unsocialible and cage-a-holic

Question
We got Bloke about 8 months ago from a lady, who couldn't handle him anymore. He hates being out of his cage. And will not go to anyone. He will get on a perch stick for us. But he bites if we try with our hand. We till him "No" in a strong, but gentle voice. Now he has started to hiss at us, when we get near his cage. We leave the cage open and he won't come out. When we take him out, he runs straight for our dinning table chairs and perches there for a while. Then he goes back to his cage. When we remove the cage, he stands where the cage was and screams. When we're not at home we place him in front of the T.V. and he likes to watch the Animal Channel. When we turn it he screams. His fav. thing to do is whistle back and forth with us. We've only been able to gave him a few baths(and it takes 2 of us.) And I know he needs one. His skin is starting to irritate him and his starting to pull at his fathers. Any suggestions? P.S. We have 4 children, that pays alot of attention to him (ages 7-14). Thanks.

Answer
Dear Christie,
thank you for your question.
Is Bloke a parakeet? From your description he sound more like a big parrot, a cockatoo maybe? I have only theoratical knowledge about parrots, so you might want to ask another expert here, for example Maggie:
http://www.allexperts.com/displayExpert.asp?Expert=41210

I recommend joinging the Click Bird list in any case because clicker training can solve a lot of behavioral problems and the people on that mailing list are very helpful and knowledgeable.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bird-Click/
This will help with the screaming, the aggression, the bathing and probably with the cage problem. It will take time, but it works very well.
Try turning on your vacuum cleaner and offering a bath tub, this often works with parrots, probably because the noise reminds them of rain and gets them to show bathing behaviour.
If he is a big parrot, at least some of his problems may be caused by sexual maturity, this causes big changes in the behaviour of the bird - they may turn from cuddly bird into screaming, biting monsters. But this can be solved with patience and a lot of attention. The very best thing is of course a mate, although this is difficult because parrots like to choose their partner and human-raised parrots often don't know that they are parrots. Nevertheless, I can only recommend trying to get Bloke a partner.
I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer