Explaining why any particular bird bites without personally being there to witness its daily routine, is pretty much impossible.

Instead, I will give a crash course in behavioral adaptation and instict.

INSTINCT: This is base of all things in the animal world. From the tiniest to the largest, you and I are included. They include our ability to eat, go to the bathroom, sleep, reproduce, and survive.

Let us discuss reproduction for a moment. When many animals are born, they lack the ability to find their own food, and that is where nurturing by the parent comes into play. That aside, If you were dropped onto an island at the age of 3, with a fence around it, with no interferance from the world outside, and you had 2 things, food/water supply and a same age member of the opposite sex, you would reproduce without anyone ever telling you how.

ADAPTATION and EVOLUTION: This is the part where things become very tricky. Adaptation is the key to survival, so behavior comes into play through adaptation. This is the thing that, we as humans, have affected in the animal kingdom, and we have affected it a great deal.

• Eyes Out Front: Most predators have their eyes out in front, so that that they can lock on to it's prey and see it very clearly, when running, flying, swimming, etc... In prey animals, the eyes are to to the sides, to gather a much larger peripheral of sight. Have a look at your bird and look into the mirror. When you stare at a bird with both eyes, that bird has to get past millions of years of evolution, telling it you are going to eat it.
• Flock Animal: Most birds are natural flock animals. They travel in flocks for protection. A hundred eyes looking for movement in the bushes next to that pile of seeds is much better than one set. So when you single a bird out and put it into a cage alone, it WILL feel a sense of insecurity. This also comes into play when you place 2 same sex birds in a cage and they abandon your affection.
• Dependence: This is the most important thing of all. I can go on for days about this. Birds DO NOT have the ability to reason. No matter how good the food you give them, they will not comply to dependence for food. When you give them food and water in their bowl every day, they simply see this as the natural order of things, and for some reason, when you pop up sometimes, there is food in their bowls. They don't reason and figure out you give it to them. They adapt to memory, an order of things playing out. Let me give you the best example. At public lakes, like Greers Ferry in Arkansas, the following was observed. People come to the docks, buy the fish food, throw it into the water, and a fish comes to the top and eats it. The Gulls, of course, over a long period of time, watched all of this and took it in. It has been photographed and documented that the older birds will now steal a piece of food from the water immediately after someone throws it in, take it to a stump sticking out of the water, and throw it in and wait........ Until a fish comes to the top, then swooh! Gull has a tasty meal. This bird just went fishing. Not because it figured out that if you throw it in, the fish will come up. All the bird saw for years was food-fish, food-fish, food-fish etc... The bird does not pass the knowledge on to it's young. It has not learned a trick. It has simply placed this combination into the natural order of things.

So, here is the problem that you are faced with. For whatever reason, your bird is biting you because it has placed the bite into adaptation survival and the natural order of things. Bite-ouch!, bite-ouch!, or maybe bite-go away, bite-go away, only you can know the answer to that.

The order MUST be changed, or the biting will not only continue, but the longer it is enforced, the more adapted the bird becomes to its presence.

IMPORTANT: The bite zone is an area in front, from its beak to its lower chest. Trying to step up a bird in the bite zone is a bad idea.

OK now lets stop that biting and make the bird your friend again!

Please follow these guidelines first:

1. Remove all other animals, birds included from the work areas.
2. Take the bird from it's cage (gloves?) and move it to a room where the cage is not seen.
3. Take away the birds flight license, and cut the flight feathers. Pet birds are a hazard to themselves, and you, if allowed to fly.
4. Stick to your original plan, and never deviate, even after the bird stops biting.

Now, you have a flightless bird in an unfarmiliar place. This alone may make your bird see things differently, so give it a shot but where some gloves! If you jerk away from a bite now, it could only enforce bad behavior.

Lets try a couple of different methods and you can choose one that works best.

First, good hand bad hand. Wearing gloves on both hands, and the bird sitting on a chair back or something similar, move your left hand slightly unsteadily, to just out of reach in the bite zone while moving your right hand very slowly up beneath the bird and slightly in front to the step up position. Make sure the bird keeps its attention on the bad hand. Now slowly, with the bad hand, ease it almost into reach, while moving the right slowly to the top of the feet. If the bird attempts to bite the right hand, distract it with the left. Do not jerk the right hand away under any circumstances, heheh, this might be your behavior modification as well.

When the bird steps up onto the right hand, say step up! and give it some good bird praise. Once on the hand, if the bird attempts to bite, continue to distract it with a shaky left hand.

Every time the bird attepts to bite, go with the bad hand, and eventually the bird will recognize that in nature, the events played out are "bite-shaky scary thing, bite-shaky scary thing ". The action becomes enforced every time you do it, and the bird adapts to the event, and keeps them bound together.

The second method is the destabilization method. It seems to oly work once the bird is in hand and works like this: When the bird attempts to bite, slightly shake hand that the bird is peched on. The bird is UNABLE to fly since we cut the flight feathers so gravity is formost on your birds mind. The events played out are " Bite-EARTHQUAKE! ".

Always wear the gloves until you are satisfied the bird wont try to remove any digits, and its usually best for more than one person to work with the bird.

Try both methods a couple of times to see what seems to work best and STICK with that method for the rest of the birds life. Do NOT alter your actions in any way. Do NOT back down. Last but not least, do NOT offer treats just for good behavior, as good behavior should be expected.

Finally, you should never give up.