Starting Over Again

[sobkowich]

It's been a while since I posted on here, as things seemed to have stabilized themselves with myself and my young peachface, Suzie.

When I started leaving the cage open, she suddenly discovered that she loved sitting on top of my computer monitor, and would take seeds from my hand, and even from my girlfriends hand also, something that would be totally unacceptable prior.

The problem, is that when I try to change her feed, when she's in the cage now, is it sparks an outright, full blown attack.

How can I tell if she trusts me, or is attacking out of fear or just being territorial? How can I convince her that I mean her no harm, she still won't step up onto anything but a perch, and if anything else comes towards her, she attacks it, even if I am holding open the cage door or something she leads with her open beak and clamps down when ever she gets hold of anything flesh-like.

does anyone have any advice for building the trust? It's tricky because she won't let me try anything except giving her a treat, and even then, she will usually try to bite.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[linda040899]

Suzie actually trusts you or she wouldn't want to be near you, let alone give her treats. You're running into the issue of territory and the fact that she doesn't like hands. Her cage is HER home and your hand is an intruder. What do YOU do if a stranger just walks into your home????? Try changing food/water dishes and cleaning her cage when she's not in it.

If you've trained her to step up onto a perch and she's OK with that, be consistent. There are a lot of birds that don't like hands and Suzie happens to be one of them. It's highly doubtful that view is going to change so you have to respect her and work around it.

[Pips mom]

Yup, it's a territorial thing....it's instinctive and probably not something that's going to change too much. With my Rudy, he's grown a trust with me and allows hands into his cage just fine, BUT.....put a piece of millet in there and he would always lunge at you! something about that millet! :rotfl He's since stopped doing this now, so maybe she will stop eventually on her own, or maybe she'll just do this when she's hormonal....time will tell, but try to understand that this is just a lovebird being a lovebird, and not as some horrible thing that you have to change in her, and it has nothing to do with her trust in you. People are sometimes quick to see things like this as something that has to be changed by training or whatever, thinking this animal is like a dog or cat, but this is a bird, and birds are very different and not domesticated like dogs or cats. So much of what they do is just instictive. Having a bird means having to be tough sometimes to a few bites....even my most loving, tame bird has bitten me.....bad! It's hard to not take it the wrong way and not let it hurt my feelings, but I have to realize that this is just her being a bird and that she doesn't mean to hurt me, that plus if you get to really know the bird, you can learn to see what's causing it and try to avoid and work around it to prevent the dreaded bite!! Good luck, and stay strong, ok?! them bites can really hurt sometimes!