Parrot Behavior; Yes, No And Maybe

Parrot Behavior; Yes, No, And Maybe

It was a typical day, a typical caller and a typical request. My (typical) response was, "I understand. You want what everybody wants". No, I'm not a call-in therapist and the request wasn't for a good job and a loving relationship. I'm a parrot behavior and care consultant and the request was for a sweet, tidy and quiet parrot. Yeah right.

Some days I wish I had become a therapist like my mother wanted me to.

Does such a parrot exist? The answers are yes, no, and maybe. Yes, given the instinctive sociability of parrots the potential exists for virtually any parrot to be receptive to physical interaction. So, whether a bird is sweet or nasty is almost 100% a product of the way he is raised and handled. No, it is virtually impossible to control a birds messiness through behavior. (Don't panic! It can be controlled enviormentally.) Finally, where the volume level is ultimately set falls somewhere in the middle of nature and nurture. Some parrots are simply louder than others, and some level of control is possible. So, will your parrot be loud? you guessed it: Maybe.

Before we go into these topics in detail, it's important to point out two things. First, when I refer to "parrots" I'm talking about all members of the parrot family. This includes everything from the 25 gram Parrotlet to the four foot long Hyacinth Macaw. Cockatiels, cockatoos, Amazons, Greys, Pionus, Rosellas, Lovebirds, Ringnecks, Conures and even the adorable little Budgie are all parrots. The second important thing to remember is that parrots are not domesticated. While you will hear the phrase "domestic" all the time, and it is important to buy a domestic parrot, this means that it was born (Okay, hatched) in the USA. Domestication refers to breeding generation after generation of an animal so that it more completely suits our needs, like dogs and cats. Domesticated animals look and act differently than their wild counterparts. Parrots have not been domesticated, so knowing how to deal with , in this case temperment, messiness and noise, will depend on their natural behaviors - those behaviors exhibited by both wild and domestic parrots- and what we do with them. Lets begin with "the sweetness factor".

Yes, Most Parrots Can Be Sweet.

While parrots are very individual and a product of their environments, there are some generalizations that apply from species to species. These inherited behavioral traits enable wild parrots to better deal with their different ecosystems. I refer to this as the " behavioral range" for a particular species. Proper breeding and care will strongly influence where within this range an individual bird may fall.

An easy way to look at this is by using a scale of 1 to 100. For cuddliness a Yellow Naped Amazon may have a "sweetness potential " of 30-70 whereas an Umbrella Cockatoo may be 40-90. in other words, a cockatoo raised to be cuddly will be cuddlier than an amazon raised similarity, but the same amazon will be much cuddlier than a cockatoo where the 'too is bred by someone who does not socialize his babies well. This is why I have always felt that the breeder is more important than the breed in many cases.

So, while certain traits may be limited by nature, where a particular bird fall within his range is a product of nurture. This is why , in purchasing a parrot it is important to get to know the instinctive behavioral ranges of some of the birds that interest you. Use these generalizations as something of a middle ground and know that for any particular trait there is room for improvement if the bird is well bred and well kept.

Of course, sweetness can be looked at in the sense of the presence of a trait, like cuddling, or the absence of a trait, and that would be biting. Ah, yes. The dreaded application of the beak to flesh with the intent of doing epidermal rearrangement. Take heart, oh friends, as this is even more controlable than cudlliness. Whereas cuddliness is somewhat determined by species biting only slightly so. Simply put aggressive biting is not a natural behavior of adult parrots; we teach it to them.This usually happens because we approach a bird improperly or try to play with them when they don't want to be played with. They really don't want to bite, but we frequently fail to heed the "leave me alone" signs like walking away growling or gently holding our fingers. Parrots do not to bite in the wild and a properly raised and kept domestic parrot should not bite.

Here are some guidelines for having a sweet bird:

1. Know yourself. do you want a bird that is moderately cuddly or one that is permanently attached to your chest? Don't buy into absolutes or stereotypes, but you can play the odds a bit. Know what you want and learn what parrots' natural behaviors may best fit the bill.

