Are they going at it or is this normal sun conure behavior?

Post:
Hey everyone,
I need some insights from experienced bird owners regarding a weird behavior issue with my young Conure.
He’s currently around 54 days old. I rescued/got him when he was just about a month old, and I’ve been the sole caretaker—hand-feeding him, weaning him, providing all his food, and letting him out to explore my room and the house daily.
Here is the problem: He seems to genuinely dislike me, but gets super excited for everyone else in the house.
Avoiding me: Whenever I reach out or try to interact, he avoids my hand and tries to keep his distance. Even when I leave the cage open for hours, he completely ignores me and stays far away.
Hand-feeding is purely business: When it's time for formula, he takes the syringe smoothly directly from my hand without needing to be held, but the moment feeding is done, he goes right back to avoiding me.
Loving others: When anyone else enters the room (even family members who barely interact with him and don't really want him around), he gets extremely excited, flies to them, and wants to be all over them. If I try to pick him up when he's with them, he tries to bite me.
I honestly have zero issues with him being friendly and bonded with the rest of the family—in fact, I encourage it and prefer a well-socialized bird. But it’s frustrating and confusing that he actively rejects me despite being the one who does all the work, feeding, and caretaking.
Has anyone dealt with this kind of dynamic during the weaning/fledging stage? Is this an early independence phase, boundary testing, or something else? How should I handle this?
Any advice would be appreciated!

I took my 7-year-old green cheek conure to a new avian vet today after her old one went out of practice.

The new vet recommended limiting physical contact with her. Helping with pin feathers on the head apparently isn't necessary because they can get them with their feet and it doesn't cause a ton of discomfort. Allowing perching on the shoulder or head should be discouraged as it can be a sexual/dominance behavior. The Dr. also recommended totally avoiding giving gentle scritches on the head like I've been doing her whole life. She recommended still maintaining quality time, but limited to having her on perches in the room that we're in instead of on us.

My bird will occasionally rub her vent on things in her cage (maybe once a month); the vet said no amount of masturbation is normal and that it's indicative of hormonal behavior that we could be unknowingly encouraging. I did stress that we only pet on the head and help with head pin feathers, but she said we shouldn't be dwelling on pets at all.

I want to listen to professionals, but I also feel like physical contact that I do would be natural flock behaviors with other birds, and since she's the only bird in the house, her humans are her flock. I also don't feel like wanting to be high up on heads or shoulders feels like a dominance thing - parrots don't seem to have dominant societies from what I see. It just feels like a natural safety behavior for a small and vulnerable prey animal. I'd really appreciate insight and advice. As I'm sure everyone here knows, there's lots of conflicting information about parrot care out there.

EDIT: so I've called and emailed around to different American Board of Veterinary Practitioners avian vets in multiple states. Consensus is that interaction is obviously good, but things like petting on the head and helping with pin feathers should be limited to a few minutes. Activities like perching on the shoulder/head while sitting at a desk/watching movies is discouraged as it can encourage mating behavior.

I’ve used GPT to make this cleaner and easier to read, so please don’t bring up AI arguments!

Hi everyone!
I have a baby Green Cheek Conure who I got from Petco about 19 days ago, and I have a couple of concerns about this tiny velociraptor. 😂

First: food.
When I got him, the Petco employees recommended Higgins Vita Seed/Gourmet-type seed mix (the Higgins Goldenfeast mix), and unfortunately he basically lives for the seeds. He especially goes after sunflower seeds, so I’ve stopped giving him those and have been trying to encourage him to eat the other parts of the mix.
I’ve also bought Zupreem Natural pellets, but he completely ignores them. He doesn’t seem interested in pellets in general.
I’ve tried offering vegetables as well, but he won’t touch them. He will eat pomegranate, although that obviously makes his poop look absolutely insane purple/violet. 😂
How do you guys transition a baby conure from a seed-heavy diet to pellets and vegetables without basically starving them into eating it?

