agreesion

Question
Hi,
 We've had our Sun Conure for almost a year, so he's around 4 now. We got him from someone who got him when he was a baby. He's used to us & sounds around our home. In fact he's almost a watch bird. I'm here alone all day & if someone parks in the drive way he starts squatting & I know someone is coming. Enough of that, what can we do to get him to not attack his water bowl,,the bigger one that he drinks & also takes a bath in. I change the water as soon as he is through with his bath. He can get his beak on the metal of the bowl & bang it up & down real hard in the round rubber thing that it sits in. Nothing has changed around here lately at all. Same old, same old. About 2 mo. ago he had his wings & nails clipped & the girl at the vet said she cut one of his nails too much. The Bird Vet was not there & we were upset that he didn't do this. Anyway when we got Tweety home we could tell he was a bit traumatized & we understood that. We were upset too. We like that vet & he's the only bird vet around. Anyway that was 2 mo. ago & he finally got sort of better but he won't let either of us get him on our finger or our hand or our shoulder. It's very upsetting. Nothings happened to him that I know & he hasn't been moved & no company since Christmas. The only thing that I can think of is a few days before he started doing this, when I put the bowl in he always stays at the door of his cage & won't move so he ducks down when I put his bowl back & I got my arm around & put his bowl in the holder. When I was putting it in, he kind of squawked. So I don't know if he got hurt a little. But that was maybe a week before he started this behavior. 1st time he did it we kind of laughed, even though his bowl was filled & us & cage got soaked. So we took it out. He has another small bowl of water by his door, he likes to sit there & eat, if we are in the room, we leave his cage door open until bed time & he never comes out if we are not around, as soon as we are he comes out,so he likes to dunk a lot of his food & he just bends down & dunks. He started trying to take a bath in it & of course he couldn't, I ran & put water in the big bowl & put in the cage. He did get in & take his bath. But after that he started banging his water bowl again real hard up & down. We are trying everything we can to be calm around him & from this really great book we got, it explains to know why a parrot does what he does. Emotions, companions, anyway it didn't cover anything about behavior in the home like what he's doing or how to get him on your finger etc. or stop bitting lol. It was more of how to do his feeding, like weighing it etc. we & learning how parrots behave in the wild. we learned a lot from that. But I tried putting his bowl in there empty & he started banging it up & down real hard again, so I took it out.
 If you have any idea why he might be doing this, I hope you can, if not thanks for replying back if you do.
 Sincerely,
      Mary R.

Answer
Hi Mary,

I would recommend switching his dish to something he can't bang up and down. Sometimes my conure gets really in to attacking toys with bells. Especially if the dish is metal and shiny... that it makes it all the more interesting- and now that he has figured out how to make so much noise and everything- it is even better. :)

Here are some articles on biting and aggression that will hopefully help you with your little Sun:

http://www.companionparrot.com/agression-and-biting.htm

http://www.parrothouse.com/jdoss1.html

http://www.quakerville.com/qic/q_biting.asp

http://www.parrothouse.com/sf3.html

http://www.parrothouse.com/pamelaclark/secondhand.html

I hope this all helps- and sorry it took me a few days to get back to you.

-Maggie