The Sequential Psittacine

The Consequence Zone

2012-01-26T16:34:00.000-08:00

Need an overview of how behavior increases and decreases? I give you sock puppets!

Preventing stress in the supermarket isle...

2012-01-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

"O Magazine. How to live your best life." A magazine title from a supermarket isle catches your eye. You leave your gaze hovering on the title for a moment until, in the cashier's line ahead of you, a child screams bloody murder from his grocery cart seat, "But I want it!!! NOO!"

You witness the parent slapping the child out of blind frustration and your heart falls into your stomach while your body turns cold. The child is still not quiet.

It's now your turn at the cashier's register and you stare at the duo as they leave out the door as a bawling caravan of neatly bagged goods. The bagger makes a comment on the incident "I would have given that child more than a swat. All this mushy parenting advice about 'don't hit your kid' is making so many delinquents these days."

I have been blessed to witness many of these events, mostly from behind the cash register itself. Which I am happily, no longer doing. Even so, I quickly learned to identify the warning signs as to when these situations where about to occur and stopped it before anything happened. I'll leave that for later...

The majority of the public are unaware that these situations never have to develop in the first place. It is actually quite possible to prevent a behavior from occurring, which is of course preferred. The human species seems to be obsessed with dealing out consequences for behavior instead of preventing these behaviors. Hindsight is 20/20, therefore I dub our species Homo hindsightedness (I know, poor setup).

Parents have ultimate control of preventing these kinds of problems, yet they are not aware of or empowered enough to implement these essential skills. Here is what Act Against Violence and Karen Pryor have to say about what parents can do to prevent tantrums in the isle:

1. Stressed and busy mothers find themselves shopping before dinner with their hungry children, this is prime time for tantrums. "Feed the kids before or while going to the market" Karen Pryor states as a preventative measure.

2. Prepare kids for the checkout line. If you know your child will cause a ruckus in line let him know that he'll get a nice surprise if he can play the quiet game while your groceries are being checked out. Often times cashiers have coloring books and crayons to give just to the little ones to reward good behavior.

3. Help children to develop an awareness of early signs of a temper tantrum. For example, say, "I see you are rocking in your chair now; what are you thinking?" With practice the child could learn to signal you when he notices that he is beginning to have a temper tantrum. Then help him with some of the above prevention strategies.

Tantrums happen. But they don't have to happen every time. Let's reduce unwanted behavior by preventing it rather than "correcting" it.
But what if it's not your child? I'll tell you what I do when it's me in the isle, in the next installment...

Sources:

Don't Shoot the Dog - Karen Pryor

http://www.teachersandfamilies.com/open/parent/tantrum3.cfm

http://actagainstviolence.apa.org/materials/publications/act/teach_carefully.pdf

Yup, that's it.

2011-12-24T15:32:00.000-08:00

Last year I posted photos logging how Achilles mysteriously started to pick at her skin causing her to have visible wounds on her back. I was so worried I made an oatmeal paste to get her through until next morning, then she would be off to the vet.

The oatmeal treatment practically healed all of her wounds, the vet told me. But the oatmeal residue didn't let the feathers dry very easily. So the vet gave us some Dermaide and in a couple days Achilles's wounds had healed. Brilliant!

As to what caused her to start picking at her skin I did not know for sure, but I do now. She gets dry skin from the weather and it looks like it will be a seasonal thing. So I stocked up on more Dermaide from their website a couple weeks ago. Achilles started picking at her skin again when the weather started getting cold, thankfully the Dermaide was applied before her skin became overrun with wounds.

Applying the Dermaide would have been a problem if I didn't do some training in advance. When I first got Achilles she didn't like being pet in many places other than the head. So I decided it might be a good idea to have her learn to like being petted in other places like her back, wings, and bum (near the preen gland, which can get infected). So with that training in place applying her medication is actually a cuddle session. How cool is training when it's done right?

I'm glad that has been all sorted out.Yup, cold weather, that's what it was.

Happy Solstice!

A sweet fluffy cockatiel, or a deadly bird of prey?

2011-10-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

We had a lazy Sunday this week. I hope you enjoy the video as much as Achilles is enjoying the rain.

Predicting, Preventing and Replacing Biting Behaviors

2011-10-08T19:24:00.001-07:00

"I have an almost four months old quaker parrot. He's very friendly and is not afraid of people. He gladly steps up to come out of the cage. He'll go up to you but when he's on your shoulder or hand he'll nip you HARD. I can't say he's being aggressive. He doesn't seem angry or stressed, he just pinch your skin so hard, its almost impossible to let him stay on you. He's fully flighted and he will follow me everywhere I go. What should I do to make him stop the nipping." - user Struckbygold

Hello! (I will refer to you as Adrian) it sounds like you have quite the mischievous Quaker! From the impression you gave me it sounds like one of his main reinforcers is human interaction. And this is true for many parrots, when a bird gets to play with a human that pets him, feeds him, and generally has a grand old time, what social species would not enjoy it? This is a major reinforcer for the bird. Keep in mind that every behavior that an animal keeps is due to a corresponding reinforcer.

