Friendship & Positive Reinforcement

Allie, My Ham
I mentioned in an earlier blog that parrot behavior consultant Liz Wilson focused on two themes when I contacted her about how to "handle" my Military Allosious, or Allie, his unruly behavior and his relentless regurgitation.

The first was foraging which I wrote about here.

The second was to think about relationships with companion parrots as friendships, not parent-child or romantic relationships. Allie was regurgitating because he found me attractive, as in mate attractive. I was unintentionally doing stuff that returned his affections - holding him too close, kissing him too much. You get the picture.

My second challenge with Allie was teaching him some rules of engagement. His freewheeling lifestyle pre-me didn't help. This was a bird that was permitted free reign in his former home. There, his cage didn't even have a door on it.

All of these factors contributed to his demand for attention that was turning aggressive when he didn't get what he wanted from me.

He wanted to gurge. He wanted to turn the back of an antique wooden chair into kindling. He wanted to crawl on the rug and regurgitate all over it. He wanted to step up and never, ever step down to go in his cage or onto a playstand.

If I disallowed any of these behaviors, he lunged, bit, hung off my shirt in true contortionist fashion with the goal of landing a strategic bite to show his displeasure. Once, hanging and swinging upside down from my sleeve, he took a nice chunk out of my stomach that sent me crumpled to the floor. I was not pleased. I made the call my avian vet and then to Liz.

What I needed to do was back off and establish some boundaries for myself in order to help him. I needed to remind him and me that he's a parrot and teach him parrot skills like working for food, foraging. I also needeed to reinforce good behaviors and limit opportunities for bad ones. I needed to be strategic about my interaction. I needed to use my head and my heart, so we could have a nurturing, respectful relationship.

No dominance. No anger. No force of any kind. Mutual respect, that's the key.

• We must respect parrots' nature, their species, the behaviors that make them parrots.
• We must respect their ability and need to make choices - on their own, not forced by us and our desires. Sometimes we may or may not agree with these choices, but our role is not to berate or punish. It is to support and guide towards better choices, like one would with a friend.
• We must behave, or learn to behave, in ways that earns us respect in the eyes of our parrots.

Respect allies nicely with the idea of positive reinforcement too. Barbara Heidenreich founder of Good Bird, Inc magazine and web site uses and teaches this method, as do many other animal behaviorists and trainers. I use it with my birds, but more consciously now than I did before in everyday activities with my parrots. I still find myself saying "No" on occassion to things I don't want them to do, as a reflex, but I'm getting better.

A simple 1, 2, 3 example of positive reinforcement:

1. Your parrot is screaming. You ignore the screaming or leave the room, right? (You do not coo, tell him to shut up, or respond to this screaming in any way verbally or physically, except to maybe leave the room, right? Because if you would do any of these things, that would be encouragement because it gets a reaction which is what your bird wants -- any reaction. So you do not respond or react.
2. Eventually he quiets down (Yes, this could take some time).
3. He quiets down, so you proceed to fawn all over him. He gets to step up, he gets a head scritch, he gets a favorite nut in its shell or a piece of dried fruit. He gets what he wanted, something that's pleasurable to him, because he's quiet, which is what you want. This is postive reinforcement. Everybody's happy.

It works. It really does. For everything. But it isn't an instant fix. It takes time for your parrot to grasp what's happening, particularly if you haven't been operating like this from the start with your bird. Your parrot will experience some confusion if a certain behavior he exhibited used to get a rise out of you, and now it doesn't. He'll try harder for awhile to make what used to work, still work. Hang on gently, but hang on. This can take months or years. Please stick with it, and you will reap the reward of a mutally respectful, happy relationship with your parrot.

If you're wondering, Allie and I are doing great. He's learning to step down when I request it (stepping up is never a problem with this bird). He rarely lunges. His gurging has lessened, some of which I do credit to the Lupron injections to control his hormones. And he forages or rampages cardboard boxes for his ultimate foods - almonds and walnuts. Nuts for the nut. In Allie's case ,we were lucky. Allie was a fast learner. It took us about five months. But we've much more to learn together, and I look forward to every day with him and all of my birds.

Befriending a parrot is a process, not a project with a beginning and end. In that way, it is kind of like parenting except these kids don't grow up and leave the house. They depend on us for their well-being for as long as we share our lives with them, and in return, we get immeasurable joy.

Birdie Byte
Make it your mission to find out what motivates your bird.

What does he / she like best? Nuts? Sunflower seeds. Head scritches?

Your relationship with your bird will blossom if you know this potent piece of info. For my senegal, Beaker, it's head scritches.

For Allie, its walnuts, almonds, and a short spell in front of the mirror laughing together, or dancing.

If it's food, remove that food from your bird's regular diet and only use it for training. I didn't do this at first, because I'm wussy, and thought it was mean 'cause "they liked it." It's not mean. Once I came to grips with this little concept, we were full steam ahead.

Please post a comment about what you find motivates your bird to learn with you.