2. Find a quality breeder (or a bird store that has obtained the bird from a quality breeder and has continued to raise them well). How a bird perceives human beings is immeasurably dependent upon their earliest experiences and memories. The best general rule here is that a bird that is loved will be loving. Look for birds that are eager for handling and are curious about you and the world around them. Avoid birds that seem frightened around even the calmest of strangers.

A birds feeding response should be stimulated by the sight of food and the person who feeds them. A bird that begs or whines constantly has probably learned that this is the only way to get food or attention, and may have been neglected. Since feeding is an integral part of the early human/parrot relationship (and, in the wild, parrot/parrot relationship), it is important that you buy a bird that was not gavage or tube feed, or that was forced to become food independent too early. This is very unnatural and frequently results in in a bird that is nervous and not trusting. Feeding and all that surrounds it will, in many ways, determine the quality of the breeder and the quality of their birds

Birds should be raised in a clean but not isolated or visually sterile environment. There should be things to see and other birds, people, and toys to play with. I know several breeders who have a rule with their children: no one watches television without a bird on their lap. Unfortunately, we're now raising a generation of parrots who think all people look like David Hasselhoff and Pamela Lee. We can never again let let our parrots see us in a red bathing suit.

The relationship you forge with a breeder or bird store should be more like that of a friend. There is a huge investment, physically, emotionally and financially, in this wonderful little critter; you will want to be involved with someone you can trust, someone you get a good feeling from, and someone who has made it abundantly evident that you can call them, and must call them whenever you have any questions.

Buy only a bird that is fully weaned and eating a good diet. Changing hand feeders can be very traumatic and, with certain birds have dire consequences. A bird will not bond better to you simply because you finished hand feeding. This is not how it exists in nature. Also remember to get health guarantee of no less than three days* and to immediately take the bird to a qualified avian veterinarian for a "well bird exam".

3. Your turn. It is very possible, in fact, very easy to undo all the good work done by a quality breeder. Since much of this good patterning and behavior was taught, especially in the areas of cuddling and biting, it can be forgotten if not reinforced and untaught if different information is given. Here are some basics for keeping a sweet bird sweet.

Never do anything that would threaten or scare a bird. Parrots are prey animals and are quick to become suspicious if they feel compromised. A bird must trust in order to bond, or even to remain tame.

Part of feeling safe and protected is knowing that they are not in charge. Parrots are flock animals and never actually achieve total independence. Older parrots may become flock leaders, but they remain dependent on the flock for all essentials of life. you can establish yourself as flock leader by teaching tricks, establishing boundaries, keeping the bird at your chest level or below and always using the "Up" and "Down" commands.

-Always trim the flight feathers of companion birds. Aside from the major safety concerns, a bird that is autonomous in its movements is much more likely to have dominance problems

-A healthy bird is a happy bird, Birds on bad diets do not want to snuggle; malnutrition is not a warm and fuzzy thing. I worked with a Greenwing macaw who became aggressive at about age 12. It turned out to be the long term effects of an all seed diet, (Frankly, he was lucky to have lived that long.) The owner started giving him better foods and he became sweet again, and has remained so.

-Maintain a fairly regular schedule when it comes to your birds. Don't be absolutely rigid or they will come to depend on exactly the same thing happening at exactly the same time, and when it doesn't, watch out! But a basic routine will make them feel safe yet teach them enough flexibility to handle the larger deviations like travel, strangers and the occasional late night at the office.

-Reward good behavior only. Cuddling is its own reward, but biting should be ignored. Keep your reactions to a minimum. No big, dramatic displays of your anger. Just stop playing with them for a while.

-Draw the line between biting and mouthing. Some people will tell you that a bird should never put it's mouth on you, but that's wrong. A bird's mouth is like a third foot and the tip of the tongue is very sensitive and contains most of their touch organs. Mouthing is common in parrotdom and it should not be excluded from your interactions, Just draw a clear line at a certain amount of pressure and stop all playing if the bird either mouths too hard or gets too excited. They do understand the difference,

-Know your bird's moods. If you know that your bird is all wound up, don't play with him just then. Bad habits form easily and are hard to break, so avoid situations that are likely to have a bad outcome.

