Many times, Herbie will be sitting on my shoulder and he’ll want kisses so he’ll grab my ear and tug. I turn my head and give him kisses for a few seconds. Then when I turn my head straight I can see from my peripheral vision that he leans his head forward expecting my lips to be coming for him again to give him more kisses. When he sees that the lips aren’t coming to him, he’ll grab my ear again and tug for more kisses. By then I’ll usually just have him step up on my index finger and have him face me and inundate him with lovin’s. This bring up another sharp beaky situation. Since a bird’s beak has a rather large blood supply and they use their beaky for preening and social interaction, the beak is a bird’s mouth. They recognize that our mouth is our social connection point as is our hands and fingers. A bird will revel being showered in kisses. Just like when something is so cute you want to squeeze it so hard… birds get overzealous in birdie kisses and since part of their societal interaction is preening, since we’re part of the flock they will attempt to do that too. They’ll take our lip and grab it and clamp down on it. Don’t let lovebirds fool you. Just because they are small, they can bite pretty hard whether out of anger and fear or love. So I have found a way to get around this.
Purse yer lips & they can’t getcha
If you’re kissing your bird, there is no reason to have your lips exposed. When they’re babies this is fine because they are still developing their reactions to the world around them. But as your bird gets older he will start to become more confident and begin kissing back and one day… CHOMP! Which is kind of like when your toddler gives you a good night kiss and ends up head butting you… So since you’ve already established and your bird understands that kisses are your societal preening. But you can accomplish the exact same thing by pursing your lips.
This way, since lovebirds and most parrots are hook bills, in order for them to open their mouths to chomp down on your lips they have to tilt their heads back. Pursing your lips makes them rather “level” vertically so that it doesn’t give your bird a place to grab on to or for them to take their top beak and push your top lip up, move forward while simultaneously tilting their head back and then CHOMP! They’re sneaky and will work that in there when you least expect it. You can also tilt your head down. This will still have your lips making contact but with your head tilted down there is no physical way that they can maneuver their body down yet tilt their head back far enough to work their beak in there to chomp. Thus saving a mark on your lip in the shape of a bird beak and always, of course, right before family pictures or a wedding or something. Oh… the things we do for our birds.
Mostly it doesn’t really hurt but any time you can prevent your bird from accessing unwanted possible germs its good to aim for that goal. You NEVER ever want your bird to start digging in your mouth. They’re not the shrimp from Finding Nemo. Your mouth harbors tons of bacteria that do nothing beneficial for your bird. So when it comes to your bird and contact… its best to keep your mouth shut.
Bruised beaky eating mango
Holly’s bruised beaky
Birds’ beaks have a major blood supply, just like our nails and hair do. Beakys can become bruised. If this happens it may become painful to eat. Holly injured her beak and she could only eat the mangos for a few days after the injury. The story can be found in the “Our Vet Stories” Chapter.