Hi-

I've had my 2 male budgies for about 5 years now, they're not completely tame as they usually just chill with eachother and fly around the house but they'll gladly step up on your finger and are generally comfortable around people. However, one of them has semi-recently (the last year) taken up biting, and it's only getting worse. Whenever I put my hand in their cage, he gets really excited and starts crazy head-bobbing and doing the whole spit-food-into-the-other-one's-mouth thing - however, this always leads to him biting and latching on for dear life to you finger if you stay around him too much (while he continues to be extremely overexcited). It used to be that he'd just bite hard every once in a while after a few harmless nibbles of your finger, but it's gotten to the point where he'll actually lunge at your finger to bite. And.. it's rather painful. I'm not sure what happened, as when I used to clip their wings, his attempts to bite were absolutely painless and he never used to bite at all except for when he had to be held for these wing clipping sessions. I'm not sure what's going on here or how to avoid it, if possible.. any help would be much appreciated!

Hi Concreteandwater! to the forum. It's nice to see another North American here. Seems like a lot of Canadians have been joining lately

 

I'm no expert, but you'll probably have to wait a while for an answer from the Aussies. I think it's around midnight there, and they are probably all off celebrating New Year's Eve. (At least I hope they have better things to do tonight than haunt the internet! )

 

It's around 9am here, and I assume Ontario is either EST or Central time? Indiana used to be split to central, but now only corners of it are.

 

I think Birdluv is Canadian, and she seems to know a lot about hand taming. Maybe she will come on and have some advice for you. Anyway, you should look in the faqs section, or look up topics about hand taming. I know there is a hand taming topic by Elly.

 

My guess is that he is jealous, and is trying to keep you away from the other bird, who he sees as his mate.

 

I'm sure others will have better answers for you.

When they do that type of behavior they are flirting with you and going through their hormonal stage of the "month" so to speak. You can calm this behavior down by making sure the cage is covered 10-12 hours and you can add on a couple more hours for a week to calm the hormones down. Do take it as a compliment.