Sparky wrote:Because I think he's great, I enjoy having him out, he enjoys being out, and I don't want to let it descend into any more of a vicious circle than it already has?
There's nothing wrong with this answer but it clearly illustrates the selfish perspective that I'm trying to demonstrate and help you reverse. What I mean is, you answered why it is important for you that he doesn't bite you. And this is completely reasonable. When I asked, I was asking why in his mind he should not bite you but you replied in your mind. This is perfectly fine but I hope you realize this small folly and that this is what I believe to be the fundamental reason why things aren't working out. Also I don't mean the word selfish in a judgmental or negative way but just in the sense of looking out for self interest.
What we are facing here is a prisoners' dilemma. Both the parrot and owner are choosing to defect and thereby act selfishly while secretly hoping for the opponent to side with them. In the end both fail. The parrot wants, well who knows really, but something like to be left alone, not to be put in cage, not to be handled, to be handled more, whatever. He thinks that by biting he will most likely gain his self interests. You on the other hand, don't want the bird to bite and you want a good relationship all around which is perfectly understandable. However, thus far the parrot is the only one doing something about it and is winning. The parrot is manipulating you by biting to do what it wants. By avoiding training, you are basically not doing anything and thus the parrot is acting as the superior being. Please bear with my sarcasm and puns.
What I am trying to encourage you to do is to play devil's advocate and look at things from the parrot's perspective. You must use all of the evidence that is based on behavior when making these conclusions though or you will just end up projecting what you wish it to be rather than what it is. So for example, you bring finger over for parrot to step up but instead it bites. You might think the parrot is being mean, trying to dominate, or any of a long list of reasons like that. However, let's try to see what happens around this even and wonder why shouldn't the parrot bite you?
What is very often the case is that people use step up for good things but more often for bad things (for the parrot). For example, you use step up to take the bird out of the cage. The bird stays out an hour, then you ask it to step up to put it back in the cage. Well let's weigh the net benefit of stepping up these two times. One step up equates to 1 hour of out of cage time which seems to be highly desired especially as it is so limited. On the other hand step up also leads to 23 hours of boring cage time. Turns out, between the two of these, that step up leads to more displeasure (being caged 23 hours) than pleasure (being out an hour). Therefore fingers should be avoided to try to not have to be caged. How do parrots avoid stuff? Fly away or bite.
On to the initial question, why shouldn't the parrot bite? Well let's see, if it bites your finger, maybe you won't put it away for now, that's a win. Or maybe if it bites it will just win a few more minutes of time until you finally manage to get the bird into the cage anyway, still a win because more time out even by a little. Or the last scenario is that you manage to put the bird away into the cage anyway despite the biting, ok that's a waste of effort but nothing lost by trying. So from this sort of example you'll see that the parrot can only win by biting and nothing to lose. You're not going to win in a fight so it has no reason not to bite. As another bird, you're not a better "fighter" and not that I'd encourage you in any way to fight back, but from the bird's perspective you're not a threat when it comes to beak to beak fighting. So since the bird can't lose in a fight to you like it might to another bird, it has no reason not to bite you but some reasons to bite. This is the way you need to think about situations.
So to answer your original question, the trick to resolving many forms of biting is to start by thinking about why the bird bites and why shouldn't it bite.
Forget about punishment because it's not going to work for you and will backfire. This only leaves you with being nice and doing things in such ways that the bird has a lot to gain from being around you. Then by biting, it only has things to lose. This actually creates the opportunity for negative punishment. For example if you are teaching a trick such as wave, if the parrot waves, it gets treat. If the parrot bites rather than waving, it gets nothing. The lack of the otherwise expected treat in a way punishes the bite without ever laying a finger on the bird in ways normally associated with punishment. So basically if you are super nice when the bird is good, the motive not to bite is that it will lose that from you and thus it should not do it. This takes time but this is the reason you must not brush off positive reinforcement training.
looks forward to his bedtime mealtimes (when he goes into cage for night) to enjoy his fresh veggies and bit of fruit. In fact he will often say "yum yums, night night" to tell me he he is ready. I suggest you re-read and read again Micheals post on this topic. Lots of great info in there and it can be extrapolated to many situations you will find yourself in with your bird. It took me a while at first to realize that I can only get what I want by having the bird want to do it. Positive re-enforcement.