How I met my Royal caique

I’ve always love spending time in pet stores and whenever I shopped for my cockatiels I would wander about the store to admire and play with the other eager potential pets. As I approached the specialized bird enclosure I noticed a gorgeous little parrot alone inside a cage near the door. She was hanging on the side of her cage closet to me and made it quite obvious and she wanted out to play.

Immediately I went to her and we interacted through the bars. What was she? A conure? A lovebird? I had never seen her species of bird before and asked an employee what type of parrot she represented.

“A caique,” the employee said, “specifically a white-bellied caique. Would you like me to let her out?” Of course I did!

Apparently, the little caique parrot felt the same; as soon as she was placed on my hand she quickly, without any hesitation ran up my arm and snuggled under my chin. As clique as it sounds this little bird stole my heart that afternoon. She tucked herself as close as possible and made soft cooing sounds as I carefully caressed her. I had never experienced such an interaction with any bird before.

That little caique parrot never entered her pet store cage again. She was expensive and I was concerned to spend so much money; but when I imagined leaving without her no amount would have mattered. I happily spend the required sum, reluctantly scooped her from my neck, and enclosed her safely inside a box provided by the store. She chirped and whistled questions from the dark space and I reassured her that she would be safe and happy and loved. She seemed to understand. I arrived home with my new companion a short time later and introduced her to her new home and family. Within a few hours she had named herself, Royal, and she is royalty.

She’s the queen of my heart.

Baby Parrot Names

Recently I mentioned that the young parrots at my house had been given new names. This created a few puzzled responses from folks. I thought I would elaborate as I now know a bit more about how the new names were chosen.

The double yellow headed Amazon parrot was previously called Joker. His name was given by the breeder with the thought that it might be changed at some point by the folks at his new home at the Kaytee Learning Center. This was the same situation for the blue throated macaw formerly known as Jackson.

The staff at Kaytee had a brainstorming session and came up with some clever ideas.

Joker’s new name is “Wrigley” as in Wrigley’s double mint gum…..double yellow headed Amazon…get it?

Jackson’s name was changed to Beni, because this is the name of the region in Bolivia where blue throated macaws are found in the wild. This macaw species is quite endangered. Connecting his name to the plight of his wild cousins can help raise awareness to parrot conservation.

So there you have it! Beni and Wrigley. I have to admit their new names have grown on me.

Barbara Heidenreich
www.GoodBirdInc.com
Copyright Good Bird Inc 2009

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Who Wants a Parrot that Talks?

Everyone! Well, sometimes it seems that way. One of the popular requests I receive is for information on training a parrot to talk. The truth is there is no guarantee that you can get a parrot to talk. Otherwise we would think of great talking parrots as a dime a dozen and everyone would have one. You can be a great trainer, but part of the equation is the bird and its learning history.

If you are one of those people who has a parrot who is trying to copy sounds, all I can say is “Woohoo!” You have it easy. All you have to do is create the situations in which your bird is likely to make a few sounds, reinforce and then put the sounds on cue.

One of the parrots staying at my house for some training is a double yellow headed Amazon parrot, newly renamed “Wrigley” (Yes, Jackson and Joker have new names. Jackson is now Beni and Joker is Wrigley) Wrigley is already showing an interest in talking. One thing that helps is that my yellow naped Amazon parrot Delbert talks up a storm. So Wrigley hears Delbert’s phrases and sayings throughout the day.

This morning when Wrigley stepped onto my hand to come out of his cage he blurted out “How are you!” I must admit I had a little tingle in my stomach. It is exciting when a parrot starts to pick up sounds you like. And one of my training mantras is “if it happened once, it will happen again” I suspect I will be hearing a lot more of our Wrigley in the days to come.

Those of you who do have parrots that talk probably have noticed that they often get chatty when there is a loud continuous sound such as the vacuum cleaner or water running. This is a great way to encourage your parrot to vocalize so that you can reinforce sounds you like. Here is a little video clip of Wrigley practicing his various sounds with the vacuum running in the back ground.....and a slight interruption from Beni. Enjoy!

Barbara Heidenreich
www.GoodBirdInc.com
Copyright Good Bird Inc 2009

The right training tool: Sid’s Balance & Flying Ethics

Continuing on from the last post, it has been a very uneven path with Piper acclimating outdoors. At times he has become very relaxed, and at one point was flying to the door when I was getting ready to go out, so he could come along. But it takes very little to cause a setback — anything from a new spook outdoors to not having had the opportunity to take excursions for a week or so.

