So hopefully someone will have some good advice here, and I'm sure the first answer I'm going to get is "this is normal parrot behavior, it means they like you", but does anyone have any positive training tips to avoid being "preened" by their babies?
All of our birds seem to really enjoy preening me, specifically the conures. The problem is, it can be painful at times! They love nothing better than a good amount of shoulder time, but that usually leads to preening my neck and ears while making the most adorable noises imaginable. Being someone who has several small skin tags along my neckline (a life of wearing collared shirts every day!), they just love to get ahold of one of these and try to take it off, which of course is painful. They also like exploring ears, but this sometimes leads to nibbling.
I've attempted the obvious tactic, which is a firm "No bite" and trying to put them down for a few moments, but the little brats are really tricky once they are on my shoulder/neck, and are usually not at all interested in stepping up to be removed when "grooming time" has started. So typically a session of this involves me squirming around, trying to hide my neck with my shirt, scrunching my head against my shoulder, and other such actions. I know they are probably having a blast with all of that as well, and I want to figure out how to best discourage the practice. I've had limited success with a plastic necklace covered in foot toys which Ernie likes to try and detach, but even with that the preening urge sometimes wins over the playing urge.
Any tips or tricks out there to help with this? I love being a "tree" for our birds, but they have to stop eating me!