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Bipolar Bird!


jgerardo

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Luna is a good bird overall. But he constantly changes his relationships with my family. By order of liking here is the breakdown. 1) Me 2) my mother 3) my sister and 4) he just hates my dad haha :P Even though he overall trusts my family he sometimes changes his mind about them. One moment he will be a total sweet heart with them stepping up nicely want to be scratched on the head. But other times he will lunge and bite them (not hard but leaves a mark). is he bipolar lol? He hardly acts like that with me but I need to correct that behavior.

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Greys for the most part have a favored person. That is you. They remain fairly consistent in all interactions with that person. All other people will receive different privileges based upon how well the grey likes them, if it feels like a scratch, wants to step up or interact with them at all that point in time. When people are visiting and interacting with you and your grey, there are many dynamics at play. The grey may feel happy at first to see them and wish to interact. Your grey may start feeling like a person is taking the majority of your attention and become jealous and display unfriendly behavior at that time. There are times a grey just does not wish to be bothered with interaction and wants to sit and chill. It is things like this that cause the different responses you see your guests getting from your grey at different times. It is completely normal in my opinion. If you have the opportunity and time, it is really a good idea to try and teach your family and friends a little about grey body language so they can recognize when your grey is accepting of and wanting up close interaction and when he is clearly showing through body language he is not interested at the time.

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As I read your last sentence, I smiled. You are right that you need to diminish that behavior but it is the humans that will be trained, as Dan said, to read Luna's body language and prevent the bites before they start. You will still need to let Luna know it is unacceptable, but the main advice given to us from the beginning of our relationship with Gil has been the best way to prevent bites is to learn the body language of our grey and not to push them. One thing that stuck with me is the explanation that a grey is very subtle. If their subtle communication (eye pinnning, moving away, trembling chest, puffed up feathers, or other posture) doesn't yield the result they want they will resort to a bite. Then, if a bite is effective, that will become the "goto" communication device. He may have chosen you as being the most easily trained and you are more tuned in to his subtle clues. Watch and keep track of the situations that lead to a nip and figure out if he is overstimulated by too many people in the room or if he is giving clues that are not being noticed by other family members. Our situation is opposite, "my" little Timneh is more likely to let others give her a scratch and she has decided I am generally not to be trusted with such closeness.

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jgerardo... No, greys are NOT bipolarar, but they sure seem to be! LOL! They tend to if exposed to the entire family, get confused where their allegiance should be. That was my goal when we first got her. A decade later, Sophie loves all of us for different reasons. I think I got the " short straw"... I am the one who feeds her, keeps her safe. Kids are the " fun ones". Nancy

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  • 4 weeks later...

You're right on the money. You are his favourite, so you can get away with much others can't. Your next job is to train the other humans! Explain the favorite person thing to them, and give them a lesson on body language. There's a sticky in the training forum that explains it well.

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