I have heard comments from some that the reason I was not freeflying Piper sooner is because I don’t use weight management (although you are never supposed to control weight on a bird under 1 year old!) Piper’s recall is excellent indoors, as well as outdoors in our routine locations when he is on a harness (short 8-10 ft recalls). His focus is usually better than Carly’s, and as with her we time training sessions before meals to optimize food motivation. (Actually, I’ve rarely seen Piper NOT motivated by food, dinner or not!)

Acclimation is one part of training, and for us this is the hardest part. One of his early freeflights resulted in an extended chase by crows (off and on for hours) and that didn’t set us up for quick success for sure. His manner of flying after that was not relaxed, and seeing him flying with Carly was a huge contrast; one was a bird relaxed and aware of her surroundings, the other was a bird in a state of fear, flying straight and fast with unpredictable turns. Increasing his comfort level outdoors became a primary concern.

I’m reminded of a list that Sid Price presented once, in a talk entitled “It’s Not the Scale, It’s the Balance.” It’s also in his blog article on Food and Weight Management. On one side you have a training challenge, things that work against a bird’s motivation. On the other side you have a set of tools you can use to accomplish the goal, that increase a bird’s motivation.

Things that affect the motivation of the bird include not only its desire for food (its degree of hunger) but also:

• The reinforcement history of the bird.

– Does the bird fully understand that the executing the cued behavior will result in a desired reward?

— Has the trainer always been honest in their reinforcement of behavior in the past or for example was a large visible reward offered by the trainer to elicit a behavior switched out for a small treat when the behavior was completed?

• What is the relationship like between the trainer and the bird?
• Does the trainer have a history of positive rewarding experiences with the bird?

…
These are just a couple of the things that contribute to the “will perform” side of the balance. Meanwhile on the other side of our imaginary balance are all the things that are telling the bird not to perform the behavior.

• Is this a new or poorly trained behavior?
• Is the bird physically capable of performing the behavior?
• Is the trainer being clear communicating what they are expecting of the bird? Clear, concise, consistent cues are essential components of this clear communication.
• Is the bird in good health and not exhausted by behaviors performed earlier in the training session?
• Is the bird in a novel environment with new distracting noises and/or sights?
  Generalization of behaviors in varied situations is an essential step in training any bird. When entering novel situations a trainer should relax their criteria for the behavior and build the bird’s confidence.

The key is to use the right tool for the job. That first involves identifying the problem by looking beyond weight as the only option. If the real problem is environmental distractions, lowering weight is a very inefficient (or even ineffective) way to solve it; it could take a very large reduction to overcome the problem when it could more directly and ethically be solved by eliminating and then gradually increasing the distractions. If the problem is an unreliable new behavior, repetition is by far the most effective solution.

Another ethical consideration I have pondered also concerns Piper’s acclimation outdoors. Even after a year of going outside regularly he is still much more relaxed, animated, and playful indoors. He is rarely eager to go out, though once we are walking on the beach or sitting at the pool he sings and whistles. When we come home from work, he gets animated and sings when we turn into our driveway, and increasingly so as we park the car and walk up the path to our apartment. He’s the only animal I’ve ever had who actually appears to get excited about going home.

So I have had to ask myself, with all the risks, why train him to freefly? With Carly I decided early on I would go as far with flight and recall training as her skill and comfort level allowed, and I would do everything possible to minimize the risks. It was always about her enrichment, not about me wanting to do this as a sport. With the inherent risks of freeflying, should it be encouraged in a bird who seems to be just fine without it? I don’t have an answer to that yet. I believe it is certainly wrong to push a bird in that direction if it’s a poor candidate for freeflying, whether that’s because of poor skills, an unsuitable temperament, or whatever. So like with Carly — initially NO skills — I’m going to take this at Piper’s pace and see what happens. (Another post from Sid related to this is The Right Bird for the Job — The Right Job for the Bird. I have seen these decisions in play with the birds in the San Diego Zoo show, with everything from performing talkers to flying behaviors.)

The first few months Carly took walks with me on the beach (while still young) she was only relaxed if she was on my “shore side.” Now she dives over the waves, chases seagulls, and buzzes surfers in the water. As long as we can do this without undue risk I think it’s definitely worth it. (Much of our training is about minimizing risk — responding to an emergency recall whistle, not flying to strangers — and though the latter was especially challenging it’s no longer something she seeks out.)

