My 6-year-old Senegal is normally a very sweet and docile critter. However, when her wing feathers grow out to the point where she can get some "lift" and fly a little bit, she becomes more aggressive, growling and nipping often. It's almost as if she is telling me, "Ha-ha! I can fly away from you now and you can't catch me, so I can do whatever I want!" Why does she do this?

-- Judy E. Corcoran, Everett, Wash.

GOOD question! One of my first parrots, a maroon-belly conure, did this exact thing. When she was clipped I could handle her with no problem. But when she was flighted she would bite me in a second if I tried to pick her up. It is almost as if they know they don't need you to give them a ride anymore! What I think actually happens is a result of reinforcement. Consider this: your bird with clipped wings does not want to step onto your finger, so you ask again and maybe apply a bit of pressure to its chest. It nips, not hard, and you decide that it has to step up now so you persevere and try again until it steps up. The bird learns that the action of nipping did not change anything and it still had to step up regardless of what it wanted to do, so next time it steps up right away. (This, by the way is what creates "learned helplessness," which we've covered here before.) In scenario two, the bird is flighted so when you get nipped and continue to push the bird, it simply flies away. It just figured out how to get what it wanted on its own. It did not want to step up so it gave you a little nip and then flew up to the curtain rod where you'll leave it alone or at least have to spend the next 10 minutes finding a stool so you can reach it!

So in reality, I don't think it has anything to do with "I don’t need you anymore!" but more with the bird exercising free will and choosing not to comply with what you wanted because there was nothing to keep it from doing so. Your best route of dealing with this problem is not to keep the bird clipped continuously (although I do recommend that all pet birds who are not confined to cages be clipped for their own safety) but to teach the bird that stepping up whenever you ask it to is a good and fun thing to do. It's all about positive reinforcement: reward her for doing what you want with a treat or scratch on the head or whatever it is she likes, and ignore the bad behavior. This helps to build a strong relationship based on trust and will earn you fewer nips in the future!

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