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I hope the video owner will forgive me for not entirely approving of this method of “baby’s first bath” which is essentially here is how you take a bath, get over it. He is very gentle and careful and talks calmly to his parrot. Obviously he loves her a great deal and wants to help her with new feather itchies. However, she is not happy about her bath and may or may not be willing to get in the sink next time.

What do I mean by “not happy”? Explicitly at :19 she starts trying to get out of the sink. At :34 she tries again and when she is unsuccessful holds up a foot, wanting to try again, but not making a big attempt because she wasn’t successful on her last try. When she succeeds in busting free at :54 she definitely has escaping on her mind and beelines out of the sink. If you have ever heard me talk about watching for subtle body language that exhibits discomfort or fear, that is what I am talking about. Her body language is saying, “I don’t like this.” If the parrot finds the situation undesirable, then it is not training with positive reinforcement, because being in the sink and being sprayed is obviously not reinforcing. It is also not operant conditioning because the operator is clearly not in control.

Is she terrified? No. Traumatized? No, I think she is just fine. However, it’s now a crap shoot whether or not she is going to want to take to her next bath, because it obviously wasn’t rewarding. Behaviors only repeat themselves if they have been rewarded. Compare her experience to Blu Lu, Barbara Heideinrich’s parrot and her first bath which is entirely directed by the parrot.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

When Blu Lu is uncomfortable, she is allowed to leave. I know not all of us believe in having our birds flighted. If she were unable to fly, Barbara would have just offered her a hand, when Blu Lu lifted a foot wanting to get away from the water and let her step back down when she leaned toward it again. The parrot can make the decision and discover for herself how she feels about bathing. What she discovers is that it is positive; look at her body language in compared to the other parrot. She is flicking and bobbing her head and dunking herself in the water voluntarily. Her body language shows engagement rather than a desire to escape. And when she does leave, she comes right back. The experience was positive and chances are it will repeat. There is no question about how she will feel about being near the sink or being offered a bath in the future. Perhaps she won’t jump right in, but it will only be because does not feel like having a bath, not because she is nervous or fearful.

So you can train a parrot with operant conditioning to take a bath by allowing her to reinforce herself, or if you have a reluctant parrot, you can be the giver of reinforcement and shape the behavior. Those step would look something like this:

Leave the water running in the sink and step your parrot on the counter. (You may have to do some repetitions on and off the counter if your parrot is uncomfortable with standing on it.) Once your parrot is comfortable sitting on the counter train her to bath by shaping the behavior for rewarding each step progressively:

1. Reward for looking at the water. (She looks at the water, you say “good” hand her a treat.)
2. Reward for getting closer to the water.
3. Reward for getting right next to the water.
4. Reward for touching the water.
5. Reward for getting beak all the way the water.
6. Reward for leaning all the way into the water.

At any time, if she is uncomfortable, she can back out or quit all together and you can pick up your training session again later. And once you get her going to the water on her own you can ask her to step up and position her with your hand so that she can move all the way into the water for rewards. Pretty soon you have a parrot that has learned that bathing is fun and enjoyable and getting into the water will likely be its own reward.

Sure, a lot of us have learned how to swim by being thrown into the water, but who wants to learn that way when you can just as easily put on your floaties and slowly the test the water on your own? Life should be a self-explored adventure, not a task that is forced on us. Those of us who have found our way by exploring and being in control are well- adjusted and on the look out for fun. This is similar for all animals. So give your parrot a chance to delight in the simple things in life, like taking a bath!

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

Alien Eye

A snippet of the parrot training book I am working on…

Imagine that your parrot is an alien dropped into your home from another world. Actually, this is pretty close to the truth.

Parrots don’t have lips and cannot smile. Their strange little pupils expand and contract with their thoughts. Overall, they have strange expressions that do not make sense at first, expressions mostly based in the rise and fall of feathers. They communicate in clicks and beeps. Their locomotion is even different from ours. It is hard to even imagine what it would feel like to travel through the world on wings, but they do it and in the wild make it look easy. You may as well have E.T. in your living room. (If you haven’t seen the movie E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, you should definitely rent it.)