With Piper I’ll see how he adapts to being outdoors in general, and how the manner of his startle response develops over time. The training routine is the same as with Carly, just with less attention to flight skills and more to acclimation. He joined the family first and foremost to be a companion with Carly. If that includes flying, wonderful. If not, they enjoy each other immensely many more hours each day than we’d ever be spending out on the beach. I won’t risk that just because it would be cool to have another freeflyer. But I’ll give him every opportunity to progress as far as he wants to.

Piper’s Outdoor Acclimation

I am training Piper for recall with the same general methods as I did with Carly, but whereas with Carly I had to take quite a lot of time training flight skills because she was never fledged, Piper came ready to launch. However his disposition is entirely different than hers and he spooks very easily and often outdoors (and indoors some also). It has taken time to acclimate him to specific locations so his behavior is relaxed, but he still becomes alarmed by a variety of things. Carly is an extremely calm bird outdoors, so spook flights were never an issue. Her alarm response is typically just an alert posture, or at most flying up and doing a short loop (5-15 feet) then back down to me. Having seen several losses and near-losses of free flighted Greys after spooking, it’s a very high priority of mine to ensure Piper is confident and secure outside before flying with Carly.

This puts us in a bit of a catch-22 however: the biggest reinforcer, normally, for wearing a harness is not there. Going outside isn’t a reinforcer but instead needs to be trained systematically. But he needs to wear a harness for that acclimation. (I don’t think th experience of being outdoors in a carrier or aviary is the same at all; they are quite protected spaces. Piper does fine on our enclosed balcony that is up in the trees with an open view of the sky.)

Piper puts on a harness well, but does not like to keep it on long. I just can’t seem to find reinforcers big enough, and can’t use going outside as a reward. When reading one of ShanLung’s recent blog posts I was reminded how his Grey Tinkerbell was so prone to spooks, indoors as well as outdoors, which was his main motivation for flying her on a harness with a long line (with a controlled recall). To do that he designed his own harness that is very soft, light, and a bit stretchy, so it can be felt as little as possible when on. I already use a hand made custom design, but it is still more bulky than the Tink harness.

When emailing about some of our experiences with acclimation and spook flights, ShanLung generously offered to make me a nice comfy Tink harness for Piper. I’m hoping the Tinkerbell UltraLite will be more comfortable and make the acclimation process easier. I’m also going to begin training flying up in a small loop (like Carly does) so he may perhaps learn there is a controlled way to respond to something startling.

So when our package from Oman arrives, we will try the Tinkerbell UltraLite model of harness (sans the long line). And I think I owe a parrot conservation organization a nice donation

More thoughts on the subject of outdoor acclimation, as well as weight management and training ethics are in the next post, The Right Training Tool.

The Part with the Caveats:

ShanLung and I are always stressing ATTACH THE HARNESS TO YOUR BODY, and that the bird must be well trained in staying with you and recalling before using a harness. I was amused by this post of his, which he calls the Cargo Cult Rant, comparing people who don’t consider the bonding and training part of it to indigenous south Pacific islanders who thought it was the landing strip itself that caused food cargo planes to land during WWII:

‘using’ harness without the understanding and training is like South Pacific islanders building airstrip and wondering why planes do not land with cargo for them.

(The history of cargo cults is a rather fascinating example of magical thinking.)

So to reiterate, harnesses must only be used on birds who are trained to ride on your hand or shoulder, and who have a good trained recall, and have been acclimated on wearing the harness indoors or another familiar place.

See the complete Harness Training series of blog posts and the Recall Training page for more details.

The Story of Snowball’s Rise to Viral Fame

Training a Parrot to Love a Towel

How much do I love this behavior? Let me count the ways. Training a parrot to look forward to being wrapped in a towel has become one of my favorite behaviors to train. I think in part because I know most parrots at some point in their lives will likely be wrapped in a towel for a medical procedure. Knowing that I can reduce stress that may be part of that situation by using positive reinforcement, makes it easy to add this behavior to my list of training goals.

In my DVD Training a Parrot for the Veterinary Exam, I go through the approximations of training this behavior with a yellow collared macaw and also a hybrid macaw. Both were re-homed birds who had a history of unpleasant experiences with towels. This makes it a little more challenging to train the behavior, but certainly not impossible. It just means taking it slower, using smaller approximations and of course lots of positive reinforcers. And as you can see in the video, both birds learn towels are now associated with good things.

One of the great things about working with young parrots, is often they have not yet been exposed to things in a way that might create a fear response. Both Jackson and Joker, the young parrots at my house, have seen a towel. But I have been very careful to make sure all towel encounters include positive reinforcers.

