The Baby Parrots Take a Trip

What an adventurous day. The baby parrots took a small excursion….. planned of course. So far both Wrigley and Beni have had the chance to spend time in each room of my house and also the back yard. They now appear relaxed and comfortable in these environments. This means it was time for us to push the envelope and try a completely new environment. I had done quite a bit of training to get both birds ready for spending more than just a few minutes in a crate for travel. And it paid off. Both birds entered their crates without hesitation. I had already worked on walking them around the house in the crates, and also placing the crates in the car and taking a short drive around the block. Today we took it a bit further and drove to my friend’s house.

I packed a familiar perch, lots of treats and a few toys. My friend had recently hurt her ankle and was stuck in her room with her foot propped up on a pillow. Time for some feathered entertainment! I placed the crated parrots on the bed. I set up the portable perch. Now it was time to open the crate doors.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how what you think will be so predictable often ends up being exactly the opposite. I was so sure Wrigley the double yellow headed Amazon would be calm as a cucumber and Beni the blue throated macaw would be wide eyed about the new environment. Instead Beni could have cared less. He was just thrilled to be hanging out with people and sucking up tons of attention. He flew with confidence to the perch, to my hand and to the top of the crate. To him it was just another room.

Wrigley on the other hand had to take a moment to observe his new environment. He then launched into a few loops around the room before finally landing on his familiar perch. But once that moment passed he was all about exploring, flying to my friend for treats and playing with toys. That was actually my favorite part. The fact that both parrots were comfortable enough in just a few minutes to play with toys was a great sign. It also meant all that time spent practicing behaviors in new environments was working. Beni and Wrigley are learning to generalize their behaviors. This is an important goal for these future ambassadors for their species.

Although they did really well in the new environment we did have one small set back. The crate training suffered a small breakdown. Beni was not so eager to enter the crate for the return trip home. This means the short drive was too big of an approximation for him.

Training Beni to crate has been a challenge from the start. I think this is because his first experience in the crate was a 4 hour drive from the breeder’s place to mine. This was more than he was ready for at the time. This has meant a lot of work on this behavior, and no doubt we will spend another session just practicing some repetitions of going in and out of the crate for our next sessions, and building our approximations from there. Even though there was a slight glitch, the good news is we can get back on track. Thankfully, even less than perfect situations can be turned around with a little positive reinforcement.

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

Parrot Training in New Environments

If you are a parrot training fan, you have probably already trained your bird to do a few cute things like maybe wave or turn around on cue. Have you ever tried to ask your parrot to present those behaviors in a new environment? Such as a bird club meeting or at a friend’s house or maybe the veterinary hospital. For some parrots this can be very challenging. Suddenly your outgoing social butterfly freezes up and seems to have forgotten all the things you have taught him to do.

In truth he probably hasn’t forgotten, he is just not yet learned to present behaviors in other environments. The process of teaching an animal to present a behavior under many different conditions is called generalization.

Beni, the blue throated macaw has done so well with harness training it was time to let him experience some new environments while wearing his spiffy blue harness. First we visited different rooms in my house. The bathroom was particularly fun. He got quite excited by his reflection in the mirror. I think he even tried to say “hello” in macaw language.

He did well in each of the rooms of the house. They weren’t much different from what he was used to. He would take treats, and fly to me and other perches on cue. However when we ventured into the back yard, it was a different story. This environment was quite unusual for him. So we took it slow. For the first few days I kept the sessions short and gradually walked him to more areas of the yard. He accepted a few head scratches and treats after some initial looking around, but did not look quite as relaxed as I wanted.

Finally today he started to seem a bit more comfy. I thought now would be a good time to try a favorite strategy of mine. One great way to help a bird move onto the next steps toward generalization is to cue a super simple behavior over and over a few times. This gives the bird something to focus on that he knows earns some positive reinforcers. What Beni does best is fly to me. I grabbed a familiar perch and placed it in the yard. With the leash safely wrapped around my wrist, Beni recalled like a champ. Next thing you know his body language looked much more relaxed and he began to show an interest in exploring this new world with confidence.

For Beni, recall is an easy behavior. For your parrot it might be something like saying “hello” or lifting his wings or foot when cued. Any behavior your parrot offers readily is ideal for this strategy. Your bird may need some time to desensitize to the environment first before he will present behavior, just like Beni did. But after just a few sessions of looking around, Beni was ready.