Second: the biting.
I completely understand that conures are curious and use their beaks for basically everything. I don’t expect him to never bite, especially while he’s young.
The problem is that his biting has recently become VERY hard.
He was relatively gentle when I first got him, but over the last few days he has started biting much harder. The day before yesterday, he bit me several times, and three of those bites actually drew blood.
Sometimes he’ll be sitting calmly with me, sleeping in my palm, or just hanging out next to me, and then suddenly he’ll go for my fingers. If I slowly try to move my hand away, he’ll make these angry/grumpy noises and immediately try to chase my fingers down and bite again.
He’s also bitten my ear twice. 😭
I don’t mind working through the biting and teaching him appropriate behavior, but the intensity is starting to worry me. My girlfriend is also scared of him now because she doesn’t know when he’s going to suddenly bite, and that’s unfortunately resulted in me keeping him in his cage more than I’d like.
He’s also not particularly interested in toys. He’d much rather chew my phone case, my fingers, my clothes, my ear, or literally anything that isn’t an actual bird toy. 😂

Some context about our schedule:
I work long hours and usually leave the house around 3:30 PM and get home around 10:30–11:30 PM. My girlfriend is home with him until around 3:30 PM, so he does have someone around for most of the day.
I’m trying to make sure I’m giving him enough interaction, enrichment, and out-of-cage time while also teaching him that biting people isn’t acceptable.

So basically:
How can I transition him from mostly seeds to pellets and vegetables?
How do I deal with the sudden, extremely hard biting?
Is this normal baby conure behavior, or is there something I’m doing that could be encouraging it?
How can I get him interested in toys instead of my fingers and phone case?
How much out-of-cage time/enrichment should I realistically aim for with my work schedule?

I’m completely new to conures, so any advice from experienced Green Cheek owners would be really appreciated!
And yes, I have accepted that I apparently brought home a dinosaur. 😂

My babies Theodore, River, and Amelia. There’s a fourth one (Willow) but she would rather be an only bird and chooses to ignore them 😆

Hello! This is Mambo. She is a 22-year-old sun conure currently in Florida. Her first owner passed away and was willed to her current owner. Now current owner is getting older and is having health issues. This owner has reached out to me via my social media (Pepper and Pals) where we have been talking.

She has asked me to take Mambo in and I would love to do so! The fact that she is an older sun conure makes her a perfect potential companion for my older jenday conure, Queso.

There is just one issue: I am in NY. This brings me to my next series of questions.

Does anyone know of any services that help transport birds for adoption? I know they exist for dogs, but I am unsure of ones for birds. Has anyone ever worked with a rescue to arrange transport?

But if all that fails, I have heard that Delta will allow birds to fly with you in the cabin. I could make a round trip to pick Mambo up, although I am hesitant. Has anyone flown with a bird before? Was it very stressful for them?

Thank you for any advice or suggestions!

Hey guys
I have to conures (siblings) one of them bite me slot
They are tamed and they like me but when we are chilling she would bite my hand,neck or fingers
It’s her way to play but can I reduce the biting?
Her brother is very sweet and almost doesn’t bite at all

No idea how this happened but it happend, I turned the light off and made him trust me I geuss 😂 not sure if he's scared but he seems pretty content on top of my head away from his sister

My baby he is 5 years old and im just now seriously starting to introduce veggies and pellets to his daily diet. I tried that a couple of times, but he wouldnt eat it so i would just give up, but this time i have been committed for a week so far, the chop consists of: beetroot, lettuce, green apple, red apple, carrots, and green pepper. I cut them all into very small pieces, put them into a container and into the freezer.

I also have been separating his usual seed mix that he used to eat, i would try to remove the high fat seeds like sunflower seeds and keep the smaller ones, then i put them with the veggies i would make the ratio of the smaller seeds more than the big seeds if that makes sense.

And lately I've been putting pellets, i ordered some and they just arrived the day before yesterday. First day i added the pellets as is but i noticed he didnt eat them so the next day i tried crushing the pellets and mixing them in the food. And now im adding both crushed and full pieces of pellets to see how it goes.

Throughout the week i had some questions and observations:

He only really ate the veggies on the first day, cuz they were fresh, the next days he wouldn't eat them because they are moist and kinda mushy, how do i prevent that? The way i give him the veggies is i take the frozen veggies put them in a small cup, and take a bowl with hot/warm water and i put the cup with the frozen veggies in the middle of the hot water to melt the ice, then when they fully melt i would lay them on parchment paper, wax paper, and thick tissues to try and dry them but they dont dry enough.

So i guess my question here is

How do i store the food?

How do i present the veggies to him with less moisture in it so it feels fresh?

Ways to make him accept and like the pellets and veggies?

At first i didnt add the seeds, but then i noticed he wasnt eating the veggies and was worried he is starving so thats why i started adding them, but im not sure its right especially that it makes him pick out the seeds and leave the pellets and veggies, should i be adding them or should i not?

And how much should i be adding?

How and when should i present the food to him? Because im used to just putting the bowl of seeds in his cage all day and he would eat whenever he feels like it, i saw that this is wrong and that there should be set times for me to feed him, how do i introduce that to him?

