, I agree with Wolf. GCCs are extremely needy little birds - I often compare them to cockatoos in that sense because, like them, they are not happy unless they can spend hours and hours and hours on their human. I have one now, a female named Codee and even though she has a boyfriend of her own (a severly handicapped male peachfront conure), she still spends two solid hours on me if not more. Lone birds need more than that to be happy. I had four, all of them rehomes and all given up because of their aggression and they all stopped biting once they got lots of one-on-one. They also need to fly (the only way they can get the 'ants out of their pants' ) and to eat a low protein diet (free-feeding protein food like pellets, seeds, nutriberries, avicakes, etc is a no-no with them) and this is not only because they are mainly fruit eaters in the wild but also because a high protein diet (especially if it's pellets made with soy) makes birds aggressive.

So my suggestion to you is to re-evaluate your husbandry (light schedule, one-on-one time, out-of-cage time, diet, flying time, etc) and see if the biting could not be caused by something that he/she needs but it's not getting.