Parrot training gone terribly, terribly wrong

[Eurycerus]

I was going to teach him to fly somehow but I've just decided to leave it be for now until he's fully tame. He has all his flight feathers so he will at least be able to glide if he falls
Is that your plan with Nika too?

Nika's feathers are growing back. They look fairly complete but I don't think they are totally yet. I am making no effort to teach her how to fly or facilitate flight. She has sort of flown, not well, but hasn't figured out that she can do that all the time. My plan is to get her harness trained before she can fly well and keep working on complete hand taming so that maybe I can work on socialization. So basically, yes that is the plan.

[Ursibear]

Sounds good, let me know how it works out

[Ursibear]

BTW, moderators... is it OK if i keep this thread as a diary of sorts? To track the progress of Sisu, maybe someone else is having the same problems as i am and this might help out

[JacobBird]

Should be ok (: people have done it here

[cml]

Marie, when it comes to the shoulder thing, i've tried to get him to stay on my forearm ever since he started coming out of the cage, but he won't budge.

Its possible, until I knew better I let Stitch be on my shoulder all the time. Now, through being persistant and removing him everytime he went there, he almost never sits there. Just keep removing Sisu, EVERY time he goes to your shoulder. He'll get it eventually . Dont even let him on your forearm so he can start climbing up your arm, keep him on your hands!

I havnt read the forum in a couple of days (first time since I joined that I havnt probably ^^), but I can understand how frustrating bites can be. I have scars to prove it, mainly on my hands though. Its possible to work around biting issues (we have ), and as people have already stated start to pay serious attention to your bird's body language. Stitch is really obvious when he's pissed, his eyes start pinning, and he starts shaking his head. Better to ignore him at those times than getting bit.

You and your boyfriend HAVE to get over the bites though, if you are going to be able to keep your parrot. Convince your bf to start interacting with Sisu again, it wont help aggression at all if he just ignores your parrot. Also, keeping Sisu unflighted will not help either. I understand that you are afraid of attack runs resulting in bites, but an unflighted bird is much more likely to bite, as it cannot get where it wants!

Best of luck!

[Ursibear]

You and your boyfriend HAVE to get over the bites though, if you are going to be able to keep your parrot. Convince your bf to start interacting with Sisu again, it wont help aggression at all if he just ignores your parrot. Also, keeping Sisu unflighted will not help either. I understand that you are afraid of attack runs resulting in bites, but an unflighted bird is much more likely to bite, as it cannot get where it wants!

Best of luck!

True I need to have a serious think about this, and make a plan.
Sisu's back to flinging away any treat i give him, even his all-time favorite (peanut quarters), exactly as the day he first came home, so it looks like I'll have time to think about it

[Polarn]

Well I do think amazons overall are quite easily red, but alot of the bodylanguage he uses goes both ways, and normally, as mentioned earlier, I ignore him when overly exited as well, unless were playing and he gets exited couse he thought a certain thing was funny or when we sing he sometimes gets really exited but then hes singing as well... anyways the pinning eyes, I never really have to look at them couse the other signs are so obviouse.

Oh also if you start to pay seriouse attention to any indicators of your birds bodylanguage, my bet is that with time it'll start do it properly couse it knows you will back off and leave it alone without the biting being a nesessity. I think the first few stages are trained away in alot of birds, even if they originally did fan the feathers (not wagging, just fan it as wide as possible (usually at the same time as making them look bigger by putting the wings out slightly)) people doesnt really know if their exited and wants to interact or if their pissed and want you to leave, so what do we do, we put our hand up hence removing this sign. since that sign made no affect on a human what so ever, they resort to the next thing trying to get you to leave it alone and thereby you have trained it to not show that sign that its going to bite. I do however think the affects are reversable by paying extremely clsoe attention and backing off or pausing every time you think your bird might be expressing some of these behaviors. The thing is though (and im fine with it but probably not everyone is) that all and any interaction with your bird is on its terms, if it wants to train its a trainingsesion if it tells you it doesnt want to interact atm then there is no session.

Even if i find most of the amazons ive met easy to read I still hear plenty of people saying they got bit out of nowhere etc, in some cases yes but in many cases I think it's because they havn't spent the time learning how to read the bird and either doesnt know what to look for or they have trained it away hence resulting in the surprisebites. I'm not sure as to how much easier an amazon is to read compared to a poi but I know that they had some pictures of pois displaying these behaviors when I was at a seminar at the vet. and the stances these pois had was basically the same as my amazons, I think the growl is the only thing I havnt really seen in any other species except for the odd grey every now n then.