Reinforcers come in two flavors, positive and negative. Let's slow down and define both of what "positive" and "negative" mean in the sense of behavior modification. I must emphasize that positive does not mean "good", this is the same for the word negative and does not mean "bad". Instead think of the rules of addition and subtraction. Positive means "to add" negative means "to remove from".

Now that we have defined these two words lets remind ourselves that reinforcent means to increase a behavior, and you can do that by bringing something into the situation or by taking something away. To simplify we call this Positive Reinforcement or Negative Reinforcement, respectively.

So what is the reason your bird is biting? I cannot tell exactly why because I am not there observing the behavior, but I can take a good guess. We have already identified a positive reinforcer that your bird works for, and that is human interaction. Let's set up an example of how this behavior could be increasing due to the use of Positive Reinforcement. Here we will be using an ABC setup for Jane and her bird (you can learn more about this here).

It's morning and one of the first things that Jane does is to let the bird out of his cage to give kisses. She knows the bird is awake because he squawks. So she gets out of bed to make his food and opens his cage door to pick him up after he has had his fill, but forgot to kiss him.

A: Absence of beak kisses.

B: Bird bites finger.

C: Jane grabs bird's beak, shakes it, and tells the bird "no".

Predicted Future Behavior: The bird will continue to bite Jane if not kissed.
Can you see the Positive Reinforcement? Grabbing the beak, shaking it, and talking to the bird are ALL added to the behavior, thus "positive". And because we predict the behavior will not change but will continue to happen, we know that a reinforcement is in play.

Now let's look at what a Negative Reinforcement ABC setup looks like.

A: Absence of morning beak kisses.

B: Bird bites finger.

C: Jane drops bird to the floor.

PFB: Bird will bite the hand more often. And may avoid stepping up on the hand all together.
As you can imagine being dropped to the floor is very painful and dangerous for an unflighted bird and keel bruising and splitting are likely to result. Not only is it physically abusive but the behavioral side effects (such as fear) of using such ideas are not good for you or the bird. Hence we may see the
"may avoid stepping on the hand" in our PFB.

But your bird is flighted! So even if you removed your hand from the situation the end result may be positive, especially if he enjoys flying. Because of this I'm going to say the likely reinforcer for your bird is a positive, not negative one, as you did not mention any behaviors that might indicate fear.

When addressing any behavior problem the first thing behaviorists look at is the environment and how it directly affects the behavior. In other words, what happens before the behavior so that it may be prevented? In our example biting could have been avoided if we gave the bird a kiss. In other situations biting can also be avoided by reading body language. If we know what a bird is trying to say we can prevent biting situations from occurring.

Can you tell when your bird is about to bite? Does he communicate with his feathers, beak, eyes or body posture? Does it happen during a certain time of day even? Find this out so you can prevent the behavior from occurring.

Now lets say you could not prevent the behavior and you see him getting ready to bite. What do you do to avoid the bite while keeping his trust? It's a rather clever concept. You should cue him for a behavior that makes it impossible for him to bite you. Behaviorists call this Differential Reinforcement of an Incompatible behavior (DRI).

To prevent biting teach him a cued behavior that involves keeping his beak away from your ready-to-be-bit hand. Have him tuck his beak behind his wing, shake his head "no", or stand up tall. He cannot bite you while he's shaking his head! And then make sure to give him his kisses, this way it lets him know that everyone needs a second chance.

Good luck in your endeavors Adrian.

Who is Training Who?

2011-07-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

This morning during our regular training routine I noticed some regression in Achilles's harness training. Suddenly she was wearing it for a shorter and shorter time span, but demanding more treats anyway! Why? Something was wrong in my training and I had to figure it out quickly before this became an obtrusive habit.

In a previous post I mentioned one of the "rules" in our training is that I would only give a seed reward to her when she looks comfortable wearing her harness before I take it off. The other rule is that if I make her uncomfortable wearing the harness the harness will come off, which for her that is a reinforcer in itself.

I quickly got myself into the habit of removing the harness as soon as she looks the most comfortable. And for her this meant that when she repositioned herself to stand up strait, -She does this during a lot of our training, especially when a heavy 'ol harness is on her, she lays herself horizontal to her perch.- I would remove the harness and then give her an additional treat in the hopes of replacing the Negative Reinforcement of the harness with the Positive Reinforcement of the food reward. Double reinforcement whammy!

Clever cockatiel however found the pattern in my own behavior: "If I stand up the harness comes off!"

This single idea gives me a hint that perhaps the harness is not quite a Positive Reinforcer yet and may still be in the realm of Negative Reinforcement. So it looks like the situation is this:

A: Achilles is rewarded for putting on her harness.

