# HELP!! AT WIT'S END w/ Jekyll/Hyde pidg!!



## cassixjewels (Apr 4, 2017)

I haven't posted on here in ages--prob since I rescued my pigeon back in Spring '17 (he was 4 days old). 

To the point my problem is he is a relentless bully! I probably would've made changes raising him but I had no plans to have a bird--just an animal lover who noticed a baby stuck in a grate w an abscessed leg. Anyway I hand raised him and splinted his leg so we are quite bonded. Thus, he chases and pecks and pulls fur from all the other animals ESP if they're near me until they wimper away but he will also corner attack them for no reason, too. He attacks me incessantly when I'm on the phone/talking. He pecks me incessantly especially on the sofa when I'm trying to work on my laptop. I've tried the get up and walk away but that gets old and isn't practical and as you all know pigeons are PERSISTENT AF!! If I tell him "no" in a stern voice he starts biting me harder. He's free flight 24/7 in the house so I tried putting him on time out when he'd bite for 15-30 min in an unused cage w a dark sheet over (someone with a conure said that worked--not for me). Did that for a couple days aaaand he's hating me now and is being so vicious coming up and biting me for no reason (I'm having to baby him to rebuild the trust). My problem is I'm at my wits end and anything I do except give in, he views as an aggressive act to challenge to the death. I need a way to stop the bad behaviors ESP the biting for attention 24/7. I've tried giving him more attention like playing foraging games with seeds in crumpled paper or giving corn for answering commands correctly or taking him to different windows on my hand & describing what we see which he loves but as soon as I stop and do something else the biting starts until I scratch him or give him attention. This is not feasible. I'm literally fed up! He can be so sweet and is certainly bonded to me and I love him dearly as I hand raised him (he follows me everywhere and is extremely possessive) but he can also be a huge bully and anything I do to stop the bad behavior results in heightened, persistent aggression & biting.

ANY help, advice or techniques would be greatly appreciated. There just isn't much info out there on training pigeons--it's all focused on the typical pet birds and those techniques don't work on pigeons. However having taught mine a few commands very quickly when he was quite young I know they are smart & teachable.


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## beachwood45789 (Jul 15, 2014)

Hi, have you ever tried to get him or her a mate??? Robert


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## cwebster (Dec 11, 2010)

He sounds like he needs a mate.


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## 8790 (Oct 21, 2019)

If you can, get him a mate.


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## cassixjewels (Apr 4, 2017)

cwebster said:


> He sounds like he needs a mate.


Huge factor I forgot to mention re: the mate--I know I know but It's not feasible for me to get him a mate. Hell taking in ONE bird of any sort was not in the plan and tho he is now an addition to the fam he does create tension/strain that did not previously exist. 
The only time I can get him to simmer is to put out the fake eggs in the nest bowl but I don't do this often since it taxes his body sitting almost consecutively for 3 wks.
Is there such thing as a pigeon/dove trainer? Can I curb some behaviors even if only the incessant biting for attn?


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## Marina B (May 5, 2011)

He views you as his mate and is just doing the natural thing a male does with a female "driving" you to the nest to lay eggs. Has he ever mated with your hand? That's why he cools down when you produce the fake eggs. If putting out fake eggs help, then keep on doing it and remove them when he loses interest.

I have 2 males that behaved exactly like yours, both were raised from a young age. They both changed when I got more pigeons who paired off and started mating. Both my males took females and lost interest in me. Now they attack me when I get too close to their nests. But at least they are behaving like normal pigeons. So get him a female, do a very slow introduction, spend less time with him and see how it goes.


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## cassixjewels (Apr 4, 2017)

Marina B said:


> He views you as his mate and is just doing the natural thing a male does with a female "driving" you to the nest to lay eggs. Has he ever mated with your hand? That's why he cools down when you produce the fake eggs. If putting out fake eggs help, then keep on doing it and remove them when he loses interest.
> 
> I have 2 males that behaved exactly like yours, both were raised from a young age. They both changed when I got more pigeons who paired off and started mating. Both my males took females and lost interest in me. Now they attack me when I get too close to their nests. But at least they are behaving like normal pigeons. So get him a female, do a very slow introduction, spend less time with him and see how it goes.


