Have you ever noticed now matter how nice you are to your parrot, no matter how much yummy food
you give him, or how sweet you talk to him, that he still doesn’t seem to want you to pick him up
or pet him?
Sure you have, we all have…
I can remember back when I used to think that if I just spent some more time with my birds, and
talked nicely to them that somehow they’d magically start liking me, realize I wasn’t so scary after
all, and they’d turn into well behaved parrots for the rest of their lives.
How TRULY stupid I was to EVER think that would work!
Because parrots usually bite for one reason. They are afraid of something. They’re either afraid
of you, someone in your family, someone entering their territory or a hundred other things.
And when parrots are afraid, the only thing they can do is ‘Fight or Flight’. And if you’ve clipped
your parrots wings, he’s probably going to think he has better chances of biting something he’s
afraid of then falling to the floor ‘cuz his wings are clipped.
So when you (the scary thing) try to force your parrot to step up, by pushing down on his feet
or up on his chest and trying to pry him off his perch, is that building trust with your parrot?
If every time you open your parrots cage he runs and hides in the back corner, is that a trustbuilding experience for the bird?