Yet, despite the fact we must seem just as alien to them, we assume parrots understand our words, motions and sometimes even our thoughts. So where would you start if you found yourself having to share your home with an alien you wanted to communicate with, have fun with and teach how best to live with you? If it were E.T. you would coax it into interacting with you with Reece’s pieces, train it how to integrate into your home without making too much trouble, teach it to talk, learn everything you could about the species and then work on some awesome tricks together. (Who wouldn’t want to ride a flying bicycle?) You should skip the candy, but working with a parrot is not all that different than working out how to live with E.T.

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©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

Ty

 I answered an email the other day that I thought might be helpful to share with all. What do you think? How do you decide what too many is?

Dear Rebecca,

What is a good retort to when people say, “You just have too many animals; you need to get rid of them.” The best retort I have is, “You just have too many kids; you need to get rid of them.” And no, I don’t believe that parrots are the same as children (though they do act like them), but well-meaning friends believe any bickering between the husband and myself or ANY day-to-day problem comes as a result of having so many animals.

Thank you so much for any advice–this is really driving me crazy!

Just Right

Dear Just Right,

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to answer. I read your email and honestly did not know how to answer. I tried to think of what I would say, but the honest truth is that no one has ever said these words to me… “You have too many animals, you should get rid of them.” And then when I asked myself why no one has ever said this to me, I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t. For one single female my menagerie is pretty immense—1 dog, 3 parrots, 2 falcons, 1 hawk, 3 pheasant and 10 pigeons. Oh, and there are the six goldfish I just bought… Is this too many animals? And if not, how many more would be too many? And what do people think of me? And if someone did suggest I had a problem, what would I say? I slept on it and my answer still isn’t a simple one.

The first thing I suggest is to take a deep breath and save your retort. Forgive your friends. Humans by nature want to “fix” things. We want to produce solutions that save our friends in speedy ways that both rid them of their heartache and also make it easier for ourselves. It is very hard listening to a friend in pain and not be able to help, especially if that friend is in a bout of troubles. Your friends are compassionate, generous and they love you. –They are also self-centered and uncomfortable having to listen to your woes. I know this because I’m like that as well; it is called being human. And being a good friend can be pretty damn exhausting.

Loki

When a friend suggests your animals are too much for you, thank them for their suggestion. Then take their hand and tell them that you weren’t looking for a solution, you were looking for a friend and that you deeply appreciate their willingness to just listen.

Reward the good. Ignore the bad. That’s the animal trainer in me, speaking, but it’s also the only code that has never failed me, a practice that reminds me which lens I should be looking through.

Be grateful that you have friends wonderful enough to listen to your day-to-day hiccups and domestic shake-ups. There are people who are unable to engage with others and are too ill to figure out how to fix it. There are people who barricade themselves against the world surrounded by so many animals they can barely take care of them, but expect these animals to fill that sucking wind of silence which only another human being can fill. They collect more and more animals trying to fix something and yet have no idea what is broken. Having too many animals is the symptom, not the disease. Obviously you are not ill. You are probably not a hoarder. So you can also laugh at this image of yourself, embrace your sense of humor and tell your friend that perhaps they watch too much television or that maybe they should watch more, because removing the clutter in a hoarder’s house does not suddenly fix the problem.

Is it possible all the animals are a symptom of some issues in your life? Perhaps. I am certain that the amount of feathered and furred bodies in my home is very much in correlation with the difficulties I have committing to people, the ridiculous expectations I have of the significant others who come into my life and my fear of being hurt. The animals don’t disappoint me and they give me a safe direction for my nurturing and love. But would ridding my home of the animals fix my issues? No. Again, it is a symptom not a solution. I know this about myself and I work on it and perhaps this is why no one suggests I have gone overboard with my menagerie. Or perhaps it’s just that they are too afraid of me and my trained predators to even make such a suggestion. –I’d like to think it is actually because I seem balanced.

