Bipolar lovebird?
by Julie
(Amsterdam, the Netherlands.)
Hi! I got my lovebird about 9 months ago. She was never socialized with humans, nor handfed. I realized that after about 3 months, she was used to me. I tried the whole training thing, but after about 4 months there was no progress after her eating food i was holding between my fingers. from her perch.
She got really really aggressive at some point during training. Biting me, not just when i offered her food, but also while she was eating what i was offering her and when i was cleaning her cage or filling her food/water bowl. Not just soft nibbling either (even though, now i look back at it, it did start like that), but eventually just really hard aggressive biting. I did some research on how to stop this behavior, giving no reaction and scolding her when she did, but not in a loud voice.
It didn't change anything. She just got worse.
It got too much for me to handle eventually and i felt like there was no hope left of her ever becoming tame. I cut off the training progress after 6,5 months.
A month and a half i spent keeping out of her way as much as possible, since she seemed to seriously hate me. I let her do her own thing, but she got bored of that, and even though she had lots of toys and is perfectly healthy, started screeching and begging for attention. I ignored her, cause I know screeching is a bad thing, and started paying more attention to her again when she was quiet. Offering her food, etc.
Then, all of a sudden, about 2 weeks ago, I was offering her food, and she didn't bite. Even more surprising, I turned my head the other way for about a second, and she put one foot on my finger! I was scared it was gonna be a one time thing, but it went on like this.
For the past 2 or so weeks I've been feeding her like that, and there's been so much progress. Her biting softened and she dared to softly headbutt my fingers. She still won't sit on my hand with two feet for more than 3 seconds, though.
I felt like it was going to go alright. She's positioned next to my bed (where I usually spend my time, studying or working on my art/chatting with people on facebook/skype), so she's a part of everything I do, and I spend multiple times a day feeding her from my hand for 10-15 minutes a time.
But the last few days it got worse again. She's biting me harder and harder again, even if I don't react. I know not to move my fingers while she's sitting on my hand, cause she's scared of any movement of them when she's close to them. These past 2 days, she's been biting my fingers out of literally nowhere, though. There was no movement, she got no reaction, she had food right in front of her, and toys to chew on, but she resorted to biting my fingers/hand.
Then today, while she was sitting on my hand, she went absolutely wild. She didn't even pay any attention to the food anymore (while it's her favorite and she never gets enough of it), just stood on my hand with one foot, other holding on to a bar of her cage, and just..bit me. No screaming or anything, she was completely silent. I didn't react at all, just calmly talked to her, until she jammed the (very sharp) tip of her beak in the area just above my fingernail and bit down on it like she's never done before. And I've had her bad bites before.
It hurt so bad that I pulled my hand back. I didn't scream, or anyting of the like, maybe just sort of went "MMHHMMH" while my mouth shut. I kept quiet for as much as I could. I pulled my hand back, and told her (calmly) not to do that anymore. I looked at my hand 5 seconds later and saw that my finger was bleeding, really bad. She's not even a year old, about 10 months, and she's never ever bit me till I bled. I was confused, upset, cried a bit because it was really frustrating to have your bird be more aggressive than ever before even though you've been making so much progress, and I've left her alone since then. Just changed her water about an hour later.
So that's my story. Does anyone, PLEASE, have advice for me? Am I not training her right? Should I be more consistent? Look at her angrier? Ignore her for a day when she does this, or try again a few hours later? Please answer this question