B: Achilles stands up strait.

C: I bridge, remove the harness and offer a treat.

Ooops! Looks like the immediate reinforcer is removing the harness! In part this looks like a poor training strategy from me. I need to simply switch the C to "I bridge, offer a treat and remove the harness". That sounds like it might help fix the Negative Reinforcement problem. Looks like my double whammy was teaching her to cue me instead!

But back to Achilles and standing up. Yes, she figured out in that delicately encased cockatiel brain of hers that standing up = immediate reinforcement. Which in turn increased her comfortable standing up behavior, but decreased the amount of time that she wore the harness. So it ended up with her cueing me for a behavior! She wanted me to take the harness off because it still seems to be acting as a Negative Reinforcer.

So now what do I do to get around her cueing me? One idea is to wait a longer period of time before I give a reinforcer instead of an immediate one. Sometimes I should give a shorter or longer wait just to keep her on her toes.

Another idea is to cue well learned behaviors in her harness. This should add more value to the harness. I think I'll put the harness on, cue a behavior and then offer a treat. No? Perhaps wearing a harness will signal that fun training is about to begin and it will take her mind off of the harness.

So a new training plan.

1. Replace R- of the harness to R+.
I want her to be super excited when I offer the harness. -She is less-so these days. This tells me that it is not acting as, or is not a strong R+.- So offer the treat as the immediate reinforcer before the harness comes off (I hope this works?). I could also offer her cues for other behaviors when her harness is on, increasing the likeliness of the harness acting as a R+.

2. Replace her cue for me!
Make her cueing unpredictable and capricious to reduce her cueing behavior. I could also offer her cues for other behaviors when she stands up tall, increasing the likeliness of the harness acting as a R+.

I hope this works!

Top 10 Ways to Build Relationships with Parrots

2011-06-06T17:21:00.000-07:00

Have a Feisty Freida on your hands? Or a Bossy Bubba? Put yourself close to their hearts by taking these ten steps to a successful relationship with your parrot.

1. Don't ask for too much

I remember the day when I discovered harnesses for birds, how exciting! Now I could take my Budgie and Alexandrine Parakeet out with me wherever I went without having to fear flyoffs or crashes to the ground. I could walk my bird down the street every day just like a dog, wow! The day I purchased the harness for my budgie I followed the instructions -to just introduce the harness- but only for the first two days. I was impatient...

This however was not good enough to have my bouncing blue budgerigar willingly hop into her harness to go out for a brisk walk in the neighborhood. I was so excited to put the harness on her that I didn't check to see what she had to say about wearing the harness and as a result she learned to run away from it. She stayed to have the scary, monstrosity of a leash fixed to her only if I coerced her with my hands to stay where I wanted. Once it was on did she relax? No, she fought that harness with everything she had in her, and millet rarely distracted her from trying to rip it off her body.

In the case of my bouncy blue bird, I asked her to accept too much too soon. How was I suppose to know she would throw a hissy-fit from putting on a harness or not? The only way to tell, I would later find out, was to understand how to use her body language to my advantage. This idea is what I am now using to train my cockatiel how to wear her harness, and the results could not be more dramatic! She LOVES her harness, and you can watch a series of videos on her progress too!

2. Read and Follow Body Language

What does this bird's body language mean to you? I see many hints given from this bird's forehead, crest, cheek, and body feathers, and also his beak, eye, wing and posture. This is a bird that is comfortable enough to take a nap, and this is the level of comfort that I need to see when training my Cockatiel how to wear a harness. She doesn't need to be falling asleep when we are training, but she does need to be comfortable.

Case in point: She can be perfectly, blissfully perched on my shoulder -looking just like this bird- when I ask if I can put her harness around her while I give her scritches. If Achilles even slightly starts to show signs of discomfort while harness training then it means that I have pushed her beyond her comfort zone and that I now need to quickly make up for it by lowering my criteria. I start off one step back in my training goal and practice that step for a while to help build up that behavior, and then I try the harder step once more. Reading and following body language ties nicely together with not asking your parrot for too much. If the bird shows signs of discomfort, you have asked for too much.

3. Expect nothing

If animal caretakers expect their birds to happily jump right into a new harness, or to instantly love everyone or even to just come out of the cage when asked to, you could be setting the bird up for failure. Just because "he's done it a million times" doesn't mean he'll do it now. If you really expect that he'll do whatever it is that we want, you'll be let down and might try to force him to do what you want instead. You'll put the harness on anyway even if it means getting bit, or you'll tell someone to pick the bird up even if he doesn't want to, or you'll just chase the bird around the cage until you grab his foot and yank him out. This is what happens when expectations fail; people play dirty. If a bird does not do something willingly then he's not trained to like it but is instead coerced into it. Now we have crossed the line from a relationship into a dictatorship and this is not our goal.

4. Relationships are about trust

Being a trustworthy person involves being clear, honest and precise. No teasing, no double standards and absolutely no lies.

