New Rainbow Lorikeet

[Wolf]

The first thing that I would do is look at what was occurring just before the bite to assess what I may have done to elicit a bite from my bird. Was I moving too fast? Was I pressuring the bird to do something that it didn't want to do? Was the bird already excited? With parrots, unless they have been taught to bite, biting is a last resort type of action and reserved for those cases when its normal mode of communication is ignored or missed and they are unable to move away. I would say that 98% of all bites are due to errors on the part of the human. If I see that my bird is excited or irritable then I don't handle it until it has had a chance to calm down. Always avoid a bite if it is possible as it is the best way to teach your bird that biting is not needed.

[Gabriel]

Are Yucca Pieces safe for lorikeets? I heard their brush tongues can pick up the little fibers, and ingest some of it.

[Wolf]

Yucca is on the safe list.

[Pajarita]

It is not toxic but lories do have a particularly long tongue which is 'sticky' at the end (it's not really sticky, it has little thingies -papillae- growing out of it, like the hairs of a brush) to enable them to 'pick up' powders (like pollen) and liquids (nectar) from the flowers they feed on so, yes, it is possible that small fibers do get 'stuck' to it.

[Gabriel]

So it is true that the small fibers can be picked up by the papillae and ingested, but it is considered to be fine for birds to ingest some of the Yucca?

[Wolf]

Again Yucca is on the safe list, so your bird eating some Yucca will not hurt it at all, it is safe for them to eat.

[Pajarita]

Yucca is safe, my birds love it boiled (it's quite sticky and starchy and they seem to love its texture -I do too ). The question is whether he would end up ingesting too many dry fibers because of the 'stickiness' of their tongue which might cause crop impaction -I don't think so but it pays to be safe, doesn't it?

[Gabriel]

I have seen that many pet birds think that they are at the top of the 'pecking order'. How do you keep your birds from thinking they are dominant?

[Wolf]

I have never seen this behavior in any of my birds. They do not live in a dominance based social structure either. Because of this you will have to explain to me what you saw. I am pretty sure that we are seeing the same behavior but are seeing it differently.

[liz]

I would guess it to be more like jealousy. I can't put Rambo on my shoulder because Myrtle will try to knock him off. I have to keep him at chest level when I play with him. She can't swoop him off from there.
I just can't wait for him to get his flying under control. There is no way we could possibly know how happy he will be. He has always been jealous of the cockatiels flying around him.