by Pajarita » Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:16 am
Hi, Kristin and welcome to the forum! Do not worry for one single second. Mango hasn't really bonded with your boyfriend, the bird is just hormonal. Parrots don't bond that fast BUT, when they are overly hormonal (very easy with conures and parakeets because of incorrect diet), they do attach themselves to the person that reminds them the most about another person they loved. This is what is happening to Mango and why he appears to hate you.
All you have to do is put the bird under a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk, feed it the right diet and wait. Let me explain. A bird that has been kept at a human light schedule and fed too much protein will become overly hormonal because the body has not stopped producing sexual hormones once the breeding season is over so its gonads kept on growing which causes first physical discomfort and, in enough time, chronic pain. An animal in pain is an animal that will be, most likely, VERY cantankerous and even aggressive. It will also be terribly sexually frustrated because it has been horny for years without any real relief. His attaching himself to your boyfriend and his aggression toward you so very early in the honeymoon period are clear symptoms of this problem so what you need to do is eliminate the cause of the problem because once the bird is no longer overly hormonal, he will be more than happy to accept you as, if nothing else, a flock member.
You also need to make sure it's getting the right diet which means low protein, high fiber, high moisture and low fat. Sun conures are mainly fruit eaters in the wild so they cannot be free-fed protein food (seeds, nuts, pellets, nutriberries, avicakes, etc). I suggest you feed it chop, mash or gloop accompanied by a different raw eafy green, veggie and fruit every day at dawn and a budgie seed mix for dinner (switching to a good quality cockatiel mix in the summer -I would normally change the diet around beginning of March but if this bird has been free-fed protein, you will want to stretch the lower protein a bit more than normal to allow its liver and kidneys to cleanse themselves a bit).
Now, the days are already getting longer which does not work to your benefit because sunnies breeding season wil be starting relatively soon... It would have been better for you if this had happened during the summer so the days would get shorter naturally which helps to speed up the process but the sooner you start, the sooner the bird will 'calm down'.
So, for now, just continue interacting with Mango as you have been doing: keep it company, talk, whistle, give it a little treat here and there, etc. Don't worry about his behavior, just ignore it, and don't try to make him love you because, in all honesty, it doesn't work. People say things like 'Be the only one that feeds it' or 'Interact with it only when your boyfriend is not around', etc. but, to tell you the truth, none of these things really work if the bird is overly hormonal.