The contest is over and the winners have been selected. It was indeed a difficult decision. There were over 175 videos entered and yes I watched every single one…several times : ) I have to admit this contest turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined. I was laughing to the point of tears on several occasions, but the most rewarding part was watching so many people enjoying their parrots. The good news is we plan to keep the site up. Although we will change the text about the contest, people can continue to share their special parrots at http://www.besttalkingparrot.com/. One viewer pointed out that they enjoyed being able to view so many talking parrot clips at one location. I agree.
Onto the winners! This contest included an amateur and professional parrot category. Our professional parrot category only had one entry. Therefore Clover the Congo African Grey parrot from Turkey takes the prize in this category. The amateur category had lots of competition. We let your votes decide and the front runner when it came to votes was Mishka the Congo African Grey parrot. Mishka resides in South Africa and carries a lovely accent as he announces “He would like to go to the bathroom.” Congratulations to our top prize winners. They will receive a gift certificate to Good Bird Inc products, prizes provided by KAYTEE and five free signed copies of the soon to be released “Train Your Parrot To Talk” DVD/CDROM.
In addition to Mishka and Clover, there were a number of other notable entries. The following parrots and their families will receive three signed copies of the “Train Your Parrot To Talk” DVD/CDROM.
Ariel the Panama Amazon Parrot
Bibi the Congo African Grey Parrot
Bongo the Congo African Grey Parrot
Bowie the Indian Ring Necked Parakeet
Casey the Yellow Naped Amazon Parrot
Disco the Budgerigar
Einstein the Talking Texan African Grey Parrot
Emma the African Grey Parrot
Freddie the Yellow Naped Amazon Parrot
Kona the Green Winged Macaw
Koolaid the Parrotlet
Ozzy the African Grey Parrot
Pluto the Quaker Parrot
Ray the Blue and Gold Macaw
Sunny the Cockatiel
Poly the African Grey Parrot
I hope you enjoyed our talking parrot contest. The new DVD/CDROM “Train Your Parrot to Talk” should be in stock mid February 2011. Just sign up for our mailing list on the top right hand side of this page to be notified or visit this link to purchase it shortly.
Barbara Heidenreich
http://www.goodbirdinc.com/
Copyright 2011 Good Bird Inc
Showing posts with label blue and gold macaw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blue and gold macaw. Show all posts
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Training a Scared or Aggressive Parrot To Step Up
In 2002 when I first struck out on my own as an animal training consultant I did some work with a parrot sanctuary in Texas. At this facility, the birds were stepped up onto hands wrapped in towels. Often this approach means force is being used to train the parrots to step up. We all really wanted the birds to learn to step onto hands voluntarily. It was my job to train it with positive reinforcement. I had 50 parrots to work with. All either showed fear responses or aggressive behavior towards hands. (Many of these birds can be seen in my first book “Good Bird!” A Guide to Solving Behavior Problems in Companions Parrots”)
What I quickly discovered was that asking a parrot to go from two feet firmly planted on a perch to one foot on the hand was a BIG approximation, one that most birds would not do with that kind of history. I had to find a way to make smaller approximations. So I developed a technique of placing my hand at the end of the perch and using the target to get small steps towards my perching hand. This way if your parrot is not ready he does not need to get on your hand, but can still make progress towards making it happen and you can reinforce it. Here are some photos of me demonstrating it in my DVD and another at a facility where I consulted.
At the time few skilled training professionals were working with parrots with such challenges and I am quite confident I had not seen this particular method elsewhere in my years of training. Certainly early in my career I learned from other great trainers the importance of letting the bird approach the hand and reinforcing small approximations. But what to do with a parrot that is really struggling with aggressive behavior or fear responses towards hands right when he is at the cusp of touching a hand was not something I had seen someone demonstrate. It was actually fun to explore options and experiment until I found a technique that worked pretty consistently.
Since then I have had the chance to practice it and fine tune it with at last count over 1000 parrots at workshops I teach. I do very freely share this technique in my DVDs and almost everyone gets to see a demo of this at the live seminars. In the DVD you get so see a parrot go from lunging so hard at my hand that he almost knocks over the perch, to eagerly pulling my hand closer so he can step up on it.
The bird is a blue and gold macaw belonging to a friend. I had never really interacted with him much before we filmed and by no means was he already trained. We filmed over a weekend. It took two twenty minute sessions to go from lunging to "can't wait to get on your hand!" I still smile every time I play that clip at a seminar. Makes me happy to see a parrot's behavior change so dramatically.
The DVD that features this clip is called Parrot Behavior and Training #1 . Click here and you can see the "before" and "after" with the lunging blue and gold macaw about half way through the video featured in the player on this page.
Hope it helps inspire a few parrot people out there! Happy training : )
Barbara Heidenreich
Copyright Good Bird Inc 2009
www.GoodBirdInc.com
What I quickly discovered was that asking a parrot to go from two feet firmly planted on a perch to one foot on the hand was a BIG approximation, one that most birds would not do with that kind of history. I had to find a way to make smaller approximations. So I developed a technique of placing my hand at the end of the perch and using the target to get small steps towards my perching hand. This way if your parrot is not ready he does not need to get on your hand, but can still make progress towards making it happen and you can reinforce it. Here are some photos of me demonstrating it in my DVD and another at a facility where I consulted.
At the time few skilled training professionals were working with parrots with such challenges and I am quite confident I had not seen this particular method elsewhere in my years of training. Certainly early in my career I learned from other great trainers the importance of letting the bird approach the hand and reinforcing small approximations. But what to do with a parrot that is really struggling with aggressive behavior or fear responses towards hands right when he is at the cusp of touching a hand was not something I had seen someone demonstrate. It was actually fun to explore options and experiment until I found a technique that worked pretty consistently.
Since then I have had the chance to practice it and fine tune it with at last count over 1000 parrots at workshops I teach. I do very freely share this technique in my DVDs and almost everyone gets to see a demo of this at the live seminars. In the DVD you get so see a parrot go from lunging so hard at my hand that he almost knocks over the perch, to eagerly pulling my hand closer so he can step up on it.
The bird is a blue and gold macaw belonging to a friend. I had never really interacted with him much before we filmed and by no means was he already trained. We filmed over a weekend. It took two twenty minute sessions to go from lunging to "can't wait to get on your hand!" I still smile every time I play that clip at a seminar. Makes me happy to see a parrot's behavior change so dramatically.
The DVD that features this clip is called Parrot Behavior and Training #1 . Click here and you can see the "before" and "after" with the lunging blue and gold macaw about half way through the video featured in the player on this page.
Hope it helps inspire a few parrot people out there! Happy training : )
Barbara Heidenreich
Copyright Good Bird Inc 2009
www.GoodBirdInc.com
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