African Grey Congo stopped allowing head scratches

[MaggieOwner]

We adopted 18 months old African Grey Congo 2 weeks ago. first week went well, Parrot was fully tamed, allowed scratches and learned bunch of new tricks with us. Maggie cuddled with my wife and enjoyed a lot of head/neck scratches. Then something changed and 2 days now in the row she doesn't allow head/neck scratches anymore and bites, also walks away on the perch from my wife.
But she stills sits on my wife watching tv, does training of the tricks, does kisses etc.Just doesn't allow head scratches.
Surprisingly she wants me to do head scratches instead, and runs to me first.

I assume something happened and my wife lost Maggie's trust. We tried giving treats, spending positive time etc, but nothing worked.

We are lost and desperate. What would you advice to do to win back the trust?

[Pajarita]

Hi, Maggie and human, welcome to the forum. I had just finished writing a looong post replying to you but, when I went to post it, it disappeared So, here I go again. First of all, Maggie did not switch allegiance from your wife to you, she had never bonded with either one so there was no actual 'switch'. You are also not doing things right - and, please do not take this as criticism but as explanation and guidelines to a good relationship with a parrot. Let me explain a couple of things that I think you might not be aware of.

First of all, parrots do not bond with a human in a matter of days or even weeks, it takes months and this only if the human does everything right and the parrot has not been abused or severely neglected. First time owners usually think that the parrot has bonded with them because the bird is not biting them, takes treats, rides a shoulder or obeys during training but it's not so. Dogs do that, parrots don't. When a parrot other than a very young baby goes to a new home, it goes into what we call 'the honeymoon period'. This is a time when the bird is at its best behavior because, as prey animals vis-à-vis a large beings that look and act as predators (namely, us, with our eyes in front of our faces and our tendency to stare at them), they go into a 'preservation mode' when they do not 'rock the boat', just in case. Parrots need time to decide on their own that the new (unfamiliar and, as such, potentially dangerous) environment is safe, to observe the new humans, learn their voices/tone, their behaviors and idiosyncrasies, to learn the routines in their new home, to study the 'lay of the land' - to reconnoiter. Parrots are not 'explorers', nature evolved them to be born, live and die surrounded by the family they know from birth and in the same territory so rehoming, to them, is VERY hard to adapt to. They can do it but for the transition to go smoothly, one needs to give them whatever time they need to reach their own conclusion that we are safe, that we are no threat to them, that we want to be their friends and that, most of all, we will respect their wishes (respect is almost more important than love to a parrot). Ergo, treating them as if they know us and trust us from day one and taking familiarities with their bodies is never recommended because. although it seems to work at the beginning, it always ends up backfiring on us. So, please, stop training and asking her to do anything immediately. Think of her not as a 'pet' but as a companion, a small human - you would not expect a stranger to obey you when you give it an order, accept your touch or trust you with their wellbeing, would you? Well, parrots are like humans in that respect.

Once she is over the honeymoon period, you can start training her again but beware that the sessions need to be very short (a few minutes at a time) and only a couple of times a day. You see, parrots are not genetically programmed to obey or be subservient because they did not evolve to live in a hierarchical society so, as far as they are concerned, they have no bosses and obedience is not a concept they understand. In order for training to be stress-free, care needs to be taken and a deep bond of love needs to exist PRIOR the commencement of training. Why? Because, although they don't have genetic traits that allow for obeying the rules of an alpha role model, they do have them for pleasing their mates. Parrots are monogamous birds that mate for life and, in order for a relationship of this type to last their entire life, they need to do things that will please their mates so, once the bird loves you, it will be willing to follow certain orders (mind you, this does not mean you can ask a bird to eliminate a natural behavior like chewing your furniture, for example) as long as it's not too onerous to them (boring repetition of doing what they would consider a useless trick is 'onerous'). But, having said that, just because you are not training, it doesn't mean that you are not teaching the bird. I do not train at all. I have no training sessions, do not use a target or a clicker, and do not use food rewards for anything but my parrots are all very well behaved and obey my orders almost always the first time I give them. What I do is teach them as we go along, the same way a mother teaches a toddler not to touch the stove or grab a knife or sit down properly, etc. I use repetition, consistency (you cannot allow something one day and not the next), persistence and praise with an occasional redirecting (as in when they insist on chewing a baseboard or furniture after I tell them "No! Do not touch!" -which they all know what it means).

So, establish the bond by spending time with her, open her cage at dawn (without artificial light on, of course, because she needs to be kept at a strict solar schedule so her endocrine system stays in good working order) and allow her to come out on her own (meaning do not put your hand inside her cage for her to step up to it), eat breakfast with her (HER breakfast, not yours! stuff like raw produce, for example), allow her to ride your shoulder or whatever she wants to do, give her a treat every now and then (a gifted treat, not a reward or a bribe), praise her a lot (they love praise) and allow her to decide what the pace and depth of the relationship will be. The way you handle the honeymoon period is the foundation of your future relationship with your bird so make it a strong one of trust and love and she will reward you with love and devotion for the rest of her life.

As to her now choosing you over your wife... well, that is always the way they are. They decide who is going to be their 'chosen one' and nothing we can do will change that. Companion parrots are not family pets, they are ALL one-person pets. It's the way nature made them (monogamous, remember?). But that doesn't mean she cannot have a good relationship with the other members of the family. They do establish friendships with flock mates other than their own mates so it's not as if she is going to hate your wife or not love her, it's only that she will always have a deeper bond with one human and one human alone. And it's most chemistry with them... I am the bird lover and caregiver in my house but Isis, a female African Redbelly parrot, loves my husband and not me. She likes me a lot and now allows me to scratch her head and cheeks, steps up and everything but she loves him - always has and always will even though my husband is not a parrot person and does not pay her enough attention. But Maggie moving away from your wife while moving closer to you might be caused by behaviors that she dislikes. Is it possible that it was your wife the one that asked for more from her at the beginning thereby giving her the impression that you were more respectful than her? Or that your wife is high energy while you are calmer? Grays do not like high energy people or busy environments... they hate change and get extremely stressed out by hullabaloo so they do not work out in households with children or yappy dogs running around, loud music, routines that are not the same day after day, etc. They thrive in calm, ordered environments where there is hardly any change at all AND they do not like to have their bodies touched (did she maybe handled her a bit too intrusively by touching her body?). Sheesh, they are so particular that the greatest majority of them don't even like to have their heads scratched UNLESS they ask us for it. My own Sophie CAG, a sweetheart of a bird that I've had for 12 years, always comes to me when called and loves to ride my shoulder and kiss my cheek only allows me to scratch her head when she is hormonal and only when and for as long as she wants it. She is the boss. Not me. You need to be careful with grays because they not only require a calm type of home and very respectful relationship, they are also naturally high-strung birds and introverts so if they get anxious or stressed out, they tend to pluck and that's why they are never recommended for first time owners.

Parrots are all very hard to keep healthy and happy in captivity... it requires not only cooking for them, getting up at an ungodly early hour in the morning in the summer and literally no visitors in the evening all winter long, hours and hours of one-on-one time which needs to be during the daylight hours, no sleeping in on weekends, vacations, sick days, etc and constant research because although we have learned a lot in the last 20 years or so, what we have learned has only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg. But if you love them, you can do it - and if you have questions, we will do our best to answer them to the best of our ability. That's what we are here for: to share what we have all learned with one another so we can make their lives better and ours easier.