DON’T HIT YOUR BIRD OR “FLICK” ITS BEAK! Birds are very fragile, like eggs. Birds have a lot of feathers covering them and they look bigger than they actually are. Their necks are very small and flicking their beak can break their necks. We found out the hard way that severe negative reinforcement doesn’t work very well. Spraying them or chasing them with a spoon when they’re bad make them afraid but it doesn’t curb behavior. However, redirection does work. Birds have the intelligence of a human toddler. Look into training your birds. Clicker training usually yields pretty good results. You can teach your bird to wave, turn around, play dead, etc. You can even train your birds to poop on command (we did). You can even train them that if they have to go then they fly to their cage, poop and fly back to where they were before. Thus eliminating a lot of cleaning. Even so, buy lots of cheap tissue in bulk. You’ll probably have a box in each room of your house J Trust me.
As for negative reinforcement, we did the water spray at Holly when she would bite us if she was in the cage trying to curb it. We didn’t understand that she as a female will protect her home at any cost, unlike Herbie. We now respect her territory and coax her out if we need to do something in here cage. The Ove-Glove terrifies her so we put that on and she flies out screeching. Then we can do whatever needs to be done, be it cleaning or checking on the babies.
An Ove-Glove is also a good idea to have if you need to grab your bird out of the cage for whatever reason, say a fire and don’t have time to coax but yet don’t want to get bitten. Also, what we learned is that even though she still hunches down and fluffs out in a defensive posture if we get close and put our hand near the door, we now are able to redirect her bite into a playful “pinch yer beaky” game. Birds can bite lengthwise fingers easily but its hard to bite a spot between your pinched 2nd knuckle of your index finger and the tip of your thumb (like what you would use to pinch someone with). If she does manage to grab it then its easy to bend at the wrist and point down to avoid contact. And if she happened to get you then pinched skin doesn’t hurt as bad. Kind of like the nurse will pinch your skin before giving you a shot. Use positive reinforcement and understand that these birds are their own entity and sometimes just want to be left alone and/or just don’t want to do certain things. Respect their space, their individuality and their independence.