Hi, My quaker attacked my 5 year old son in the eye yesterday, (He`s ok luckily), My quaker was on my shoulder and it actually ran across towards my son sat on the opposite side of me and went straight to his eye right in the corner, I managed to gently get Kes off him then put Kes back in his cage whilst I sorted out my poor crying son, I am quite shocked at this because my son did nothing to provoke Kes, he was just sat beside me talking to Kes. Is there anyway I can discourage this as my lad adores Kes and only wants to have it step up on his finger, but Kes seems to have taken a dislike to him. Why would this happen?

Linn.

your quaker has bonded to you. He wanted your son away from you. That's why he did what he did.

I'm not really sure you can stop that behavior. The bird actually thinks he's protecting you.

Someone should be on soon that may have a better answer than myself.

Thanks for your quick reply, Kes seems ok with my husband do you think that it`s because he`s more authorative?

Yep, I agree with Sandy, he's just protecting you from "danger". Casey is bonded to me and one other person in our house, if we're holding her and someone else comes to talk with us, she'll bite me to protect me from the scary person, lol, if they're close enough she'll go after them. Casey was really good with kids when she was a baby but as she got older, she become much less patient with them, lol.

For birds, kids are easy targets because they get a lovely reaction after giving them a good scare, whereas adults are more apt to hold in their tears and screams and reprimand the bird so it's just not as exciting to them. Quakers naturally thrive on drama so hearing your son cry after he hurt him was probably the reaction he was going for unfortunately. It's really difficult to tell a 5 year old kid not to flinch or cry when he gets bitten, which is why it's difficult for a Quaker to have a relationship with such a young child...

Hopefully he can still talk with Kes from a distance and maybe offer treats, but since you're son is so young I'm not sure if other methods would really help.

Good luck!!

Thanks for your reply, you covered pretty much everything I needed to know, I do hope that Kes calms down for my son as he gets older, he was really upset that kes doesn`t like him. Bless