Once Beni has a few more days of relaxed body language in the back yard, it will be onto another new location and a repeat of the process. Eventually Beni will learn that presenting behaviors in any environment is easy and earns you favorite things like head scratches and treats.

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

Harness Training Your Parrot

Ah, the harness. So many people want to train this behavior. And for many parrots this is a very difficult behavior, and for trainers a behavior that can try your patience. However this doesn't mean a caregiver should give up on positive reinforcement to get there. It just means preparing to take some time, maybe a lot of time.But for me that is absolutely A-OK.

For those of you who have been to my seminars and seen video clips of parrots sitting for blood draws and perched patiently while they receive an injection, you no doubt realized those are behaviors that were trained with tiny, tiny approximations and took some time to train. I recently read the manuscript to a friends book in which she said "you can be sure that shaping with the smallest approximations is what is behind the most impressive behaviors"

We have a tendency to take for granted that our parrots should do things we want, when we want. Especially when it comes to behavior we accomplish easily with other species such as our dogs.

I implore people wanting to train this behavior to take a moment to pause and relax and say "it's OK if it takes me two years to train this behavior" It probably wont take you that long, but it will let you calm down and not feel pressured to get the behavior done right this second. Go at the pace your bird dictates works for him.

I often tell people what if this was a lion or a porcupine....what would you do if that animal did not want to go in the harness? : ) (I mention the porcupine because at one zoo where I consulted we did work on training a porcupine to wear a harness) Force will likely cause aggressive behavior or an animal that wont come near you. And as has been mentioned before, our goal with positive reinforcement is to create an eager participant and in turn continue to foster that wonderful relationship we can have with an animal.

I too have been working on this behavior. I started maybe 1 year ago with one of my amazon parrot's and have worked on the behavior off and on. I went through a lot of experimentation. Different harnesses, different shaping plans, etc to try to find the easiest methods. I have also worked on this behavior with the two young parrots currently at my house. One has mastered the behavior and one is still learning. Once everyone (and another one I want to start on this behavior) is trained I will have a comprehensive teaching tool for this behavior. However here is a sneak peak to get people started. It doesn't have all the steps outlined, but it may help you get some ideas.

The bottom line is that difficult behaviors require small approximations, using high value reinforcers, training when the animal is most receptive to those reinforcers, going at the animals pace.....and time. Be patient. You have many years ahead of you with your parrot.

PS The harness I am using is the Aviator Harness.

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

Preventing the One Person Parrot

There was a recent discussion on my yahoo group about innate vs. learned behaviors. It seems the two are not so mutually exclusive. There are many behaviors we tend to chalk up to genetics and assume we can never change. But the good news is even these so called hard wired behaviors are often heavily influenced by experience. This is especially important as we work to shape the behavior of our parrots.

Beni the blue throated macaw is a great example. As his photos show, he can be a love……once he gets to know you. Guess who he knows best now? Me. I spend more time with him than anyone. And all those wonderful head scratching sessions, treat fueled training times and fun play encounters make me a special person to Beni. Although I certainly enjoy this, Beni has more important things to do in his future than just be my buddy. Soon he will be teaching others about responsible pet ownership and parrot conservation. This means Beni needs to play nice with others too.

Even though parrots may have a tendency to choose one person as their preferred companion, I know that I can use positive reinforcement training to teach Beni that it is fun to interact with other people as well.

Recently one of the staff members of the Kaytee Learning Center came to visit the baby parrots. This was the perfect opportunity to help both Beni and Wrigley learn that other people are also great fun. John will be the baby parrots primary trainer at Kaytee. I was very pleased to see Wrigley warm up to John right away. Within the first hour he was rolling over onto his back for play sessions and flying to John on cue.

Beni on the other hand was not so sure. He did fly to John that first session, but showed body language that indicated he was not so sure about the situation. One thing that was not helping is if I was in close proximity to Beni. Because Beni can fly, if he saw me, he would often choose to come to me instead of John. While I am flattered all that great training has worked to build a strong relationship with Beni, I really want Beni to respond positively to other people. To help Beni and John succeed, I decided it would be better if I did not interact with Beni for the rest of the visit. Instead John would let Beni out of his cage, and also deliver all treats and toys. And it worked!

Eventually we were able to work up to a session in which Beni enjoyed lots of head scratches from John. The goal was to reduce my value to Beni and increase John’s. It did mean I had to temporarily reduce my interactions with Beni a bit, and let John do more fun things with him.

The good news is even though Beni may want to choose one person as his favorite, we can teach him he doesn’t have too. Everyone is a blast.

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

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

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

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