-Many birds go through a beaky phase around weaning time. This is a good time to set the limits of mouth behavior. And a good time to reinforce these limits is when they go through their defiant stage (the birdie "terrible twos") starting at between 6 months and a year, depending on the type of bird.

-Birds need three types of attention. Direct Attention is just you and the bird. Lots of eye contact and touching no distractions. Indirect Attention is the same thing, but with distractions. You're playing with the bird, but you're also reading, watching TV or talking on the phone. No less important is Ambient Attention, which is frequently called "out time", This is where the bird is out of his cage and in the flow of the family hubbub. At a minimum, birds need 30-45 minutes per day of combined Direct and Indirect Attention. Basically, they need to be
touched, preened or scratched for at least a half-hour per day. On top of that, they need to be out of their cage and within view of you (Ambient Attention) for about 3 hours per day.

-When you do get bitten, which may happen every now and then, look to see what happened. Probably 90% of bites are easily preventable/avoidable. In most of these cases that bird is just reacting to something you did. I can't remember the last time I didn't immediately see what I did wrong. Like most people, my hindsight is outstanding.

All of these factors, combined, should give you a pretty sweet bird.

NO, there aren't a lot of tidy parrots.

Birds are naturally messy. Period. Clean, but messy. If they weren't how would their environments get fertilized and replanted?

One behavioral aid that you do have here is potty training. This is a rather simple matter and there are lots of good books and articles available on the subject. The one suggestion that I would make is to allow for the bird to poop in the cage whenever he wants. Being very social and desirous of your praise, some birds train too well and will not poop without being told to do so, no matter how much fiber they eat.

Aside from potty training, how neat your bird may be is up to you, and here are some hints:

1. Birds and carpet don't mix. If the area around the bird's cage is carpeted, try putting down newspaper or plastic. What we did is to make cage pads with particle board and self sticking floor tiles. Just go to the lumber store and get particle board cut to a size that is one foot wider on all sides than the cage. Cover the top with "press and stick" vinyl tiles and you've done it; a decorative carpet saver. I even put a little moulding around the edges.

2. Cages with seed catchers are helpful, but they don't do the job completely. Especially if you have a cockatoo that thinks life is a big game of "strawberry toss.".

3. Small clean-ups do wonders. Keep a spray bottle of water near the cage and do frequent "spritz and wipe" jobs.

4. Use wider, as opposed to deeper, bowls for food. This may prevent the famous "beak sweep" that birds do when looking for favorite morsels. An added bonus to this is that it seems to help in diet improvement as some birds don't like to stick their faces into deep bowls of moist food, Amazons excepted, of course.

5. Neat is one thing but clean is another. If you're comfortable with bird toys (and pieces thereof), walnut shells, feathers and dander strewn about the place, fine, but food particles and bird droppings must be cleaned regularly. Fortunately, birds are very clean and tend to evacuate in a few chosen spots, but these must be cleaned regularly for the birds health as well as yours.

6. Although not as decorative as ground corncob or walnut shells, newspaper is a much better liner for your cages, play stands and perches. It is cheap, easy to work with, available and doesn't contribute to the messiness like a particulated substrate material. When our birds are "done" with their newspaper, we just put it out with the recycling! But the best things about newspaper are that it does not promote bacterial growth and it makes it very easy to see what foods your bird has discarded as well as to examine the bird's droppings, which can frequently assist in spotting illness, Paper must be changed once, if not twice daily.

Make the hardware store your oasis, If your bird tosses food in a certain direction, have them cut you a piece of plexiglass, drill 4 holes in it and attach it to the side of the cage with stainless steel nuts and bolts (not galvanized). Call it your "Broccoli Backstop", patent it and retire a
millionaire. Don't be afraid to experiment with materials and applications that can safely ease your workload.

MAYBE they scream, maybe they don't.

While messiness is universal, biting is unnatural and cuddliness is mostly environmental, noise is both environmental and species related.

In general, the bigger the bird, the bigger the capacity for noise. This is just a physiological fact. I have heard a loud Hyacinth macaw and it is something! And after my Moluccan cuts loose I have to go around the house and straighten all the pictures. On the other hand, the Hyacinth personality doesn't seem to lend itself to excessive noise. However, the concept of a quiet Moluccan is more unlikely than that of a lasting Mideast peace.

