I always have a hard time when people ask if caiques make good pets or when people are asking about the downside of caiques. I have 8 caiques and have also had other birds in the past.
I think my answer is that caiques make great pets for some people and horrible pets for others.
As for biting and nipping, I personally reject the idea that being able to take a bite and handle it is a skill or something necessary to have a peaceful relationship with your parrot. I think the needed skill is learning enough about parrots and parrot body language to be able to avoid bites is skill that is needed. Prevent and avoid the bites, not learn how to deal with them, end it before it even starts.
You can not convince a caique to do things your way directly, they simply do not care. They do not need your approval and they are confident, strong willed and independent. If you have ever felt frustrated and that you where having a battle of wills with your animal and felt you had to win then you would need to figure out how to avoid that. Caiques will test you and put you in that position and if you allow yourself to go there you will not be successful.
As I say, you can not convince a caique to do things directly, but indirectly you absolutely can. The trick is patience, consistency and bribery. You can totally get a caique to do what you want (most of the time) if you can convince them to want the same thing. Bribery is your best friend.
Example, you want your caique to return to it's cage after play time. Of course you caique does not want to go back to his food and toy filled cage when he can sit on your desk and remove keys from your keyboard or surf in your hair. But perhaps he does want to eat an almond (even if it's from his cage) or maybe he is willing to trade his liberty for a pine nut. It's your job to figure out what he would be willing to do that also happens to coincide with what you want to accomplish. The reason I bring this up is because if you do not figure out how to get what you want then the situation will devolve into a battle of wills and you will get nipped or most likely savagely bitten. Do that too many times and your bird may skip all other options and go straight to biting. Then everybody loses.
Another thing to look at is biting due to over excitement. This is more nippiness but it hurts. Some caiques tend to get overexcited sometimes when playing and they will all of the sudden get very nippy. It's like they are fine then all the sudden it's bang, bang, bang. A full on nipping frenzy. For this they just need a moment to calm down. I just dump them off on the nearest surface or in the nearest cage, remove your hand from the situation and try again in a few seconds, it often doesn't take long to calm down but in the moment I think they can not help themselves.
Caiques are wild, strong willed, feisty and independent. To me that is what makes them awesome but I think a person must be willing to do things on their terms as mush as possible to be successful.
Having 8 of them, I can also tell you that a lot depends on the birds. If I only had any one of mine and had never had the others I would have very different opinions depending which one I had. I have some that never bite, one that never gets to be physically on me or she will bite, others who are territorial and bite if I get to close to their territory and some that only occasionally get nippy when over excited. All of them would probably be happy to bite if I tried to force them to do something they didn't want to do (by force I mean gently prod them).
Caiques are definitely beaky and use their beaks along with varying amounts of pressure to communicate. Couple that will their strong willed and opinionated nature and in the wrong hands you can get a very tenaciously bitey bird.
So the question is, are you right for a caique? In the answer to that question, lies the answer to the question is a caique right for you.
