Sun Conure odd behavior

[sunconurelover50050]

hello all my has been weird these week

it all started off as i took him out of his cage about 7 days ago to give him fresh air and play with him i gave him a sun flower seed and he tried to attack my fingers and i thought he probaly thought the sun flower seed was something strange but i didnt think about it.

then i put him on my shoulder and he bit my ear and started biting me and i put him in his cage to give him a time out sorta.. and after 2 hours i took him out same thing happend so i put him back in the cage for the day.

then next 2 days are ok then i take him out same routine. gave him apple and banana and put him on his stand.
now when ever i have a sun flower seed (his favorite seed) he will bite my fingers and snatch the seed from me so i stopped hand feeding him seeds so it doesent become a habit.

my dad feeds him the most (by hand) and doesent attack him when hes feeding him.

if my is also out of the cage and sees my dad he will litterly pick his butt up and fly to my dads back of his shirt bite him bite his shirt nip his back and hand till it starts bleeding and is worrying me because this behavior isnt normal

i havent changed his food at all and he has a big spacios cage and toys and he gets attention he only bites my dad! he bit my dads finger so hard today it was about the size of the end of a tip of a laptop charger battery. when ever i open up the cage tho he loves me so much he will fly onto my shoulder but he always bites my ear now and i need to keep my head to the side!

so he was on my shoulder and i went to the restroom to change the water in his bowl and i was leaving the restroom he flew off my shoulder and flew into the wall 4 times but he didnt fall and he flew off flew to my dad and destroyed his skin and shirt and i had to put him in his cage. and i dont know whats going on and this behavoir is strange and i dont want him to get used to biting me! when i bought him the breeder rubbed his thumb on his chest and said it was a male so i guess its a male?

ive had him for a year and he is 2 years old and never used to bite my dad so much and he doesent hate any one but my father

i hope you guys can help! thanks!


:EDIT:

thanks for the help, i do take him out with his cage and give him an hour of sun light every day

and i do play with him for atleast an hour a day and he gets hours of solid cage time, also he plays with his toys and chews on him but during the past few days he has chewed tons of leather to the point of it turning into fiber and he crushed a macaw toy i had in a day, is that also normal and he has ALOOOOT of pin feathers on his head i softly and lightly try to rub my fingers to remove the husk on the feathers and he is bonded with me too he still flys out of his cage to me and so you are saying he will bond with some one else other then me because i am his main owner and he is away from his parents as a breeder sold me him "not a mass breeder he takes good care of his birds"

also do you reccommend i get a baby female sun conure would that help him mate and be freinds with her and also if you rub your finger on his chest how do you tell that its a boy because i want to make sure! thank you so much and i hope you can help !

[Wolf]

It sounds to me like he is (A) hormonal and (B) going through puberty.
It is breeding season and this happens once a year and he should be out of breeding cycle sometime in June and begin his molting cycle. This is provided that he is on a normal solar light schedule. A solar light schedule is the same as the birds living outside have. More specifically it is being uncovered at the first hint of light in the eastern sky just before dawn(no artificial lights on) so that he is exposed to the predawn twilight period and then he will wake up on his own shortly after sunrise. Then he needs to be exposed to dusk( again no artificial lights on) that lasts until full dark by which time he should be asleep.
Puberty, at this time he loses the bond with his special human as this first bond was like a parent/ child bond. Now he will choose a new human to be his special human and bond with that person this is the bond that we all want as it is the mate bond and could last for the remainder of his life. If he is limited on who he can choose from he may choose the same person that he was bonded to in the first bond. No guarantees.
The best things that you can do for him at this time is to feed a low fat and low protein diet, have him on a solar light schedule and get him to flying. Flying more will help him to lower the level of hormones already in his bloodstream and help to reduce his aggressiveness.

[Pajarita]

Yes, Wolf is correct. This time of the year, they can all get a bit nippy but yours sounds more than just nippy and downright aggressive. Is it possible that he doesn't have a good, solid 4 hours of out of cage time every single day (during the day, not in the evening and not at night)? Does he spend, at least, 1 hour of one-on-one time with you (playing, cuddling, preening, etc)? Because when you add frustration over not enough interaction/out of cage time to hormones, you have a real bad combination and it always ends up in aggression in certain species -and sunnies are known for their lack of patience with humans when they don't get what they want...

I have a sun conure and a jenday, right now, and they are actually more affectionate and cuddly during breeding season than the rest of the year but they are also adults and not going through puberty.