Trying to have a bird come close to you, and bribing with an almond? Don't move your hand farther away when he walks towards your hand just to get him closer, that's dishonest! (unless he knows he is supposed to follow a target, that's another lesson.) Instead, give the almond to him, but next time it might help to break that almond into very small pieces and offer one piece at a time. This way it will not take two minutes for him to eat his reward, but two seconds. This way you can have him move closer to you without having to resort to dishonesty.

5. Trust must be built

Meet Oakly, a fairly young hybrid macaw who doesn't want to step up and certainly does not want your hand in the cage to feed him. This was the bird that I chose during a workshop to train new behaviors to. Not knowing the complete history of my new training partner there was the unsettling possibility that I would get bit while attempting to train him.

But not to fear, small approximations are here! My go-to plan was to build up a very strong history of trust with this bird through rewarding small units of behavior (approximations). I started out by introducing myself with itty bitty bits of nuts and pairing those with a bridging stimulus. When Oakly started expecting treats when I said "good!" we were ready to move on. I trained him to follow my hand as a target, then we started training to station on a perch (he liked to hang on the cage bars instead of perching) using small approximations:

"Hey Oakly, can you follow my hand?" was my first request. "Good!" I said when his attention focused on me. "Hey Oakly, can you follow my hand to the perch?" I asked politely. "Good!" And when he crawled one birdie foot closer "Hey Oakly, how much closer can you get?" and on this went until he put one foot and then later, two onto the perch. Then I asked to see how long he could stay, can you stay longer? Longer? What happens if I walk away? "Good bird!"

When building up trust in an animal small approximations certainly help. But they become useless if the bird shows behavior of becoming too stressed, it is important to not move ahead to the next training step if this happens. Which certainly happened with Oakly and I, but that's okay because all we did was to practice the easy step multiple times before we tried that hard step again. And without a doubt Oakly did great!

6. Never take big leaps. The best big leaps happen on their own.

Take a lesson from my training with Oakly, I never expected for him to come out of his cage and start interacting with people. After a couple of training sessions I had trouble gaining his attention with food rewards, instead he was too focused on seeing what a group of workshop participants were chattering about on the other side of the room. Once the chatting cooled down we started back up with food reinforcements. I daringly opened the cage (I knew nothing of his behavior history, so it is important to be careful) and rewarded him for letting my hand approach his feet in small approximations. It didn't take long to have him coming out of his cage, but I had to be careful. I made sure he could easily step on and off my hand with ease before I even attempted to let Oakly out of the cage. Here are our results.

7. Avoid conflicts

I know a bird that hates towels. He runs when you pick a towel up and bites when you wrap him in it, so I avoid wrapping him in a towel. Now wait, isn't that counter-productive? Whether or not he likes the towel should I not wrap him in it anyway so that he "gets used to it"? He'll learn to like it anyway won't he? Psychologists say "Not quite".

Forcing a bird, or a person for that matter, into a high-stress situation (liken the bird's biting to a man punching people out of fear) and simply waiting for them to "get over it" induces a state known as Learned Helplessness which you may learn more about here. Essentially what you are getting across is "You can do nothing to change the situation, so why try?". If I forced the bird to stay in the towel he will stop biting it eventually. He does this out of the lack of a choice, if he had a choice he would run away. "Liking" the towel requires something different.

Instead lets do exactly what Oakly and I did, use approximations! Let's use itty bitty comfortable approximations until the bird chooses to walk into the towel. Not a bad idea!

8. Never say no

Doesn't "No." have a bad feel to it? It sets limits, builds boundaries and even crushes dreams. But even so behind every "no" is a hard to see "Yes!". Our goal as good caretakers is to find all the yeses in every situation. Saying "Yes you can have a cookie" gives focus on having the cookie, this is true visa versa "No, you may not have a cookie" still gives focus on the cookie. But if a cookie is the one thing in the world that you may not have it is better to focus on something other than the cookie. The word "No." causes a sort of hidden oxymoron: "Focus on not focusing on the cookie" how silly!
Re-direct the attention by saying "Yes" to anything but the cookie. That's what good trainers do.

9. Say hello to a world of yes!

Number four pretty much sums this up. Yes means: "Focus on this!", it is fun and uncomplicated to follow.

10. Be consistent

Have training lessons regularly, you can skip a week, or in my case when school comes along I can skip a couple of months. When you make a habit of saying "Yes!" with Positive Reinforcement it's easy to pick right back up from where you left off. But overall try to have regular teaching opportunities, whether or not it is a structured training session.

Behavior, UH! What's it good for?

2011-06-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

What is behavior and why does is exist? I suppose behavior is an action preformed by a "critter" for a purpose, and that purpose is the reason for it's existence via years of evolutionary development and refinement. That's just my quick conjecture so lets take a peek at what the prestigious Wikipedia has to say about the function of behavior.

