Biting and feather plucking in parrots

At its worst, a plucked bird resembles an oven-ready chicken. If plucking persists too long the follicles are damaged and the feathers cannot regrow.

An avian vet should be able to help you discover what has changed within the environment to make the bird pluck itself.

Two birds who board here regularly are Andy Umbrella cockatoo and Max Grey. They are sole parrots who spend time alone. Neither pluck scream nor bite. I put that down to the fact that they are integrated, beloved members of their human flock.

About biting in parrots

Biting is not an insoluble problem. It is not natural behaviour for parrots. In most cases, it arises because of misunderstanding between parrot and caregiver – not innate bad behaviour from the parrot.

“Watch clips of wild parrots, or if you live near a flock of semi feral Ring Necks watch them. You will see plenty of vigorous activity in the flock or between two individuals. You might even get to see a fight over a nest site.

What you won’t see is one parrot latching onto another one and inflicting a painful bite: the about-to-be-bitten bird instead flies off.”

Wild parrots understand one another through a variety of calls and body language.

Their captive bred cousins cannot imitate this behaviour with most of their non-flighted carers, or even birds of another species that in the wild would never have met.

If your parrot has begun to bite, don’t blame her. You need to analyse the possible causes; there may be more than one. Once you are establishing credible reasons, you can start looking for solutions.

“My own experiences….My own single serious bite in nearly twenty years was exactly that. I looked into a nest box thinking the parents were farther off in the aviary. The Timneh male latched onto the bridge of nose and held on. Completely my fault.”

How overbonding can cause parrots to bite

Captive birds who become over bonded to one family member have a hard time in captivity.

In the wild the mated pair would be living with the flock but separating from them in season, finding a nest hole, laying eggs, bringing the chicks up to fledgling and then rejoining flock life before starting over again next season.

You can see how overbonding can affect a birds mating behaviour in Joanna Burger’s book, “The Parrot Who Owns Me”: She describes how Tiko, the red lored captive bred Amazon joined her and her husband at the mature age of twenty five.

The parrot lived amiably with them except in the mating season when he‘d try to entice Joanna into the nest spaces he had discovered under furniture and would attack her husband if he approached.

The Burgers understood the reasons for Tiko’s behaviour. And while he was in this hormonal state, Michael would avoid him.

Once the mating season was over, Tiko and Michael were close friends again.

How to lessen mating behaviour in your parrot

There are some precautions to take to lessen the mating behaviour of a bird living in a human flock.

These are:

1. Avoid too rich a diet
2. Give the bird less hours of daylight
3. And most the successful is instituting a training programme that gives the bird something to think about.

What to do if your parrot bites you

When a parrot bites a vicious circle can arise. The parrot bites. You draw back in alarm and show fear. Parrots are prey not predators. Sensitive as they are to both the moods of other birds and of other animals like us, if they sense that you’re afraid, they can also become afraid.

When a bird bites you:

• Stop doing whatever it was they did not like. Repeating the action encourages them to bite again.
• Don’t shout, hit or squirt with water. Don’t cover the parrot cage. None of these will stop her from biting. Indeed it may encourage it.
• If your parrot wants your hand out of the cage, take it out.
• Don’t make a lot of noise by shouting, swearing or exclaiming. That’s drama and birds like drama. Easier said than done. Those beaks are painful. If you can’t detach yourself from the beak quietly you are encouraging a repetition.
• The neatest way to stop a parrot biting is to avoid the situations where a bite occurs. Now this can have a sad outcome.
  The carer is afraid of being bitten, so leaves the parrot for too long in his cage. This can become so traumatic for the parrot that she may develop other unwanted behaviours such as plucking and screaming.

Ultimately, don’t react to her biting and keep calm. You can then move onto methods to prevent it happening again.

How to stop your parrot from biting you

Training: Punishment is not the best solution. Understanding what a parrot wants helps. Training works best when the parrot is eager for food. Not starving but interested in your treats.

A few minutes of step up training, recall training or trick training before the bird’s breakfast or in the evening if you have removed the food bowls can work wonders.

Training workshops are a good idea. However, if you cannot get to these to see good training in practice, Barbara Heidenreich’s DVDs show her using positive reinforcement techniques with ordinary pet parrots. Notice her calm demeanour and how the birds respond to her.

Reduce boredom in your parrot: Some parrots’ cage or aviary are too bare. They encourage biting behaviour.

All birds need to chew to a greater or lesser extent. Yet far too many birds have too little wood, cardboard or safely destructible items to prevent boredom and frustration.

If you own breeding birds, then this is less of an issue. Since breeding birds are rarely much handled, that they aren’t tame is less of a drawback than with parrots in the home.

You should also provide plenty of toys that will stimulate her, give her plenty of time out of her cage and make sure she’s not left alone for long periods.

Preventing birds from biting each other

An obvious way to prevent your birds from biting each other is to keep only one bird. I think that gives the bird a less enviable lifestyle since birds are flock animals.

That said a single bird who is well adjusted within its human flock can have a rewarding life. There are no hard and fast rules as to which bird will get on with another.

Gracie, my friend’s Grey adored her partner Chip’s budgie. The two would perch together with the Grey’s wing sheltering the small blue bird.

My Benni’s younger brother Kovu free flies with a female Amazon. He can be seen holding a protective wing over his smaller friend. But Ryan the owner had to rehome his Grey because Kovu started to harass him.

And remember that one swallow doesn’t make a summer. Nor does one bite produce a biter.

Beaking – when your parrot nips

Avian beaks are far more sensitive than we often realize. Watch how a Macaw will feed her tiny chick, using her enormous beak to gently place chewed up food down the baby’s throat. Once the baby fledges she will use her own beak as an extension of her sensitive claws. This can become a problem if misunderstood.