But noise can not and should not be eliminated altogether. It is an important part of a parrot's communicative and expressive process. It can be limited to those natural functions (greeting the day, calling in the flock, energetic releases, and so forth), but if your circumstances will not allow for several minutes of noise per day then the types of birds available to you will be severely limited, "Stuffed" comes to mind.

The thing about all the topics of this article, noise, messiness, cuddliness and biting, is that they're all relative. We thought our Dusky conure was loud, and then we got our Moluccan. Now it's, "What conure? I don't hear a conure." So you have to know your limits and those of your surroundings. However, there comes a point where subjectivity ends and no debate is needed to say that a bird is LOUD. Large macaws, medium to large cockatoos, many amazons and conures should not be in particularly noise sensitive homes. Remember, a "quiet cockatoo" is not one that makes small sounds all day; it's one that makes big sounds for a small part of the day. Believe me, your neighbor will know the difference.

Some of the naturally quieter birds, and don't hold me to this, are Eclectus parrots, smaller (Pyrrhura genus) conures, Pionus parrots, Poicephalus parrots (Meyers, Jardines, Senegal, Cape) and some of the smallest amazons. Mini-macaws, smaller cockatoos, medium sized amazons and the smaller South American parrots (Caigues, small Aratinga genus conures) fall somewhere in the middle.

In order to keep the 'din to a min', keep the following in mind:

-Aside from instinctive vocalizing, additional loud noises are a form of communication. In other words, they mean something. If you know your bird and do some experimenting, you can figure out what it is.

-Much screaming is for attention. This can be avoided by not buying bird that was taught to do this not teaching them. Buy a bird that is independent and can play by himself establish a routine for interaction. If a bird knows that you're going to play with him at a certain time, it is less likely that he'll demand it. As we have said before buy a good companion bird and be a good bird companion which means...

-Never reward screaming. Just like with biting, the fact that screaming produces a desired result is a lesson they will learn quickly, forget slowly and use to make us miserable in the interim.

-Set a time when it is okay to scream. (I was talking about the birds, but if you feel that it is necessary to schedule a little scream time for yourself then let 'er rip.) Birds are very energetic and a self-confident parrot will want to let off some steam every so often. Participate in your bird's exuberance at a time when your neighbors are less likely to show up at your door with a shotgun and a roasting pan. Again, just knowing that they will get time to scream is usually enough to convince them to wait.

-Control your bird with your energy. Parrots are highly empathic and can sense your moods. To calm a bird, be calm. Move slowly and speak in low, measured tones. Throwing a fit while the bird is throwing a fit is not only positive reinforcement (They find it to be quite entertaining.) but it only serves to feed the demon that has temporarily possessed your sweet little baby.

-Dark rooms, isolation cages, squirting with water, closets or the like do not work. There is no 'punishment' in the wild and birds do not understand it. Birds scream for a reason and unless your bird is screaming because he wants to be stuck in the shower, this will not address the problem. If a bird is screaming for attention, assuming he is getting a reasonable amount of attention, the only way to deal with it is to not give in. If the bird is objectively neglected, then apologize profusely and give him more attention.

It is critical to point out that biting, screaming and many other 'bad' behaviors are just our birds telling us something is wrong. Many trainers and some behaviorists, eager to give people the answers that they want, will provide simple behavior modification or fixes' like squirting a bird or dropping a biting bird. These methods both threaten a birds sense of security and fail to address the underlying cause of the problem. Anyone can 'train' a bird to be quite but whatever caused him to be noisy in the first place will still be there and will manifest itself elsewhere. Source based behaviorism is term solution to most problems.

The truth is we're used to domesticated animals. Our dogs and cats bear little physical or psychological to wolves and lions that still wander our wild territories. They have been bred to be good compaions and have retained little or none of their instinct or survival skills. Parrots have all of their insticts and you must keep these in mind when dealing with all aspects of parrot behavior.

So there you have it, a relatively simple way to have a frequently cuddly and occasionally quiet bird,..,. who still tries to make a mess, Hey, two out of three ain't bad, right?