"All behaviors serve a purpose."

Wow, is that it? So how do we know what purpose a behavior serves? How do I know why my bird opens her wings up and flaps them? It all depends on what the is trying to accomplish, there is no "one answer fits all". Many reasons exist for any single particular behavior existing because all animals have a purpose for performing that behavior depending on the pre-existing conditions that we put them in. For example, one answer for "why" my bird opens her wings up relies on me wiggling my hand back and forth to throw her off balance, and when she does open those wings and flaps it encourages me further to wiggle my hand whenever I want to see that behavior. (WARNING: This is not a good first option, or long-term strategy. This action is using Negative Reinforcement and should be one of the very last options to consider.)

Another scenario is for intrinsic needs. If I notice that every morning when I take my cockatiel, Achilles, out of her sleep cage and place her onto her playstand, she begins to flap quite vigorously for several seconds without any other antecedent other than stepping up onto her playstand I may first assume that the playstand is causing her to flap. But given that she does not do any other time than in the morning I can then assume that there is an internal, or intrinsic need that "makes her feel good" when she flaps in the morning.

The same behavior, but different reasons for it due to different circumstances. Easy right?

So behavior has varying purposes. But in order for your bird to get what he wants (and people too for that matter) communication often needs to take place. Many actions and movements that a bird makes is communication, often enough directed right at you, the owner. It is our responsibility as good parrot owners to make sense of what our companion animals are trying to say. What does that eye pinning, fluffed cheek feathers, pacing, lunging, head bobbing, hopping, open wings, or open beak mean? We'll discover that in time because one behavior can serve many purposes.

A Breathtaking Breakthrough

2011-05-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

Achilles and I just completed another day of glorious training, everything went well and without a hitch. And the breakthrough that really made it for us was changing how I acted when training her. Let me explain.

Achilles and I have been working quite diligently on training for her to wear a harness with the least amount of stress involved. The original idea was to go at her own pace, and remove the harness whenever she showed signs of struggling. Well that idea worked for getting her to wear the harness, but the quality of her effort wasn't something to crow about. Every time she wore the harness she would squat down in one spot and not move, or at least move very little. She would only wear the harness for the minimum amount of time required before she would demand for the harness to come off of her (giving minimum effort is a sign that Negative Reinforcement is being used somewhere).

You see, the harness, even when I was pairing good treats with it, was still acting as a Negative Reinforcer. She still could not wait to get the harness off and when she told me to take it off I did so because that is what good trainers do. But by taking the harness off I was reinforcing the idea that taking it off is something good! I don't want that, instead I want her to think that having the harness on is good! So how was I going to fix this messy, self-defeating situation? Here is what I figured out.

I made three new training rules:

I will do my best to prevent you feeling uncomfortable wearing the harness. I will not push you past your threshold.
In order to prevent you feeling uncomfortable I will remove the harness before you show me you are uncomfortable and then I will reward you with a treat.
If I accidentally DO push you past your comfort threshold I will take the harness off. But no other reward will follow.

The results of these new rules? There are now almost no signs given by her that she is uncomfortable and wants the harness off. She now stands up strait, walks around, waves her foot, and sits with the harness on comfortably for a long, long time. Give a bird the ability to choose and they will flourish!

Rule number 2 is what really cleaned up Achilles's act. My best guess in why this worked is because I trained her to expect a treat when I removed her harness, before she wanted it off. After that -if I ever pushed her past her comfort threshold- I would not give her a treat. This is called Negative Punishment which involves me taking away the seed reward in order to reduce the behavior of her wanting the harness off. BUT this only applies when I accidentally push her past her comfort threshold. So conditions apply, but these conditions are the ones that she can control herself.

So, today I am proud because, even though it's been two days since out last training session, and I filled her cage with every goody in the world (including her training treats) she is still eager to come out and learn new behaviors with me at 7:00 at night. Which is usually her bedtime.

Sweet dreams!

Comparing Parrot and Child Behavior

2011-05-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

In the following video I make a comparison of how we treat kids and how we treat parrots. We just adore giving our birds human characteristics and calling our our pets "two and four year olds" so I give the following comparison:

"What if a small child told you he was too tired, grouchy, or sad to come and play with you? Would you not care about how he is feeling and make him come out anyway? No! His needs are more important than your petty want of “playing” with the poor child.

This goes for the same with our birds. If you are capable of understanding what your bird is telling you then you have the obligation to listen."

In this situation I compare the child's verbal communication to a parrot's. They both want to stay in their "room" yet use different ways to express this, and for the parrot this can include biting.

Fortunately biting is not the first natural option a parrot chooses to say "leave me alone". Before biting ever occurs there are a lot of other things that go on, eye pinning, posturing, tail flaring, and even scampering away in the other direction are ways that birds let us know they do not want to be handled. Biting is a last resort, even if they step up after the bite (or even if the bite did not draw blood), the bird was still trying to tell you to "go away".