Hi Marina--sounds like it is the likely solution. Just not the one I'm looking for unfortunately. I didn't mention I live in a small apt in LA and I almost feel it cruel to confine another pigeon to such a small existence. Granted Storm (my 1 pidg) was already at the point of certain death when I took him in so anything was better at that point for him. Having 2 pigeons flying around the living/dining/kitchen (I don't let them in the rooms), the poop good lord and feathers and fluff from the preening, and my own sanity as well as consideration for my other 2 animals, I'd be beyond maxed out. I was maxed out before he came (but "sucker for animals" and all). I'm really trying to find an alternate solution. Plus as you know unexpected ailments and expenses always crop up with any animal and his have been numerous. If there are no pigeon trainers is my only option the fake eggs?


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## cwebster (Dec 11, 2010)

I have three pairs of pigeons in three large cages in a shed outside. Two are M-F pairs and two are females. They spend most of their socializing with their mates. I swap out eggs so i dont end up with a zillion pigeons. They are pretty happy with their mates. I have had them now for several years and luckily have not had vet expenses. We used to let our first pigeon Phoebe fly all over and the mess was too much. So we got flight cages.


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## Marina B (May 5, 2011)

If the fake eggs keep him busy incubating them, then so be it. If he loses interest after 2 1/2 to 3 weeks, remove them. Give him a break for 2 weeks and then put the eggs back again. It can't harm him in any way.


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## tiffy316 (May 21, 2016)

Cheepy gets like this too. He probably pecks at the other animals bc he's territorial, and the reason he does it while your I'm the phone is bc he wants attention. Yelling will only enforce the negative behavior. The key is to stay calm. It's technically a technique for angry cockatiels, but works on pigeons too. Try to give him some attention as well. Good luck.


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## mountainflyer (Jan 12, 2016)

thump him in his damn head when he demands attention, thats unwanted attention and he will soon realize that you can be an ass as well as he can.


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## Marina B (May 5, 2011)

That will just make him more aggressive.....


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## vacantgarde (Apr 6, 2018)

My (male) pet pigeon is a relentless bully, too. You are describing my bird to a "t" when you say your bird is willing to fight to the death over any conflict -- NEVER backs down. I think all male pigies may be this way. I read somewhere that pigeons don't have proper pain receptors. Not sure if that is true or not, but you can imagine the pure fearlessness and bravado you'd feel if you basically never felt pain before. I used to try chase my bird and reclaim "my territory" to get him to back off. Boy oh boy, that would get him riled up and angrier than ever, trying to peck and bite the skin off my hands!

I don't have any clear advice for you but I will tell you how my husband and I have lived with our beloved bully for 5+ years now in relative harmony. Our bird is "free flight" in the house like yours. Pigeons are too intelligent to be kept in small cages. Some say their intelligence can be likened to a 3 year old child's. Of course we wouldn't put a toddler in a cage and expect the toddler's emotions to be positive! Early on when we tried to cage our bird, he threw himself against the cage until he made himself bleed.

He is a bird, he is TERRITORIAL. It sounds like your bird believes that the entire house is "his" territory. That in and of itself is a terrible problem. Perhaps you can start to make him believe just one room is where he belongs. With our bird, the bedroom is "his" territory (except the bed, which he knows is our territory, and he never touches it, except once or twice a year when he's being insanely naughty) Yes, we have basically given over a room to our bird. All his toys and amusements are there - shiny baubles, stuffed penguins, cat toys with bells from the dollar store. He loves those things. In fact he attempts to build nests in there for his stuffed penguin "mate." We never go in the bedroom except waking up and going to sleep. Every morning when we wake up, he chases us, nipping our heels. And when I put away laundry and clean the room, we lock him away in the closet. NOTHING makes him angrier than having his territory cleaned, ha! Every little piece of his own crap is precious to him.

When we're not home, he is confined to that room. Most days, one of us is home, and when we are home, all the doors are open, and he's free to visit the rest of the house. Most of the day, though, he prefers to stay in his "territory." But when he visits, he is for the most part shy and sweet and well behaved - it's not his territory, and he knows I'll chase him back to the bedroom if he's being a dick at any time.

You can never "win" a conflict with a bird. The only thing you can do is de-escalate him. If he is pecking you hard, talk to him sweetly and gently and laugh at what an absurd Pokemon he is. He will pick up on your emotions and calm down. When my bird is biting hard, and I am sweet to him, he starts biting more and more gently over time, until he's practically preening me. Humans do everything with their hands. They are our main way we get sensory information from the world. Birds do everything with their beaks. I don't believe someone can convince a pigeon not to peck and bite. It's how they "feel" the world. I did try that bird "no bite" spray long ago, and you guessed it- that riled him up more, and he bit HARDER. Ha! Sometimes I gently pinch his beak in between my fingers as if I am giving him a "kiss" with my beak, like you see birds do with each other's beaks, and he greatly enjoys that, and he'll try to burrow his beak and head into my hands and be as gentle as a lamb.