Joker thinks towels mean you get to roll around on your back and play with toys. Jackson thinks towels means you will get your head scratched for a nice chunk of time. My own yellow naped Amazon parrot, Delbert will fly to a towel if he sees one in your hand. He has had so many pleasant experiences associated with a towel he can’t wait to get into one.

People often ask what happens to all that great training when you go to the veterinarian and the parrot is restrained in the towel for a not so pleasant procedure. Will a traumatic experience cause the behavior to fall apart? The answer is “It depends.” If the experience is extremely difficult, the bird may need to be retrained on the behavior. However if you bird has a very long history of positive reinforcement with the towel, one not so great experience will probably not cancel out the plethora of wonderful times he has had in the towel.

Of course the best approach is to train the behavior to the point that actual restraint in the towel is not a problem for your parrot. Jackson and Joker are well on their way towards that goal.

Barbara Heidenreich
www.GoodBirdInc.com
Copyright 2009

Parrots Who Can’t Wait To Do What You Ask

Joker the yellow naped Amazon parrot made me proud today. As mentioned in an earlier blog, both Joker and Jackson the blue throated macaw showed some hesitancy in returning to their cages after a few hours spent outside their cages training and playing. With some positive reinforcement training Jackson got back on track rather quickly. Joker was a bit more challenging. This is because he primarily works for food treats. While play, toys and attention can be good reinforcers for him, when the behavior is a tough one, treats are by far the best solution in his case. However this means timing training sessions for when he is most receptive to a goodie. Jackson on the other hand will do practically anything for a head scratch at most anytime.

Usually when I open Joker’s cage door, the first thing he wants to do is stretch his wings and fly around for a bit. I usually wait until after he has expended some of the energy before seeing if he is interested in a training session.

However this morning he stuck around the cage, while I removed bowls, cleaned, etc. “I thought to myself “Hmmmmm, maybe this is a sign he is ready for a session right now.” I pulled some treats out of my pocket and sure enough he was ready for some training. We went through a number of repetitions of him entering the cage for a treat and exiting for no treat. What made me so proud was that instead of leaning away or even sitting upright, he began leaning towards the cage door as if to say “Hurry up! I want to get inside that cage!” I love it when positive reinforcement creates a parrot that is an eager participant, one that can’t wait to do the behavior because he knows it will result in great consequences.

This is also Joker’s response to a crate as well. He almost can’t wait to go inside one. Even though at the moment training sessions are timed for when Joker is most interested in treats, overtime that will be less important. All those excellent training sessions will add up and Joker will learn returning to the cage, or entering a crate anytime you are cued is worthwhile.

Barbara Heidenreich
www.GoodBirdInc.com
Copyright 2009

Training Two Parrots at the Same Time

Working in free flight bird shows for so many years, you quickly learn or develop techniques to work with more than one bird at a time. At one zoo where I consulted we flew 17 macaws together as a flock. They all lived together in one giant aviary. But we taught them all to wait on perches to be cued to step up. Otherwise we had 17 birds flinging themselves at us in hopes of getting a treat. Yes positive reinforcement can be pretty powerful. But when used to reinforce what you want, you can change chaos to cooperation.

Training two parrots I suppose is a cakewalk compared to 17. But even so, training more than one bird at the same time presents some challenges. With the two flighted baby parrots at my house, one of the challenges is that one bird, Jackson the macaw, is always looking for a cue that might mean he gets to come over and get a treat or get some attention. This means poor Joker, the Amazon parrot, gets the short end of the stick if I am not careful. If I cue Joker to fly to me and Jackson sees it, he will try to get to me first and make sure there is no room for Joker.

To address this I look for moments and situations in which Joker can see my cue and Jackson can’t. I also look for ways to reinforce the bird not needed at the moment for staying put. For example, I might get the macaw engaged in playing with a toy, or reinforce him with treats for sitting calmly nearby while I work with the other parrot.

When I work with Joker on entering a crate, I reinforce Jackson for sitting on my left hand. Joker walks into the crate on his own and I can reinforce him with my right hand. Both parrots are relaxed and comfy and earning reinforcers for doing behaviors I want. If I only need Jackson, usually Joker can easily be redirected to some fun toys as seen in the photo above.

Some people opt for only working with one bird at a time. This is certainly an excellent option. However I found that one bird will pace if left in the cage and ends up being a big distraction to the other parrot. Therefore having them both out and reinforcing one for staying out of the way, or training while one is preoccupied has worked well for these two parrots.

Barbara Heidenreich
www.GoodBirdInc.com
Copyright 2009

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