The real answer to why parrots bite? Because their previous communication attempts (body language) were not received by the person.

Want a quick fix? Put emphasis on basic communication to avoid teaching a bird to bite.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them. - Albert Einstein

Training When Young!

2011-04-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Take a look at the following video clip, it will make your heart skip with joy.

There, wasn't that just a sweet relationship those two had? It is so easy a child can do it! You don't need to resort to gurus or self-proclaimed experts that taught themselves via google. (A professor once told us that "experts" aren't anything. Being that "ex" refers to "the past" and "pert" is "a little drop of water". Put it together he said, and all experts are "Just an old used up drop of water." This idea had amused me on several occasions.)

Maybe there should be a new rule of thumb when you consider a sketchy training strategey: "Would I trust a child to do this?" And if there is a risk of the child getting scratched, bit, kicked, shoved or hurt in any way, you should rethink that training strategey. Granted this is not as good as the rule of thumb that zoo trainers use; "If I would not do this to a lion, I shouldn't do it." but it is another good idea to consider.

Happy training!

Training: I Took the Long Road

2011-03-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

I get it now, I finally get it. I have discovered the mechanics behind my own self-evolution from a liberal force-based trainer to a calm, level-headed, and conservative trainer. And this will be the only time you catch me saying that I’m very conservative, so this anomalous “Ah-ha!” is a rare moment. To fully appreciate my self-discovery I will have to dishevel some old and detailed memories from my dusty closet of bad bird training at you. For those who are well practiced in bird body language and use it like an unbreakable code of honor, you may be shocked at my actions. But this is an important part of my development, it shows that people do transform and change their minds and that means a world of hope to me.
First imagine an awkwardly tall, quiet, homeschooler, a nice polite person but nothing more than just that. Her attitude (if you could say she had one) is shallow and empty, she easily stumbles over words and simple ideas. This was me of course, but what you would not expect from this girl was her forceful and fear-inducing parrot training strategy. You could say this girl was confused when reading all the conflicting and obscure anecdotal advice read from the pages of a popular talk bird magazine. What she read was all very confusing, very influential and very dangerous for both her and the parrots involved.

Training ideas that she lived by were “You cannot be afraid of bites, just take it!” and “Never let a bird on your shoulder!” or my personal favorite “Never let a bird get away with anything! Show them who is flock leader!” For this quiet girl, bites were a daily occurrence and were proudly worn and shown off as battle scars. For some weird, psychological reason this made her feel strong, superior and successful because she was in control of the chaotic ill-behaved birds, she was in charge of the poor confused birds and she could make them do anything, it was fulfilling for her.

Now imagine putting this quiet and confused young child into a place full of parrots that didn’t really belong to anyone. She was free to “train” (the word used should be “molest”) any one of the cockatiels, conures, amazons, macaws or moluccan cockatoos she pleased. There was very little supervision and she could be there 6 hours a day or more if she so pleased, she is homeschooled after all.

Was there a quaker parrot that didn’t like head scratches? Grab it in a towel and pet it anyway, he’ll learn to like it.

How about a cockatoo that wouldn’t step up? Easy, make it step up right now, just push harder on that bird’s belly.

And if that cockatoo bit? No worries, she has all the solutions! If it bit the hand it stepped onto, just drop the hand to make him lose balance and he’ll let go! And if it was your other hand that got bit you could easily wriggle your finger out, firmly grab his beak and shake it. Or you could simply push that bleeding finger into the birds face to get it to let go, just throw the bird off balance! Ingenious!

Along with her misguided faith in force based training she did not hold herself accountable for her actions. If there was an incidence where a bird bit it was because the animal was “wild” or “untame” the fault was the bird’s and it was dubbed with a label instead. Because it certainly wasn’t her fault that she got bit, or that the bird ran away from stepping up, or that the bird flew off its perch, or its feathers had to be clipped, or that it liked faces but not hands, or that it yelled “bad bird” and “No!” back into her face, or that it scampered to hide under the nearest cage to get away, or that it never fluffed up its feathers in contentment when being pet, or that trick behaviors where never on time when cued. It was obvious that all the hundreds of birds that came through were ill mannered, dominant, mean, territorial, hormonal, or where just there to fuck with your head. It was just obvious.

And while you are cringing at every detail I dole out I have not yet touched on how changing my training changed my worldveiw too. In the beginning I was over eager to grab, experience and fondle the animals like any young excited person would be. But I was also frustrated when a bird showed no progress, or made a little progress and then promptly started having even more bad habits. I was mad, I was in charge and, in my mind, I was doing everything right to tame the bird. Instead I was swelling up with even more anger, impatience and force-based methods over time. There was no way out.

