It makes me sad to hear people say that if you have a parrot you will get bit.
It is not untrue but at the same time I think it misrepresents the truth.
To put it bluntly, and I don't mean to offend, just to speak the truth, if you are getting bit all the time you are doing it wrong.
It has become cliche to say that if you have birds you will get bit. It is true birds do bite but why don't we have the same expression when it comes to dogs? Because people don't accept a dog biting as normal behavior, if a dog growls or bears his teeth we don't push him, instead, we back off.
Sadly, if a bird exhibits aggressive or fearful body language we often don't recognize, or worse ignore those signals and we get bit.
If we continue to act this way we will create fearful and aggressive birds.
I have caiques so I will use them as an example, caiques are very assertive and often fearless. Pushing past their signals that tell us to go away, step back and leave them alone leads to biting. Pushing past the biting leads more often than not to a caique who goes on the offensive and starts issuing preemptive attacks.
Unfortunately, people are creating birds who bite and attack. I know it is not being done on purpose but it is, without question, happening. This makes me sad.
Birds get abandoned and rehomed and parrots as companions get a bad rep.
I think it is a people problem. I think the solution is education.
I'm going to offer a little advice, take it or leave it (but please take it).
Take a step back, then take two more steps back. Interact in ways that create positive responses and when you get a negative response don't do that again. Over time, when you build a record of many positive interactions and few negatives you will gain their trust and that will lead to the type of relationship you want.
If your parrot has already established a pattern of aggression you will have a long road ahead. It will take longer to build enough positive interactions to outweigh the negative interactions that your bird has had.
You will have to untrain the undesirable behaviors by equipping your bird to present more desirable ones instead. So before you can start you will need to figure out what you want instead.
There are lots of resources out there. Some are better than others. I love everything from Barbara Heindenreich at Parrot Training | Barbara's Force Free Animal Training.
I say this to let you know that there is hope and you can have a great relationship with your parrot. Specifically, you can have a parrot and not get bit (at least rarely and I mean go months or longer without getting bit).
One key to avoiding bites is to learn and heed the more subtle warnings that your parrot is always communicating to you. Here is a video of Quackers my male 5 year old white-bellied caique. He is also very hormonal at this time and was giving me all sorts of signals that he wanted me to move far away from him and his mate. I needed to get them back in their cage. The video starts after I get him back in but it shows some aggressive behavior and threatening body language. I also explain how I handle things in a situation like this and why.
I hope this helps someone who may be struggling with a biting parrot but even more I hope it helps someone to avoid creating a parrot who bites in the first place.
Don't be discouraged but do work with your birds, see how much you can do with them and make it your goal not to get used to the bites but rather to never do anything that will make your bird feel the need to bite.
It is not untrue but at the same time I think it misrepresents the truth.
To put it bluntly, and I don't mean to offend, just to speak the truth, if you are getting bit all the time you are doing it wrong.
It has become cliche to say that if you have birds you will get bit. It is true birds do bite but why don't we have the same expression when it comes to dogs? Because people don't accept a dog biting as normal behavior, if a dog growls or bears his teeth we don't push him, instead, we back off.
Sadly, if a bird exhibits aggressive or fearful body language we often don't recognize, or worse ignore those signals and we get bit.
If we continue to act this way we will create fearful and aggressive birds.
I have caiques so I will use them as an example, caiques are very assertive and often fearless. Pushing past their signals that tell us to go away, step back and leave them alone leads to biting. Pushing past the biting leads more often than not to a caique who goes on the offensive and starts issuing preemptive attacks.
Unfortunately, people are creating birds who bite and attack. I know it is not being done on purpose but it is, without question, happening. This makes me sad.
Birds get abandoned and rehomed and parrots as companions get a bad rep.
I think it is a people problem. I think the solution is education.
I'm going to offer a little advice, take it or leave it (but please take it).
Take a step back, then take two more steps back. Interact in ways that create positive responses and when you get a negative response don't do that again. Over time, when you build a record of many positive interactions and few negatives you will gain their trust and that will lead to the type of relationship you want.
If your parrot has already established a pattern of aggression you will have a long road ahead. It will take longer to build enough positive interactions to outweigh the negative interactions that your bird has had.
You will have to untrain the undesirable behaviors by equipping your bird to present more desirable ones instead. So before you can start you will need to figure out what you want instead.
There are lots of resources out there. Some are better than others. I love everything from Barbara Heindenreich at Parrot Training | Barbara's Force Free Animal Training.
I say this to let you know that there is hope and you can have a great relationship with your parrot. Specifically, you can have a parrot and not get bit (at least rarely and I mean go months or longer without getting bit).
One key to avoiding bites is to learn and heed the more subtle warnings that your parrot is always communicating to you. Here is a video of Quackers my male 5 year old white-bellied caique. He is also very hormonal at this time and was giving me all sorts of signals that he wanted me to move far away from him and his mate. I needed to get them back in their cage. The video starts after I get him back in but it shows some aggressive behavior and threatening body language. I also explain how I handle things in a situation like this and why.
I hope this helps someone who may be struggling with a biting parrot but even more I hope it helps someone to avoid creating a parrot who bites in the first place.
Don't be discouraged but do work with your birds, see how much you can do with them and make it your goal not to get used to the bites but rather to never do anything that will make your bird feel the need to bite.
