*my green cheek conure keeps biting my ear?*

[smoura123]

hi
my gcc keeps biting my ear whenever i put him on my head. its hurts but not as bad as when he gets me or anyone else on my finger. why is he doing this and how do i stop it?
thanks
sofia and milo

[entrancedbymyGCC]

It is sort of tempting to compare this to the old saw: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" "Then don't do that!" But Scooter really likes sitting on my head, so I can understand why you'd want to let Milo do that.

It is possible he is expressing bossiness, but I expect he's most likely investigating with his beak. It is also possible he's doing it to get your attention focused on him. Scooter went through a phase of making a beeline for my earrings if I was wearing any, and I had to take them off before interacting with him. I think it is important to realize that a bird doesn't automatically know what hurts us and what doesn't. They have to learn what behaviors are desirable. The trick is not to accidentally reinforce a behavior you don't want by giving attention to your bird when he does them. So if you are having a conversation with someone, or wathching TV, with your bird sitting on your head and he bites your ear and you stop the conversation or watching to focus on him, he got rewarded for doing it. He may even think it was something you wanted.

I'd limit letting him close to my ears for a while, and I'd pay full attention to him when he was there. I'd actively cultivate other interactions by giving praise and attention for doing something more acceptable, say gently preening your arm or whistling or something. And if he did bite my ear, I'd remove him from the ear and end that particular interaction, but without any scolding or excitement. I'd just quietly set him down for a few minutes.

[guybo]

I used to have a Senegal and she'd preen me and it wouldn't be gentle! She was preening me like she would any bird she was bonded to, just she didn't understand that on me it hurt!

Is your bird biting (taking a quick nip and stopping) or preening (nibbling and picking at the skin and keeps doing it) you? If preening than it's a totally different problem than biting. Try to figure out which the bird is doing.