Rebecca & Booth

So if people are suggesting you have too many animals, perhaps you should start asking yourself if there is something else in your life that needs adjusting. Western society is so good at trying to fix symptoms that we rarely ask one another, “What’s REALLY going on with you? I know there is more to it than what you are saying. Let’s get to the bottom of this.” So finding what is actually bruised, bumped and perhaps not working as well as it should is a thing that you mainly have to do for yourself. Maybe if whatever is off kilter is put upright in your life, the number of critters you have now will be just right in everybody’s eyes. Or at least, it won’t bother you when people suggest there are too many.

Some of us could never be sane without the touch of fur, the brush of feathers and simplicity of animal adoration. But all of us need other people. The question of whether or not you have too many animals is irrelevant. So you don’t have to answer it. If you really are in over your head or you know someone who is, be compassionate enough to try to figure out the real reason why. I guess my answer boils down to being kind, to your friends and to yourself. What you should say is something patient and kind. That is the answer. In fact, I think kindness is almost always the answer to everything. It shouldn’t just extend to the animals in our lives.

xxRebecca

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

Ahhh Spring.

It’s been a regular avian grumpfest around here lately. The falcons are on an all-you-can-eat diet and the molting has commenced, meaning falcons who have no use for me and are nearly impossible to handle. The pigeons or making ostentatious and impossibly loud overtures to one another. Meanwhile, the parrots are touchy and feathers abound in the house. Tis the season. What I wasn’t expecting though, was Loki’s first egg. Fifteen years old and my little hen Senegal parrot decided this was the year to settle down and get to business.

I watched her closely as soon as I realized she had made herself a newspaper nest and that she was bulging about the cloaca. I expected aggression, but what I got was adoration and regurgitation. She turned to goo, literally. I tried not to encourage her while watching for signs of egg binding. I was relieved when the first egg arrived and then the second. I might have one more to look forward to and then hopefully we’re done.

Egg laying can actually be dangerous business. An egg the parrot is unable to pass is a death sentence and not uncommon. First time egg layers and older birds may be more likely to become egg bound so keep an eye out. Egg binding can also occur because of compromised health, poor nutrition or simply because of genetics. If your bird is puffed, bright-eyed, interactive, but obviously just nesty, she’s probably fine, but watch closely for signs of distress. Watch for a distended abdomen and straining to pass something through the vent, drooping wings, fluffed feathers, loss of appetite and difficulty breathing. And if there is any question at all in your mind, best just to get to the vet!

Here are a few tips to avoid egg binding:

• Get your bird DNA sexed so you know whether or not to suspect egg-laying
• Try not to encourage nesting and bonding behavior during the breeding season.
• Make sure your parrot has a nutritious well balanced diet with sufficient calcium (smooth muscle requires calcium to function and of course, calcium is required to create fully formed shells)
• Get that bird some exercise! Obese birds are more likely to become egg bound.
• Talk to your vet if your bird lays eggs excessively. Your vet may suggest hormones to get the egg laying to cycle more normally.

If your bird does become egg bound get to the vet right away! Your avian veterinarian can help the egg pass or remove it surgically if necessary before the situation becomes deadly.

Hope you all have a great Spring. It’s gonna be a long one around here…

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

Parrots of the World by Joseph M. Forshaw

Everyone should have a book to pull off the shelf when they are wondering what species of parrot that photo on the web might be or when arguing about the name of that lory species over drinks. (It’s Duyvenbodes, by the way. You win some you lose some…)

More importantly perhaps, this book is a wonderful starting point to finding out a bit of natural history about the parrot in your home. The more you know about what your parrot’s kin does in the wild, the better you will understand his needs and habits in your home!

Good Bird by Barbara Heidenreich

Barbara and I worked together for some time in the arena of free flight bird shows. She took much of what we knew and lived by and put it into this easy to understand book for the pet parrot community. It was just the start of many great tools produced by Good Bird Inc!

The Parrot Problem Solver by Barbara Heidenreich

Taking the basics of “Good Bird” to the next level, Barbara breaks down the basics of behavior and training. She gives those unindoctrinated in the world of using proven techniques and terms standardized by psychologists a great intro and many tools to put their new knowledge to work.