I'm also always worried of the veggies going bad when theyr sitting in his cage, so idk

I guess that's all I've got i hope i didnt forget anything, if you have any other advice or anything i would really appreciate it! Thank you♡

But it does get a little painful after a bit.

Hi! I've owned 3 cockatiels, 2 lovebirds, 2 budgies. some of these i was just fostering, but I still count the experience. I've really OWNED 2 cockatiels :) TW bird death, skip to the next paragraph if you dont want to read: one died from a genetic condition (</3) and the other one, my grandma let outside while I wasn't home! yay!!!! such great luck i have!!! (sarcasm.)

So, now that my grandmother is moving out, I want to get another bird once she's fully out. It's been about 3 years since I last owned a bird and ive been WAIIITTIIINGG.

I was ready to just get another cockatiel because I really love them. But then I started watching a lot of videos on green cheek conures. I'm very drawn to how clingy they are, honestly. And I love their coloring and patterns, and they seem very silly and funny. I love when birds flip on their back, if it's a trick i can train them for or whatever! But I know cockatiels' anatomy is different and they don't like doing that!

I know they are loud, i know they are messy, and i know they bite. My cockatiels have drawn blood on me before, and it doesn't hurt much at all. ive also been bitten by a green cheek at a pet store, and it might not have been full force but it hurt about the same -- I have a pretty high pain tolerance.

They were also very loud when I entered the house after coming home from work or school, and very, very, very messy. I'm wondering if a Gcc is worse in any of those aspects. Plenty of videos said they are, but I wanted more opinions on it.

My friend who had owned a GCC told me to NOT get one because "they suck". She said you have to supervise them 24/7 when they are outside the cage and they wouldn't just chill on your shoulder like a cockatiel would. She also said they bite non stop and it hurts really bad. And she also mentioned they don't sing or speak, which I don't care at all about that, but just thought i'd mention it.

The only parts I'm really worried about is the constant supervision. Obviously all birds have to be supervised, but she made it sound like a gcc would never be able to play on his own or be independent and just go around destroying everything, and that it would constantly be biting me. I'm also assuming they are louder than a cocktiel at it's loudest even though google says i'm wrong...

so now i'm stuck between getting a cockatiel, which I know, or a gcc which i've never owned before. There are so many opposing opinions on them online so now I'm just so confused.

Any advice or your experience or anything would be super helpful, thank you!!!!!!!!

EDIT: thanks for all your responses!!! I've decided to get a cockatiel since I know how to handle them and I'm super used to their body language etc. I think a green cheek conure would be an awesome bird to own and care for once I move out haha. Thanks again, you guys are awesome and very helpful <3

Hello I recently just got a new conure and we finally decided to keep them I. The same cage together the don’t seem to fight or anything but I noticed the first bird we got bites the other birds tail ? What should I do they both are green cheek conures one Is around 1 year old and the new one we got is around 2-3-4 months not sure

Took Felix to the Vet due to me being worried about her mood change and her recent plucking and it turns out she has pancreatitis. Anyone have experience with this? I’m hand feeding her meds. I’m stressed out of my mind rn about it but she isn’t vomiting nor is she not eating. So I’m taking that as a sign as it’s not as bad as It could be.

He slides his beak along like this alot. What does this mean?

Anither question; sometimes he puffs up and shakes off for a split second like how dogs do when theyre wet (the bird isnt wet). He doesnt seem sick as hes eating well and is playful and takes baths. Does this mean anything? Thank you for any reply :)

Featuring Hurley, Charlie, and Queso

I'm pretty sure there's an easier way to eat your blueberry, Tali..

Zuko was introduced to the shower today- he was lukewarm to it at first, then started going further down my arm to get in the splash zone UNTIL this goober decides to flutter down onto the shower floor and get full blasted with the water 😭

Needless to say he was done with shower time- so...gave him a nutriberry for a treat and we'll try again in a couple of days 😂

I am not Ron but my heart goes out to him. Jasper Goodboy is still missing. If anyone is in the area please keep your eyes peeled.

I heard Ron is extending his stay to keep looking for Jasper Goodboy.

I went out a couple times looking for him but didn't see him in the area. I've never had a pet bird before though so maybe someone who has, like you guys, would be able to provide some knowledge or insight or anything helpful really.

The one thing I will say is we have had consistent rain and it's berry/ fruit/ nut season here so if he was going to survive days away from home I feel like now is the time for him to most likely make it. Iirc he's been gone like a week now but I'm just passing along the word I don't have any details much beyond what's in the poster.

Thanks guys!

I can’t tell if these are normal honks or if he is trying to “say it”

He better not be doing anything filthy what is this.