That is until a little green budgie named E.T. came along. He was bright, spunky and full of energy and I wanted to train him to make him perfect. One of my criteria for perfection was flying, he had to recall to my hand perfectly and that “perfectness” criteria permanently changed my ways. If I wanted perfection I needed to research, so I read Carly Lu’s Flight blog, Joined Yahoo’s Free Flight Parrots list, and read Chris Biro’s writings. Everybody was talking about a woman named Dr. Susan G. Friedman and everyone was giving out her works in PDF form, so I read that too and over a couple of weeks I saw parrot training in a much more simplified light. It became easy to understand and so I practiced, and I quickly got results from training that little green bird.

The first thing I practiced was interpreting body language, when you get good at it it's like reading your bird's mind. Dr. of psycology, Susan Friedman, lives by and uses this as a well honed skill.

Take another look at this Caique, can you tell what his body language is telling you? To me it is obvious that the bird is uncomfortable in this situation. there is something just outside of the camera's lens that is directly causing this discomfort. I know this because the bird's head is oriented somewhere else, the pupils are dilating, the beak is slightly opened getting ready for defense, feathers are slicked down and unfluffed, wings are slightly opened and ready for takeoff and all of his body is leaned in the direction of escape. I was taught this is very bad body language to get used to seeing, when you see these signs you know that the bird is ready to bite you and/or will flee away from training. Both are completely unacceptable if you are trying to make the experience easy, fun, and productive.

Think of it this way, if you have ever taken a test you know how important it is to keep a level head during the test, if you are too nervous for the test it is likely that you won't do as well as the calm and collected classmate next to you. You may answer the questions more slowly, forget to finish a few quetions, or your concentration will wander. You would not exactly choose to be in this state when taking a test if you could avoid it, so why make our birds feel this way when training? We want them to be happy, even excited to be here and work with us. In order to do this we read and interpret their body language to avoid these stressful situations. This is what I did for E.T.

E.T. progressed beautifully, three weeks into training and he was bolting to my hand at the exact second I called. Millet works wonders! We slowly, calmly and steadily took the training at his pace and as far as I can remember I could not tell you about a happier or faster learning bird. And I was happy too! Every day was an adventure and every day little E.T. would learn something new to surprise me with (well he had his down days sometimes, so I told myself he’d want to train later and he always did!).

Fly to me from the couch? Sure.

From the floor? Of course!

Fly to my brother in the covered patio? Duh!

My own frustration and anger disappeared; I became content not having to feel the need to make a bird do what I wanted it to do because it had to do it. Instead I found that E.T. did what I asked him because he wanted to do what I proposed. For the first time in a long time I felt encouraged, calm, cleverly observant and successful. The frustration and confusion was wiped away from my eyes like a wiper does for a windshield on a rainy day, I was ecstatic and wanted to show and tell everyone. And that is what I’m doing, you can’t stop me.

Animal Behavior 101: Learned Helplessness, Part 1

2011-02-17T19:48:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of months I've been reviewing some fundamentals of animal behavior in Dr. Susan G. Friedman's online class Learning and Living with Parrots (know popularly as LLP). It has been a very pleasant experience chatting it up with all the helpful TA's and reading many of the responses of my fellow clever classmates. But we are here at this blog today to learn about something that the LLP class helped me to find more information on, Learned Helplessness. In the following bit of blogging I'll discuss not only what the learned helplessness phenomena is, but also to tell you how you can and need to avoid using this method. I have seen everyday parrot owners, as well as the well seasoned parrot "expert" unwittingly put their beloved pets into situations that cause the physical and mental stunting that learned helplessness helps to create. And with that let's learn!

The definition of learned helplessness (hereby denoted as LH) is this: When an organism has learned to not escape unpleasant circumstances, even when escape is possible. And unfortunately this definition comes with a great big asterisk as well, as it carries well known detrimental side-effects to a creature's motivation, cognition, and immune system. An animal learns LH when it is placed into situation(s) where it has no choice of escape from an aversive stimulus. In other words the key to preventing LH is to give your animal the option to tell you "No! I do not want to do that right now."

Here is a terrific example of LH being taught to students.

Now imagine that the peer pressure in this group disappeared, and say the rules changed to "If you get stuck on a question skip it, it doesn't matter how many you get right as this does not measure intelligence." These conditions are now giving the students a moral boost by giving them a choice in the matter! Do you think that under these new conditions they would be able to solve the last anagram? You bet!

The same happens with our pet birds, choice empowers! Let's see a common LH example with out pet birds.

Have you ever had a bird that didn't like to be petted, but you wanted it to like being petted anyway? Has anyone ever told you that a really easy way to have a bird learn to like petting is to wrap it in a towel (so that it doesn't bite you of course) and scratch his head until he learns to like it? This is a great example of LH because the bird has no choice or control over the situation. There is no empowerment and no trust building between the bird and the person. All that's happening is LH, and with LH comes all those lovely little side effects I mentioned earlier: lack of motivation, less cognitive functioning (has been diagnosed as depression), and immune system suppression (more likely to get sick).

