I emailed this advice to someone earlier today and I thought I'd re-post it here...

Solving biting problems comes down to four principles:

1) Anything that makes you parrot think of you as a source of good things, is good.

2) Anything that makes your parrot think of you as a source of scary things, is bad.

3) Don't let the bird bite you. If the bird bites you once, the bird has a problem and its behavior needs to change. If the bird bites you twice, your behavior needs to change too. You can change your behavior a lot faster than you can change your bird's behavior.

4) Don't react to bites. Parrots enjoy the excitement.

Memorize these things and live by them. :-) In more detail:

1) Find out what the bird's favorite foods are, and use those treats to reward the bird any time it does the right thing. Step up? Good bird, here's your reward.

Birds will not behave according to a sense of duty or obligation. They'll do whatever they thing is in their best interest. Fortunately it's not too hard to show that them stepping up is in their best interest - just give the bird a treat. If you train without rewarding the bird for doing the right thing, training will take a lot longer than it should, and it will be much less effective. All you're doing is teaching the bird that you will force it to do what you want it to do, and that is not conducive to a better relationship. If you reward good behavior, you're teaching the bird that you are a source of good things, that hanging out with you is fun, and that when you show up, it's easy to earn treats.

2) Forget the "evil eye" stuff. People recommend that sometimes and I think it's bunk for several reasons. It's impossible to say for sure why your bird is biting, but chances are very good that it fears you. The evil eye treatment will not help with that whatsoever. That MIGHT (if you are very very very lucky) teach the bird to fear biting you, but most likely it will teach the bird to fear you, period. That will not help the biting problem. Do not use punishment to train parrots, ever. It will do more harm than good.

Parrots aren't like cats and dogs, they aren't domesticated and they don't have any bred-in trust for human beings. So there's a very fine line between "people are scary" and "people are nice to hang out with."

That's also the possibility that the bird enjoys the attention when you give it the evil eye. If the bird is sitting in a cage all day long, then anything that gets your undivided attention for 15 seconds is worth doing again.

3) Just stay out of striking distance. If the bird bites you, and you go away, the bird learns that biting the scary person makes the scary person go away. That means you're even more likely to be bit next time. If the bird bites you and you scream, the bird learns that biting makes exciting things happen (and again, you're even more likely to get bit next time). In short, if you get bit, there's a good chance that the bird will learn something that makes biting even more likely. But if you don't get bit, at least your chances of getting bit again won't be even higher next time.

Besides, bites hurt. Parrots crack nuts for a living, and nuts are harder than fingers.

4) Should be obvious by now. :-)