Brinker's All Around Grey Book

For the Love of Greys by Bobbi Brinker

The African grey parrot is unarguably one of the most popular species of pet parrot in the world. And few people are more knowledgable about this particular species than Bobbi. Introducing readers to the idea that positive reinforcement and facilitation rather than force is the best way to live with a grey, she also shares just about everything you need to know about keeping  your grey healthy and happy.

A Parrot for Life by Rebecca K. O’Connor

I won’t review my own book, but of course I think it should be on your shelf! Decades of both living with parrots and training birds professionally inspired me to write the book I wish I had when I trained my first cockatiel at eight years old. I wanted it to be fun to read and full of up-to-date information. My first birds would have had better nutrition, health and my hands would have suffered a lot fewer bits. I’ll leave it to you to decide if I accomplished my goal.

What are your favorite parrot books?

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

by C. Pedersen From Flickr.com click to see source

Those of you who have heard me speak on parrot training, have likely heard me say this in 10 different ways in my lecture. We often forget how incredibly important it is to be considerate to the others who live with our parrots and are not necessarily parrot people.

The ex-parrot post got me thinking that I ought to clarify this point just a bit further especially as more and more people commented privately, on Twitter and Facebook that the girlfriend should just “get over it” or “get some self-esteem.”

I’ve been around the block enough times now to know that no gets over anything when you tell them to “get over it.” And no grows self-esteem on demand. I agree that everyone should love parrots, I’m not really sure why they don’t. I also think they should have thicker skin. However, the fact of the matter is that some people don’t care for parrots and therefore don’t have much tolerance. Those people might love you, but not your parrot.

Don’t let the bird (or the dog or the cat) to be a bone of contention in your relationship with your roommate, children or significant other. The people in your life deserve just as much respect and love as your animals. No one deserves to be attacked, even if it is just by a tiny little Senegal parrot and they surely don’t deserved to be laughed at and told to “get over it.”  They also don’t deserve to have to listen to screaming or your ex-girlfriend’s bedroom talk if it really bothers them.
What do the people in your life deserve? Your understanding. Your empathy. Your willingness to work on a solution so that everyone came live comfortably together. They deserve for you to take their feelings seriously and come up with a training plan to change the bothersome parrot behavior. If the bothered party won’t take part in the training plan, then its their own problem that the parrot is being a pain. At least you were understanding of your roommate’s quality of life and tried to make a change for their benefit. At this point, I would say perhaps you are living with the wrong person, but not before.

In the end the quality of life will be better for everyone including your parrot if you care about the humans in your household. More importantly, you will never get to the “it’s me or the parrot” stage of your relationship.

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

1. Zinc poisoning
   

   Watch out for galvanized quick links.

Zinc is poisoning to parrots and can be ingested through metals that have been galvanized. The level of toxicity can cause feather plucking, gasteric distress or even death, depending on how much zinc gets in the bird’s system. Read more about it here.

2. Frayed rope toys

Easy for a parrot to get a toy caught and many a bird has lost a toe this way. It’s even possible for a parrot to get her neck wrapped in strings. Keep an eye on all materials that have the potential of fraying and leaving dangerous strings.

3. Choking

Watch out for anything small enough to swallow or to break down into pieces that can be swallowed and obstruct the throat. Some parrot will destroy things regularly without swallowing the bits, but others are a danger to themselves. Keep an eye on your parrot with new toys.

Glade oil candles should be kept away from bird cages.

4. Toxic fumes (from air fresheners, scented candles, Teflon, etc.)

Lots of things we put in the air are bad for us. And many of stories of dangers are overblown. However, as a rule of thumb, if it smells strongly to you, don’t put it or use it near your bird’s cage. (which the exception of over-heated teflon which doesn’t smell, but rapidly kills birds) And if it seems dangerous to your bird…well, there’s a reason why they used canaries in a coalmine. Maybe you shouldn’t have it in your house in the first place.

5. Poisoning (feeding poisonous or moldy foods)

Feed fresh food from dependable sources that don’t use pesticides. Be especially careful with fruits that bugs find really tasty, like strawberries, raspberries, etc.  Buy organic.

