entrancedbymyGCC wrote:Well, put it that way it makes sense. I rather thought I was being chastised for putting him back home at all! Can some of you suggest ideas for such a game?
Perhaps comparing to "go to your room" would have been a closer analogy but I wanted to make a point that it's not the bird's fault it doesn't want to go there. "Go to your room" is a far better example. You may like your room and spend much time there but "go to your room" is so often used as a punishment by parents by revoking the opportunity to experience superlative experiences outside of it as well as social attention.
We are also realizing that he just doesn't seem to have any idea how much use of his beak is OK and we're trying to teach him what is good contact and what isn't. We are doing this by liberally praising good behavior and either ignoring or gently discouraging a real bite. He's bold and seems very confident and cheerful and eager to interact, at least based on all I've read about avian body language, so I think it's just something he was never taught, not that he's being fearful.
This probably just takes some time. They don't learn off the bat what is ok to bite or nibble and what is not. See, you're not using any punishment for biting and it's impossible to reward "not biting" because that would be all the time that the parrot is not biting. You are essentially counting on behavior extinction to occur and it takes a very long time for previously reinforced behaviors to wear off.
The best thing to do to expedite extinction is to avoid stimuli that trigger biting and also to avoid any reaction to biting if it does happen. However, just ignoring biting is not going to immediately make it go away. Another important thing to do is to examine new routes for the parrot to get what it wants without biting. So if the parrot is biting because it doesn't want to go in its cage either don't put it in the cage (solves biting but not putting away) or
teach it to go into the cage on its own and put it on cue. A much simpler solution is to only take the parrot out (at least initially until problem solved) prior to feeding time, keep it out a while, and then put it away to a nice big meal. Then the parrot will be thrilled to go back to its cage because it is hungry.