# My Bird is INSANE!! Help!



## HanaPanda (Nov 18, 2008)

Ok, Sonny is a 1 year old female. 

She can be really nice, snuggling up to my face and rubbing her head against my cheek,then suddely she starts to attack the **** out of my face and hiss. then she goes back to how she was before, this happens every few minutes.


Or she is sat on the Cage or my shoulder and she will lean forward with her wings outstreched, flapping them and hissing. Sometimes she flies off and sometims she stays where she is.

Its odd, she is like two different birds! One minute she is fine the next she is insane!

Can anyone tell me why this happens and how to stop it?


----------



## sweetrsue (Jul 8, 2008)

I don't know exactly what the situation is but I know my birds get moody when I'm giving them a scratch and I don't do it just right. They will be bowing their head one minute and giving me what for the next. But it's more like a mock attach, a lot of noise and verbal threats. I found this in an old thread. I hope it's helpful.


"If your parrot will let others pet her but bites after a few minutes, this means that people are trying to pet her for too long a period. The pet owner’s job is to figure out how long is too long. If you time the interactions, you will get a feel for your bird’s tolerance. Once you understand that, you can remove her from the situation before she loses patience and lashes out. If she accepts being stroked for 10 minutes, then move her away after five to seven minutes. You will begin to have no further problem with her biting those who pet her. Her patience will increase once she no longer feels pressured.

If you observe your parrot closely, you will find that she warns of an impending bite with body language that humans often do not understand. Despite their proclivity for noisy interaction, parrots communicate mostly through subtle changes in body posture and feather position. If we are oblivious, we tend to blunder along, being incredibly rude from the parrot’s point of view. As far as they are concerned, they are being perfectly clear with their feelings. Unable to know that we do not understand what they are telling us, they likely perceive humans as ignorant. 



If your parrot is not hurting you when she bites you, she is telling you something in a polite and gentle fashion. A nip is more of a pinch. There is discomfort involved, but it isn’t a bite. In other words, she is not nipping just because she is using her beak. That is tantamount to assuming that hands are only used to damage, no matter how gentle their touch.


Do not try to pet your bird if she screams and bites. Unfortunately, most people are accustomed to dogs that always seem to enjoy petting. Many people perceive parrots as dogs with feathers, so they assume there is something wrong with a parrot if it doesn’t want to be petted. This is an erroneous conclusion. Like humans, parrots have opinions about what is permitted with their bodies, and they — like us — have the right to enforce their beliefs.


----------



## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

The hissing/complaining attack is cockatiel language for "stop preening/petting!" They do it to each other too, and it's a sign that (a) the other one has done something "wrong" OR (b) the bird is nervous about something and wants to pay attention to what's going on instead of being distracted by lovely sensations.

The next few times this happens, try to remember what happened just before the hissy fit. I used to think that Vlad was attacking me irrationally during petting sessions, but once I started paying attention I realized that it was happening whenever another bird approached and Vlad was nervous that the other bird might jealously attack him. The other most common cause was rubbing a pin feather the wrong way (ouch!) and very rarely, that the bird was simply tired of being petted. 

However, you didn't actually say that you were petting the bird. If she's rubbing her head on your neck while you sit there with your hands in your lap, she might be trying to tell you that it's time to return the favor and give her some head scritches!


----------

