Avoid

Most importantly you must avoid situations in which you may be bitten. Biting is self reinforcing behavior. The more often it happens, the more this behavior will be established in your animal. So please pay attention and avoid such situations. Remember to perform an ABC-Analysis for aggression or biting incidents. That way you may understand more clearly what the triggers are and allows you to avoid them, if possible.

Ignore

If nevertheless your bird manages to bite or attack you, you must by all means avoid reacting to this, as your reaction would likely be reinforcing. I know that this is easier said than done, as being bitten really hurts. But it is important! As parrots are very adept readers of body language, your best bet is to turn your back to him immediately without a comment and leave the room. You do not want him to observe the changes in your pupils, facial expression, breathing, etc. And you definitely do not want to yell at or admonish him. This too could serve as reinforcement to him.
If your parrot was perched on you at the time of biting and is flighted, shake him off first. If he isn’t flighted, immediately put him down without looking at him and leave the room. Do not walk over to his cage or play stand first. Your behaviour must be immediate to avoid unwanted reinforcement.
Please do keep in mind that inability to fly is often a cause for biting, as the bird does not have the option of flying away to avoid unwanted attention. Restore his ability to fly and usually the aggression seizes by itself.

Replace

More effective than simply ignoring unwanted behavior is to replace it with a mutually exclusive behavior. This makes it impossible for your parrot to show the unwanted behavior at the same time.
If your animal for example attacks you when you try to swap his feedbowls, you could teach him to ring a little bell when you approach his cage or to go and sit on a particular perch. It is impossible for him to attack you at the same time.

Simulate the rainy season

If your bird shows aggression, due to being breedy, it often helps to simulate a rainy season. Simply shower him thoroughly at least three times a day for approximately three weeks. This simulates a rainy season. Once it is over, the aggressive behavior often disappears by itself. Also, the whole business of showering, drying, grooming keeps you bird busy and uses up quite a bit of energy which may really help with aggression behaviour.
Please do pay attention that there is enough time left after the last shower that your bird can dry completely before bed time.

Aggression plays

Some parrots have a lot of excess energy and need to work it off. Afterwards they are as sweet as apple pie again. Unfortunately, in captivity there are not so much opportunities for parrots to get rid of energy. No flights that last many kilometers, no flock to play with, no trees to shred, food to seek or young to rear. I have found that aggression play helps parrots to get rid of excess energy. For this you have a designated “enemy”. Depending on the size of your parrot, this may be a stuffed animal, a small pillow or similar. With that you have play fights with your parrot. The rule is, he may completely total the enemy, but he may not attack you. These play fights can actually be a lot of fun for both of you, and quite frequently I find myself equally out of breath afterwards as whichever parrot I am playing with.

This is just a quick overview of the various measures you could take to approach aggression problems. More information regarding training is available in my clicker training book. You will find that the more you train with your parrot, the better your relationship becomes and the better his mind is kept busy. Both help to solve any number of behavioral problems including aggression.

Please come and visit us in our facebook group for further discussion.

Ann.

How is behavior formed?

Your parrot’s behavior develops through many different factors right from the time of hatching. These factors may be the form of rearing, environment, keeping conditions and the way he is treated. The bird will continuously learn new behaviors as a response to changes in his life. Each change will trigger a behavior. This behavior is reinforced, if showing it was worthwhile to your parrot.
In many cases the bird owner’s reaction to a new behaviour is reinforcing to his bird. For example the bird gets spooked by something and screams. The owner tries to “calm” him down by talking gently to him and maybe even giving him a treat. Thus, the bird will learn that screaming is worthwhile. It gives him his owner’s attention and a treat. Even worse in this example, the bird being scared is also likely to be reinforced by the owner’s reaction. Thus he may end up with a phobic, screaming bird. Not the kind of feathered companion one would wish for, is it?

How can I change behavior?

There are basically two means to get rid of a behavior

1. Avoid anything that triggers the behavior
2. Avoid reinforcing the behavior

Depending on the behavior we wish to change, we must avoid the trigger or reinforcer of the behavior, ideally both. In our example about the phobic, screaming parrot this would be avoiding anything that could spook the bird and completely ignoring his reaction. However, if for example the bird was spooked by another bird flying by the window, this would be really difficult to avoid. In that case we could only work with avoiding the reinforcement of the behavior.
If the behavior has already been firmly learned, the trigger is not that relevant anymore. In that case too your focus must be to avoid the behavior being worthwhile to your bird.

A completely different example is breeding behavior. Not rewarding this behavior is something that is impossible to do. After all the bird does not start to breed, because we give her attention or a treat. We do not have any control whatsoever over the rewards of breeding behaviour. In this case, our best approach is to completely avoid any triggers. Many birds will not get into breeding behaviour, if they do not have any nesting sites available. No nest boxes, obviously, but also not drawers, snugglies etc. Also shortened daylight hours and loads of activity may help to alleviate breeding behavior in parrots.

It is important, to address problem behavior, as early as possible. It is much easier to alleviate such behavior in its early stages, before it has become firmly established. Remember also that all sudden behavior changes may be indicators of medical problems. Thus the first step in any behavior therapy is without exception to take you bird to an experienced avian vet.

How to carry out an ABC-analysis – The problem journal

Triggers and rewards of behaviors can of course only be avoided, once they have been identified. As real life situations are usually complex, it may be difficult to identify exactly what the triggers and rewards for a behavior are. This is where a problem behavior journal comes in really handy. By collecting information regularly, you get into a position where patterns become obvious that you would simply not be able to see in a day to day situation. Yes, it is tedious to keep a journal and it requires discipline. But, hey, you are trying to solve a problem and this tool will help you. Written notes tend to be more objective than your memory which tends to be selective. It also doesn’t change. A journal will also help you to collect information in the required detail, as you are addressing each item on the list. A detailed problem journal will also help to differentiate between similar, yet distinct behaviors. A bite is not a bite is not a bite. I hope I could convince you that in the end it really is worth the effort of keeping such a journal. 

How do you go about it?

Note into your problem journal for each situation in which the behavior occurs the details pertaining to it with respect to the “A”, “B” and “C” aspects of the analysis.

Following this, your problem journal could look something like this:

Record all such situations into your problem journal for a few days or however long it takes. This way you can for example find out, if Coco only screams when Dad laughs, or if he screams regardless of who is laughing. You can find out whether he only screams when he is alone with everyone else being in another room. You would also come to understand, if Coco only screams when you have visitors, etc.
With this kind of detailed knowledge about a behavior, it is so much easier to come up with an appropriate treatment.

Enjoy observing.

Ann.

Ps. Here’s more on how to get help once you have completed your ABC-analysis.