And about flight, as mentioned earlier a clipped bird is more likely to bite than a flighted one since the flighted bird can use its natural instincts and flee when a bigger predator disturbs it. Saying this however we had a grey at home when I grew up that either had a good day or a bad day reading pretty much couse the signs were gone for some reason (this was an older rescue) that would fly across the room to bite, but keeping an eye on it while out you definitly had the time to put your hand up forcing it to either turn around or land on your hand and bite your fingers rather than your face.

[Ursibear]

I'd like to say that Sisu hasn't bit me since the first day, (except that accident when he was climbing on my finger) he has always started biting my boyfriend, and then me when i walked over to remove him.
So he seems to have a problem with my boyfriend, whatever it is as i said they get along just fine... except these episodes

[Eurycerus]

I haven't been bit hard enough to draw blood since the second day. There have been a variety of accidental bites, or anger bites, but no blood. It hurts but I think it's part of parrot life. Pois are known for displaced anger/fear bites, lashing out at the closest thing. You just have to be super careful and as said above, consistently remove Sisu from climbing up your arm. Your parrot has bonded with you and has bouts of territorial behavior and attacks him because he's an invader. It makes sense, but it definitely is really unfortunate for everyone involved. They are wild animals as Grey Moon consistently points out, and not particularly well suited as companion animals, but here we all are dealing with these wild animals. :] I'm sure you can figure out a way to make it work with patience, and knowing that other people are going through practically the same situations.

[Grey_Moon]

It has been a while since I got tagged by Jacko in such a fashion, I do get nipped and beak punched on occasion but its more of a hard poke and then retreat caused by me being stupid.

She is one of those birds who was taught that indicating discomfort did no good---but over the years she has learned now that crouching down/raising her feathers/leaning away or giving me the hard stare are effective ways to communicate to me that I will respect.
She *does* however have a holdover tendency to do micro-threat behaviours (where she displays threat/discomfort behaviour for a second or two) and then follow up quickly with a strike and bite. Sort of half n half from her old life of no respect and me giving her space.

I have a hunch though that your boyfriend is not going to be a problem and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is because I am well versed in what it looks like when a bird is in a blind rage and what happens when you get in the way.

Believe it or not, my mild mannered girl DOES have one big ugly green eyed problem called jealousy/territoriality. She DOES NOT like other animals/birds/small kids.
She also is triggered by certain objects in proximity to herself or her cage in a fearful/defensive aggressive fashion.

The reason I say that this probably is not a developing hatred to your boyfriend is due to the fact that Sisu flew to him and sat with him a while before reacting the way he did. So what I'm betting on is that your boyfriend was a victim of displaced aggression/fearful defensive behaviour.

When a bird is intent on attacking someone/something there is intense focus. My grey would stalk my cockatiel and give him the hard stare while she tried to get to his cage to get him. They don't peacefully sit there a while and then the light goes on 'oh yeah I was trying to kill you'. They mean it, and so help you god if you get in the way. IF you intercept that sort of aggressive charge you will get the brunt of it because you become a replacement for the target. Hence displaced aggression. You could also see it say if the bird was wanting to attack an object that it couldn't get to.

Triggered overload/fearful defensive behaviour is the type of biting you'd see if say a door blows shut unexpectedly while you're touching the bird. Its a startled bite first ask questions later and it can get repetitive and vicious if the bird hasn't had time to process the stimulus/is still in overload because it will keep charging.
I'm betting that one of these two scenarios is the reason your boyfriend got bitten. Something triggered Sisu and he panicked/got upset and lashed out. IF he was aiming for your boyfriend in the first place he would've gone for the throat metaphorically speaking.

In both of these scenarios I've had Jacko literally gnawing on my knuckles. It hurt, but I'm used to it.
Thankfully i've removed and prevented what triggers I could so it rarely happens now.

It is extremely important that your boyfriend continues to work with Sisu because of what happened, otherwise you are creating a one person bird/one who will attack your boyfriend. This is because the bird's last interaction with him was negative and now there's an unpleasant brooding energy/tension between Sisu and your boyfriend.