Not aggressive but very bad tempered!

[meeper]

My little bird loves me, she squeaks like mad for me to see her in the morning, and when she is out of the cage she likes nothing better than flying onto me and climbing about. She is very tame and will always step onto my finger.

But she is sooooo stroppy! When she is on my finger she will make 'growling' noises every now and then and 'attack' my hand, not in a violent way, she will kind of nibble at it for a second. Then she will hiss at me and fan her tail out, and then sit there quite happily until she decides to do it again a few minutes later...
Often I will walk into the room and she gives me the most evil look possible, once she tried to get at me and threw her head forward so hard she overbalanced and fell off her perch, of course the next second she is happily sat on my shoulder.

I just can't work her out, anyone else have a bad tempered bird like this?

[Pipers Mom]

How old is your bird? Is she a single bird? Has she ever laid any eggs? The reason I'm asking the questions it may sound like her hormones are enraged. Try limiting her hours of daylight. Cover her up earlier than normal to help her hormones calm down. There are other threads on the forums about hens and hormones. You will find many other suggestions and guidance on dealing with hormonal behavior.

[meeper]

Thanks for the reply.

She is not on her own, i also have a male cockatiel - Muffin - who is madly in love with her and spends all day singing to her and displaying his wings in a heart-shape. They get on pretty well, they squabble but never actually fight and spend most of their time flying around together from one place to another, but i get the impression that she is not interested in anything more than 'friendship'

She is about 3 years old now, whereas Muffin is a very old bird judging by his condition - we found him in the garden one day - and they have been sharing the cage for about 2.5 years so they are well used to each other. She has never lain any eggs.
I will try the 'covering up' for a while, although it is quite difficult as i work shifts and have never tried covering the cage before, i just leave it to the natural daylight to determine when they go to bed...

[Marrie]

Hmm. When my tiel does the biting my hand / fanning tail out thing, it usually turns into erm, uh, "loving" my hand if he can reach more than my finger (like if he's sitting on my flat hand), mine will bite me to let me know he's "ready", since I have no interest in my hand being my birds mate, I put him on his rubby toy when he does it. But, it does sound like maybe her hormones are the cause of the problems. With a female you want to discourage it, since you don't want eggs. You can buy a little light on a timer, leave the curtains pulled and let the timer do the work of a cover if you can't be at home to cover/uncover them.

As for trying to get you when in the cage, hens can become cage territorial when their hormones spike, since it is their "nest".

Other things to do are try not to keep a lot of excess food (IE: food for a day, not bowl filled and food for a few days), limit her shredder toys and dark places she can get into, etc. You want to try to discourage her hormones as much as possible.

Have you noticed her shredding/chewing up anything more than normal? Paper, etc?

[Birdmanca]

Really does not sound so bad. Mostly has fun being with you. Overall friendly and tame. Could just be her way of having some fun. Would not worry about it, just enjoy the bird's company.

[meeper]

Yeah, i guess you are right, sometimes i wish she would just calm down though as i don't get a moments peace when she is out of the cage, and i hate to leave her shut in except at night. Of course, what makes it worse is that not only does she want to spend all her time being on me and 'telling me off', but lover boy has to be with her, singing in my ear at full volume

[Marrie]

it'll be hard to train her at this point, but you can teach them to play on their own by setting a schedule for them and sticking to it and making them stick to it as well - tiels can become very clingy if you let them, but if you want her to play on her own, get her a playgym and use clicker/positive reinforcement training to teach her to stay there to play a certain time during the day. My tiel used to be as bad about having to be on me _all_ the time, so I started making him have an hour to himself every day and now he'll forage around the house, or eat his food on his cage, or floor forage etc and let me have some time without birdy on the shoulder.

[Kushala Daora]

She sounds unhappy about something there... Do you move your hand too much when she's on your hand? My tiel hisses at my finger sometimes when I want to scritch her. But doesn't do this after a few minutes. And this repeats sometimes too.

[meeper]

No, i will be sat perfectly still and she will just do it, then look at me. few minutes later it happens again! She doesn't like to be touched - certainly won't let me scratch her head or anything, but just loves being sat or climbing around on me...