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

1. Keep it clean.

Clean cages don’t stink. So make sure you change out bowls and papers daily and thoroughly scrub parrot and disinfect cages once a month. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Some soap and water and a good spray down with bleach solution (4 oz per gallon of water). Let the cage dry in the sun.  Of course, this should be done while the parrot is elsewhere.

2. Pick up an Air Purifier

Consider adding an air purifier to your bird area. Dust removal can freshen up the air. If you don’t want to spend the money on a purifier, changer out you central air filter with a hepa filter and change no less than every 30 days.
3.  Bring in a Bouquet.

Fresh flowers are a great substitute for unnatural and often toxic spray. Set out some flowers out of the reach of you parrot and enjoy the scent.

4. Spice things up.

Like the smell of spices? A non-teflon coated pan of water simmering on the stove with cloves, cinnamon and ginger smells delicious!

5. Let the parrots do the work.

Cinnamon sticks make a great toy as well as an air freshner. Let your parrots destroy and scatter the cinnamon sticks and then enjoy the smell while vacuuming!

Anyone else have any tips and tricks? I would love to hear them!

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

From “A Parrot For Life” here is a list and some thoughts on why you might NOT want to get a parrot.

1. I don’t have enough time for a dog.

Sorry, but my parrots take way more time than my dogs. The eat more than kibble, require more direct attention, are more difficult to manage and unlike my dogs, require a lot more effort on my part to be clear about what is and is not acceptable behavior in the house. The dogs seemed pretty darn easy after 10 years of living with parrots.

2. I don’t have enough space for a bigger pet.

Okay, but if you live in apartment and have enough room for a bird, do you have enough of a sound barrier? Even a Senegal that screams all day can get you evicted if you neighbors And don’t forget that your parrot should be out of the cage frequently. Is there enough room for her to remain safe?

3. I can’t afford a bigger pet.

Then you can’t afford a parrot either. Even if you adopt a parrot you should expect to pay close to retail (and that will barely put a dent in the rescue facility’s expenses) So let’s say:

• Purchase: $1000
• Cage: $1000
• Monthly toys: $30
• Monthly food (pellets, nuts, fruits veggies) $50
• Vet check up: $200

=$2280 initial investment and $1160 annually.  Less expensive? You decide.

4. Parrots are so beautiful and one would look great in my home.

Parrot have their own ideas of aesthetics, so I hope you don’t mind the way the cockatoo decides to redecorate your pretty pink and white bathroom. Seriously, buy some parrot art, you’ll be happier.

5. Someone is giving me a parrot for free.

If your best friend decides to divorce her husband, considers the fact that you are single and then offers her husband to you, would you take him? Enough said.

How about the rest of you parrot peeps. Got any good ones to add?

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.

Psittacus erithacus Tyrannosaurus Vox, Flock Spokesparrot

I’ve now been engaged in 14 years of what you call “two-way communication through positive reinforcement and operant conditioning.” (Can’t you just call it training? I hear you going on all the time like you’re some sort of parrot “expert”. Please. When I met you, you didn’t even know how to use an event marker.) Anyway, I still think you are missing a few of the rules around here. So let me clarify them.

1. All food tastes better as soup. It’s a texture thing. It’s not “disgusting”. Don’t grumble about how many times you have to change the water. 

2. If you don’t want me to say something, you probably shouldn’t say it yourself so often, or at least not so emphatically. It seemed pretty important when you said it and I want to see if it works for me too. 

3. The dogs are the easiest members of this household to train and they respond better with rewards. We both know this. I’m going to throw them pellets when I train them. Get over it. 

4. Speaking of training, you’re not so completely untrainable yourself. If you answer the phone when I ring or race to the door when I do my superb imitation of a knock, please have the decency to acknowledge my accomplishment with something other than a glare. It took me all day to perfect those sounds while you were at work. 

5. We’re in this for the long haul though, so I would appreciate it if you would work a little harder at your trainability. I’ve learned some of your language, the least you can do is respond appropriately. Let’s start now, “almond?”

Sincerely,

Ty
Flock Spokesparrot

©2012 Heckled By Parrots. All Rights Reserved.