[Wolf]

For starter, please don't edit your first post in order to reply to someone who has answered it as it gets too confusing instead just click on the reply button and say what you want. Thank you very much. Now on to bigger and better things.
There is no way that I am aware of to tell the sex of a Sun Conure or any other parrot by running your finger down its breast. Now if the breeder is very experienced then he probably was checking the spacing of the pelvis as it is normally wider in the female than in the male. But this method is not 100% accurate, the only reliable way other than your bird laying an egg to determine the sex of a Sun conure is by DNA testing.
An hour of sunlight is not nearly enough for a human to maintain emotional stability and they are not nearly as photoperiodic as a bird whose entire body is controlled by light so to speak. the special properties of the first light of early dawn before the sun tops the horizon and the corresponding twilight at dusk set and rest the birds biological clock which triggers the release of the hormones that start and stop the breeding cycle and the molting cycle. Food type and quantity also have a role in this as well. You said that your bird is 2 years old and this is the usual time for this species to go through puberty. You didn't quite understand what I said in my last reply on the bonding, so let me walk you through what occurs in the wild, their natural environment and go from there.
So we begin with the hatching of the baby bird. This bird is born helpless and it knows absolutely nothing and in this respect is very much like a human infant. This baby bird does not even know how to eat or drink, much less what to eat, it must be taught these things by the parent birds. It is totally dependant on them it doesn't even see the light of day until just before it fledges and this is because of hoe sensitive its eyes are to the light. Its eyesight is such that next to them we are color blind as they see into a part of the light spectrum that is invisible to us. After the baby fledges the parents then teach it what to eat as well as how to eat it and then how to find it, the parents begin teaching it how to function in the flock setting that it will live its life in. The baby is bonded to its parents and stays with them constantly until they enter puberty. This is triggered by hormones at the beginning of its second year of life and is also its first breeding season, although it will probably not breed during this first season as it doesn't have a mate yet. At this time the baby bird is becoming an adult and it starts pulling away from its parents and joins with the other juvenile birds and continues to learn how to function in the flock setting and begins actively looking for a suitable mate. It loses its bond with its parents at this time and when it finds a mate it now bonds with it.
This process happens in much the same manner with the birds hatched in captivity, with some differences. The first difference is that they are taken away from their parents so that they will imprint on humans. The second is that they are exposed to too bright of lights much too early and we don't know how much damage is done to their eyes because of this. Then their next step is to fledge and many of these birds have their wings clipped before they fledge and many more are clipped before the bird can fully fledge and this usually results in some of them never learning to fly at all. And since flight is hardwired into so many of its systems we end up with birds of lower intelligences and emotional issues as well as the physical problems. Now it is time to wean the baby bird, which is often done incompletely and too fast and at too young of an age. This is where the parent birds begin teaching the baby what foods to eat , how to eat them and how to find this food and water. And it is where the baby bird is taught the first fundamentals of flock dyanamics or how to live in a flock environment. But as this bird is in captivity this is when they are sold.
You buy the bird and traumatize it by taking it away from everything that is familiar with. This is not intentional on your part, but it is what happens. I could go all over the place now with what happens, but lets just stay on track as much as possible. The baby bird bonds with you its main caregiver in a short time and looks to you for everything, it food and water, it is up to you to teach it what foods to eat and how to live with its human flock. At about 2 years of age it goes through puberty and loses it parental bond with you and looks among those that it knows to find a mate to bond with. It does not have much of a choice so their is as good of a chance that it will rebond with you as with another human that it know but no guarantees. It might bond with someone else, there is no way to know until it happens. This is the number one reason for there being so many birds rehomed or in bird rescues in this country and likely the entire world.
Now you tell me that he has a lot of pin feathers so ideally he his through the breeding cycle and beginning his molting cycle in which he will replace about half of his feathers. But with the amount of aggressiveness that you are describing it is likely that his internal clock is free running and has not signaled the end of the breeding season and so he is still overly hormonal. The only way to fix this is to put him on a solar light schedule, which I have briefly described to you in my first reply and to make sure that he is eating a proper low protein and low fat diet, which we will be happy to help you with.
Now all parrots do much better with a mate or companion to be with, but before you run out to acquire another bird there are things that you need to consider first and which should influence you choices in this matter. First you will want to wait a while and let him settle back down and also find out who he bonds with, it may be you or it may be someone else in your immediate circle. Then you need to know that you don't want to get him a baby bird if you are planning on him bonding with it, he needs an adult bird of close to his same age a little older would work but you want one that has already gone through puberty. This will usually mean getting a bird from a rescue and you will know very quickly if the bird will bond with you or not based on if it chooses you or not. But the real issue is whether these two birds will bond or not and this is something that you wont know until they can be slowly introduced to each other and that is after a 30 day minimum quarantine to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. so you will have to be prepared for the fact that you may have two birds that will not bond and will need separate cages. So I advise that you wait on getting another bird until you are sure that you want another bird for you in case they don't bond.

[Pajarita]

I don't know what you mean by 'solid hours of cage time', you don't mention the number of hours or whether this is, indeed, out of cage time. The other thing is that the one-on-one time should be at the same times that parrots socialize/interact in the wild (after breakfast and before their dinner) - things always work better when you follow a natural biorhythm.

If he is molting right now, his endocrine system is out of whack and, this, added to his age and the fact that you don't know if you have a male or a female, makes it unadvisable to get him a companion bird right now. You need to put him on a good diet and a solar schedule and wait until his endocrine system is working as it should (which will reduce significantly his aggression). You also need to have him DNA'd and get his aggression to disappear 100% (strict routine and schedule, target training, etc) and then and only then you should consider getting him an older companion bird if at all necessary (I got my Jenday before puberty and he never lost his bond with me although he now has a girlfriend).