I do not have any advice on how to get him to stop bullying your other pets. We have never gotten any other pets after rescuing this stray pigeon for the very reason that we believe he would bully them relentlessly! He wants to be the biggest, baddest, cock in the universe!

I don't know if you take your pigeon on walks/put him on a leash, but you should give it a try. Wait until you see what a shy, reserved, polite little creature he can be! It's always funny when we have strangers over because he would never in a million years bite THEM. He looks like a proper polite little birdie. Ha - he only bites his nearest and dearest, most beloved humans, not strangers.

It is true he wants your attention. With our bird, he loves if we're even looking at him, making eye contact. In fact, if you talk sweetly to our bird and look him in the eye for a long while, his wings will start wiggling like they did when he was a baby. He gets overwhelmed with love. Maybe for a bird "looking and seeing" is more the style of attention they want rather than active play like a dog.

Well this is not any clear advice but this is my experience living with a male pigeon for so long. Another commenter said get him a mate, I bet that would help, but we would never do that with our bird because they'd start pumping out eggs and this would be just a pigeon barn and no longer a house before long. I know they raise their babies and they are meant to be part of a flock, so we would never consider allowing him to breed and shoving the babies out the window or something. Sometimes friends ask what it is like having a pet pigeon and I say it is like living with a grumpy old man, you're always cleaning up after him, he's irascible, he starts fights, he's demanding, but you get on with him all the same.


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## cwebster (Dec 11, 2010)

We use fake eggs to prevent ending up with a zillion pigeons. They are inexpensive (Amazon, Ebay, etc).


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

Marina B said:


> He views you as his mate and is just doing the natural thing a male does with a female "driving" you to the nest to lay eggs. Has he ever mated with your hand? That's why he cools down when you produce the fake eggs. If putting out fake eggs help, then keep on doing it and remove them when he loses interest.
> 
> I have 2 males that behaved exactly like yours, both were raised from a young age. They both changed when I got more pigeons who paired off and started mating. Both my males took females and lost interest in me. Now they attack me when I get too close to their nests. But at least they are behaving like normal pigeons. So get him a female, do a very slow introduction, spend less time with him and see how it goes.



Exactly what I would have said. The fact that he has free flight doesn't help either. He views the whole area as his territory, and you as his mate, unfortunately. It's hard on him too, because he doesn't have a mate who is always there, and that he can keep on the nest. He is only doing what he is wired to do.


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## cassixjewels (Apr 4, 2017)

vacantgarde said:


> My (male) pet pigeon is a relentless bully, too. You are describing my bird to a "t" when you say your bird is willing to fight to the death over any conflict -- NEVER backs down. I think all male pigies may be this way. I read somewhere that pigeons don't have proper pain receptors. Not sure if that is true or not, but you can imagine the pure fearlessness and bravado you'd feel if you basically never felt pain before. I used to try chase my bird and reclaim "my territory" to get him to back off. Boy oh boy, that would get him riled up and angrier than ever, trying to peck and bite the skin off my hands!
> 
> I don't have any clear advice for you but I will tell you how my husband and I have lived with our beloved bully for 5+ years now in relative harmony. Our bird is "free flight" in the house like yours. Pigeons are too intelligent to be kept in small cages. Some say their intelligence can be likened to a 3 year old child's. Of course we wouldn't put a toddler in a cage and expect the toddler's emotions to be positive! Early on when we tried to cage our bird, he threw himself against the cage until he made himself bleed.
> 
> ...


