My husband & I have a female eclectic parrot who's about 3 years old. When we bought her I thought she was a bit aggressive but my husband really wanted her. It's taken a while for her to warm up to me but this last year we've made some serious progress together. About 6 months ago I noticed that she seemed interested in the bird in our bathroom mirror. We encouraged this behavior, even buying her a special mirror that I would put into her cage when I went out for long periods of time. Everything seemed to be going well until about 2 months ago. I took her out of her cage for some outside time and she bit my thumb hard enough that I thought I was going to have to get stitches (I didn't). My husband thought that maybe she didn't mean to bite me; that she got spooked and bit down too hard.
I thought that too until I tried to pick her up from in front of her mirror. She again bit me hard enough that I thought I was going to need stitches. Fast forward to two more instances of this occurring. All 4 times I had been trying to get her from in front of her mirror. Then 3 weeks ago I picked her up (mirror again) and she bit me through my lip. 10 stitches later I'm more than hesitant to touch her with my bare hands. As for my husband, he has no problems with her at all. She loves being with him and will sometimes move as if to attack me while she's on his shoulder.
Doing searches on the internet it seemed like she had bonded to the mirror bird. My husband is the bird that comes and visits every once in a while. And I'm the bird that overstayed her welcome, causing my Parrot to try and chase me off.
So we've covered all the big mirrors and removed the mirror from her cage. We also clipped her wings (we had been flight training her before). But these solutions don't seem to solve the problem. She's definitely a lot less aggressive but now she's obsessed with trying to find her mirror friend and will spend most of the day begging to go to the spot in front of the mirror. And she still tries to bite me.
Does anyone have any ideas on how we can "reset" our parrot? Make her believe that her mirror friend is gone and to bond with one of us instead? Searching on the internet hasn't found any solutions.
Thanks.