Yoda didn't used to be aggressive, but now, all of a sudden, he doesn't want my hand near his food dish or near him when he is on a perch! He will lunge at it and try to attack, even if I am just trying to hand him a piece of raw pasta! It's like my cute little Quaker has turned into a little green attack monster!

When he's out of the cage, he's still the normal bitey bird he's always been, with spells or adorability and silliness.

Man, he's a stubborn little bugger!

Welcome to Quaker-tude How old is he? It seems like the closer to sexual maturity they are the more protective of "Their Things" they become. I have one female here in the house that is that way. She doesn't want me to touch her stuff...period...end of discussion but once I get her out of the cage she's just her sweet self giving me kisses etc. As I said, I just call it Quaker-tude.

If you can bear it, take the bites and the pecking and go right ahead and grab dishes and clean the cage and just keep talking to him while you're doing it. Jade was (and still is, to a degree) VERY cage aggressive, but I just let her bite me at first and now she understands that attacking the housekeeper when she's cleaning is counterproductive, so she just sits on her perch and watches and bosses the job when I clean. She's even let me take toys out and put new ones in. She knows that a fresh treat cup comes at the end of the cleaning job. However, I am only allowed to do that sort of thing when I'm cleaning. If I mess with her stuff very much when I am NOT cleaning, we go right back to "MINE! MINE! MINE!"

Joey used to bite me every time I went in his cage, but now he only does it once in a blue moon. Be sure not to pull your hand away when he bites, because he will think it is a game of "chase." It is like they thrive on our reactions. Someone told me this when I was having really bad problems with Joey, and it workd like magic. He eventually learned that he wasn't going to get a different reaction by biting me and that biting would not make my hand go away.

LOL Bird owners are masochistic, aren't they?

*grins* Just ignore the several hundred pounds per square inch of pressure slicing through your hand. They'll get tired of chewing on you eventually and give up! I did have to go through this same routine with a cockatoo and it always brought home to me how odd this really sounds when you try to explain to a NON-bird person why your hand is all chewed up.

I'm trying to practice what you guys are saying...but it's quite terrifying, not to mention painful! The look in his eyes and the wide open mouth darting at my finger instead of the pasta...it's just my instinct to drop the pasta and run for it! I think Cacophony described it best!

I am trying, but I'm finding it hard not to pull away. "Just ignore it" doesn't seem to be working. I'm trying to feed him the pasta through the bars of his cage, but I feel as though this defeats the purpose...

He will still step onto my hand when I put it in the cage to get him from his perch, but this is after he gets used to me being home from work again. I have to assume he's used to my schedule by now...but my schedule is odd. I'm home Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3, but Tuesday and Thursday, I get home at 9:15. So he is probably really confused as to when I should be home. Do you think he's feeling abandoned?

Sigh.

Yup my QP was never like that as well...
But Now the little green man is very cage aggresive!
Hes rude and crude that it is HIS cage! LOL
Connies right its Quakertude!

Sorry Andie's Mom (Connie), your response got lost in everyone elses. Yoda is only five months, approaching six. He is too young for sexual maturity. He has been more aggressive and meaner lately, as he is molting, and the seasons are changing. I don't know if it is the molting/season changes or if he can't keep his days straight and feels like I should be there all the time at 9. Either way, he keeps attacking me whenever I try to feed him the pasta that he keeps dropping on the ground.