It's been a little over a month since I posted this topic and I must say--vacantgarde thank you for your advice! It was so insightful. I'm really just posting now so anyone who ever googles "my bird is being a bully" or "my bird has a bad temper" or the like an potentially finds this post can see what worked for me as I actively made several changes. I know getting a mate would likely quell much of the issue but since this isn't an option I consciously made an effort to use vacangarde's technique of de-escalation. Instead of getting angry after Storm would incessantly nip me on the couch, yell, "STORM STOP IT!" and huff off I really tried becoming very conscientious of the tone of my voice and my physical responses. I never grabbed him only gently picked him up and places him elsewhere when needed & would talk to him sweetly even when he was being naughty which seemed counterintuitive BUT.... Within a week I could see a difference! A month later biting has gone down a good 80-90%! He used to bite for attention or he would bite when I would change his bird diaper or bite for no reason at all at times. I've noticed the biting even for attention has gone down dramatically to almost nil! Just yesterday I was baking muffins and he kept shooting into the kitchen thus my paper liners kept flying out of my muffin tin so I lost my cool and yelled, "Stormmm!" scooped him up and put him in the bathroom, door closed until I finished baking. He was a little bite-y when I took him out so I know that kindness & calmness for sure win over challenging the bird with strength and aggression. Had I calmly put him in the bathroom until I was done there likely would've been no biting/retaliation on his part once released. However since our interaction is now much improved it took him no time at all to return to normal/drop the "I'm mad at you" mood.

I'm also in the process of cleaning up my 2nd bedroom as it used to be my makeup room but sort of just became a storage spot so I figured that could become his space. He honestly tries to shoot 
/sneak in there whenever I go in to get something or if I accidentally leave the door ajar so I think it'll be a good zone for him as he wants in anyway! Until then though I took this idea and kind of implemented "little zones" for him with things I know he aims for otherwise. This can work for those without a spare room. For example I curled an old scarf up on the counter and now he doesn't walk all over my counters he just goes to his scarf "nest" as his area. This also helped in that he used to wander the counters when I was working and would try to get all up in my biz or bite my moving hands. Now he can still be near me and see me but he's too busy grunting in his special scarf nest to both with messing with me. Amazing! I also left a lil box with a flap lid open for him in the living room with the packing paper in it that he just loves to use as a lil hide out and make his gobble noises in. Lastly I put an old tee in a little basket on the bathroom floor nand now he no longer nips my feet when I'm in there he just goes and grunts in his basket. These are his new "Storm only zones" that he feels safe in and territories he can claim with my blessing.

I also wanted to include some very helpful ideas I actually got from a dog training video! A friend of mine recently got a dog and I was looking for vids for him but found this particular one VERY helpful myself. The trainer said that many people think they need to be heavy handed or really "in charge" but she was proposing how to be a good leader without being confrontational and while building confidence and having them like to listen to you! The keys are to be consistent, clear & fair. I really recommend anyone with bird problems watch her video and just replace the word "dog" for "bird"! (YouTube: "Are you being a bad leader for your dog?" by McCann Dog Training.) One of the topics she addresses is how to know if you're being a good leader by assessing how your dog(bird) is handling the freedoms they are given: do they listen or make good choices around you/others/& objects? She says she rather spend her day playing with and praising her dog(bird) vs. reprimanding then and telling them "no!" 

The first change I made was, as she said, to control my environment so there was less opportunity for problems. I removed things that could lead Storm to make bad decisions or decisions that would aggravate me. An example of this is he always always walks or stands on my MacBook whenever I have it open to play Netflix or Hulu or something. It drives me nuts! He just has to hop up there and prance around on the keys and gobble triggeringrandom applications to open on the Mac. So I hot glued 3-4 stacked popsicle sticks together and hot glued those to both ends of a $1 store clipboard to make a cover over the keyboard. Now if he hops up he doesn't press buttons and my blood pressure says down lol. Another example is he used all the water bowls as personal baths (despite having a pie dish of water in the spare bathtub) leading me to having to wash and refill them repeatedly and wipe up huge water messes. Now I fill them all only halfway up so he can't really get a good splash around in them and he has since abandoned trying. 

She also said in the vid not using food as a resource is a missed opportunity. Now I have little cups of "bird bribes" aka his fave popped corn or Canadian peas in several cabinets throughout the apt so when he does listen to a command I can quickly and easily reward him. I used to mix these into his seed mix but now I don't & instead utilize these as rewards throughout the day.

The attacking me whist one the phone, chasing/cornering other pets, and eating other pets' kibbles (<---SO strange) are still problems I'm working on but I have gotten a good handle on his temperament and how I can control my responses to get the responses I want from him.

Appreciate vacantgarde taking the time to respond as well as everyone else. This forum is an amazing resource, truly.


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## Marina B (May 5, 2011)

I'm glad things are going better with him. I wonder what he will do if you provide him with 2 fake eggs in a small nest? If he starts incubating them, that will also keep him busy.


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