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Indian ringneck dive bombing

Buganjimo

Meeting neighbors
Joined
3/16/18
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40
(was posted in the IRN form but figured it was more suited to here)

If anyone can help me it would really be appreciated.
My IRN Rhea is about 3 years old, (she is technically male but I refer to her as female because I originally thought she was female when I got her, lol), just growing in her ring.
Recently shes been flying at my head aggressively. and I dont really know why. all of a sudden she flys at me and lands hard on the back of my head. I cant tell if she bites or if its just her nails but its hard every time and it hurts quite a bit. she makes her "angry sound" every time, sorry I dont really know how to describe it. Its between a call and a growl. she usually makes it at the toys shes frustrated at. she has landed on my head before by accident and this is nothing like that, she lands just long enough to dig her nails in and then flys away making the growl noise. its concerning to say the least.

I really dont understand whats happening. why is she frustrated and why is she taking it out on me?
other info, she eats TOPs pellets and fresh chop, large cage but she is out of her cage most of the day, she has lots of toys and we do lots of training, she loves to do recall training, and loves to fly. this started happening when I was trying to train her to go into her travel cage. it has happened once or twice before (maybe a couple days before) but I just thought it was a one time thing, obviously not :/

I had the new travel cage out in her room for a couple days, then I started standing near it and having her fly to me for treats, then I put a bowl of treats on the floor near the cage, then the bowl of treats just in the doorway of the cage, so she had to stand on it but not go in, she caught on pretty fast to all of these, and quickly got over her fear (she is very food motivated) the day she was dive bombing me (4 times in an hour or so) I had her bowl of treats inside the travel cage, so she would have to reach in to get them.
the last time that day she came after me was when I was pouring food into her bowl in her regular cage. she regularly just sits on the nearest perch and does her little anticipation dance, but this day she growled and came flying at my face to bite me, which has never happened before. the day after all this (yesterday) I kept her in the cage for the day, just so we could both calm down.
that brings us to today. does anyone have any clue what is wrong and how I can fix it?

I have a spinal injury that extends up to my neck, so I really cant have her flying at my head this aggressively, soits not an option to just let her do it and hope it stops, as its made my injury worse in the last few days. I also cant just keep her in her cage. what should I do??

the growling is similar to the sound in this video at about 0:26/0:27 seconds

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Hermesbird

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Dostc426

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Chelsea Dostert
My sun conure is doing this exact thing to my fiance! My sun too goes through daily training sessions, has a healthy diet of chop and pellets, however he is in his cage during working hours as advised by our avian vet due to hormones. He gets his flight feathers clipped normally, but due to the pandemic we've avoided unnecessary grooming trips and have let his flight feathers grow in and started flight recall training. While he enjoys my fiance's company, he only lets me touch him and handle him. He does the exact same thing where he will dive bomb him whenever he moves though if he can bite him, he does. I have yet to find an answer that appropriately answers this question but I have been looking into Differential Reinforcement training to see if that might be a method to curb the behavior. Here's a good video about how its applied in training!
The only piece of the puzzle I am missing to that kind of training, is how do I associate him understanding that he is being rewarded for not flying and attacking my fiance specifically! :grumpy: Hopefully someone else will chime in with some insight!
 
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