by sanchez » Thu May 17, 2012 7:03 pm
Hello Parrot Wizard and others,
I had a quick question. I have a Sun Conure who's very friendly when he wants to be. When we got him he was already familiar with step up, but we trained him on it anyway. We also used your instructional videos to train him to spin on his perch. He also flips around his perch, kind of like a summersault haha. Anyway, sometimes he's very well behaved but other times he's very bitey. He's about 9 months old now.
Sometimes he will try to bite when we ask him to step up, in that case we let him calm down and try again in a minute which seems to work. My main concern though is this: sometimes he'll be hanging out, doing bird things, relaxing, preening etc. and then all of a sudden he'll bite whatever he's sitting on. Shoulder, neck, finger, etc. But not an agressive bite, more of a playing bite. If it's an agressive bite, it's usually because we're trying to get him to step up while he's playing and he makes a squawk (which we repeat to him to let him know that we make the same sound when we don't like something).
When he bites randomly if he's perched on a finger or playing we've been putting him down on the couch/floor and telling him NO sternly, not yelling just sternly. We've been doing this about 2 months and it doesn't seem to really get to him. Clearly he knows what NO means because if you tell him no while he's doing something that he's not supposed to do, ie: chewing on the couch, he stops immediately and looks like he knows he's done something wrong.
He's also gotten in the habit of clinging to whatever it is he's on, he likes to play in my girlfriend's hair so when it's time to go back to eat etc, he doesn't want to come off and will bite when asked to step up. This also goes for shirts, fingers and especially his play gym on top of his cage.
Anyway, I wanted to get your advice to see if what I'm doing is right or wrong? We're going to pick up a clicker this weekend and we've started target training him with a chopstick (which he loves to chew/bite and now that I know to keep it away from his beak we'll continue the training) and he's taken to targeting well, but he just wants to play with the stick haha.
Any advice? Thanks!!
His previous owner told me ''you can stroke him when he puts his head down'' he DOES do that but i am quite scared 
once i put my finger next to him, so, he can smell/taste my finger so he knows i'm not gonna hurt him, the first time he didn't bite me hard but the second time he literary jerked my finger! 
i want him to step up and let me stroke him without biting me! 
Please Help !