So how does learned helplessness fit into this situation with our bird, and in what part does it begin to show itself? If we look back at the situation we see that the bird does not have the simple choice if it would like to be petted or not. Well you might be thinking "But if I give him the choice of wanting to be pet then of course he won't choose to be petted! He hates it!" and that may very well seem to be the case, but as they say there is more than one way to skin a cat, or train a bird in this case. I'll tell you a preferred way of training this behavior without using LH but instead using lots of choice, in the next blog post. But for now let's focus on the side effects of LH.

Now we have a bird that does not have the ability to choose. It is unable get out of the situation and is forced to comply with the human's demands, thus it is helpless to change or avoid the situation. If the encounter happens a few times more you will first see the bird give up more readily -perhaps he will stop trying to get away from the towel- and then later you may indeed see the bird begin to relax while you forcefully pet his head. But those pesky side-effects will crop up as well. So is making an animal do this worth it in the end? Let's go over one of these side-effects to see what we are dealing with.

Motivation

In an experiment on dogs in 1976 the poor pups where exposed to LH conditions and then tested to see just how well they could learn a new behavior in a similar situation. It was found that a whopping 2/3rds of the dogs in that group did not learn the new behavior. The new behavior, by the way, was to simply flee. These results have remained statistically high well into the 21st cent. through further testing of LH in many more species since the 70's. These dogs where not motivated enough to learn, plain and simple. This experiment shows that a lack of choice in an animal's life retards the animal's learning ability.

Motivation and "Frustration"

Now rats were taught LH and then conditioned to move through a maze to get a reward at the end of the maze. When they ran the trial again without a reward the rats showed "frustrated" or "stubborn" behavior by refusing the leave the maze's reward spot. But the rats that where not treated to LH quickly learned that no reward was there and moved out of the finished maze. Again, the rats that where treated with LH stayed "stubborn" and did not leave the spot where the reward was usually. This shows a lack of ability to learn or "move on" from the situation. Animals treated with LH are much less adaptable to new, troublesome situations.

So we have now learned what Learned Helplessness is, we went over two examples of it, and one of the detrimental side-effects. Next time I'll wrap it up with the other two side effects, give examples, and reveal the LH-free secret to training a bird to like head scratches! Happy learning!

Pygmy Parrots: Pint-sized Peculiarities

2011-01-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

Dare I say it? Pygmy parrots pack a punch of perceived peculiarities! Well I'm glad I got that out of the way, I thought I would pop from such perturbation!

Pygmy Parrots are birds that are true to their name, they are small. When I say small I mean a bird that is 67% the size of a Pacific Parrotlet, the smallest of the pygmy species come in at an 8.4 cm while the Pacific Parrotlet is a big 12.5 cm! That's like comparing the average teen to an adult in height, the kid may be getting closer to adulthood but there are some major differences between the two. The same goes for the pygmies and parrotlets as they are petite and green, but take a closer look and you'll find so many different peculiarities it'll either get you begging to learn more about these little known gems, or it'll make your head spin.

Size: The size for the average pygmy parrot is 9 to 10 cm. The species clocking in at this length include the Yellow-capped, Geelvink, Meek's, Finsch's and Red-breasted Pygmy. But the smallest, and the world record holder, is the Buff-faced Pygmy Parrot at 8.4 cm.

Four of the six Pygmy species and distribution
Click to enlarge

These birds inhabit wet and lowland habitats like mangroves and some dry tropical forests on and around New Guinea and it's island chains. One bird, the Red-breasted, inhabits higher in the Montane region. Many island species within a genus tend to have diverged from a very recent common ancestor. Ancestor birds tend to come from a single source like a group originating from a large mass of land, an island or continent for example. In this case you can think of Darwin's finches, which are still undergoing rapid change and variability even today. They have evolved a variability of charicteristics like long beaks for prodding and pulling, shorter and tougher ones for cracking and so on.
What we see happening in both our parrots and the finches is known as Allopatric Speciation, a very cool and observable phenomenon. This would explain why we have a total of 6 island species but a whopping concentration of 26 subspecies of pygmy parrots! Where else can you find that many subspecies in one place if not on island regions? Well, mountains oceans and probably some others too, you just need some kind of barrier for speciation to take place. Lets take a break from all the scientific terminology and find out what these little buggers eat!

Male Red-breasted Pygmy Parrot

Okay, so these guys are known as the world's smallest parrot and they have a whopping 26 subspecies found in only one area of the entire planet! But before today a lot of you probably did not know much about this amazing little bird. But if we had it as a common pet everyone would know it's name, so why don't we have them as pets? One reason is because of their super-specialized and very odd diet. These birds feast on lichens as well as taking insects, fungus, larvae, fruit and small seeds. Let me quote Forshaw about how the Buff-faced Pygmy goes about eating lichens. Video of a bird feeding.

Near Port Moresby I watched a pair feeding in a tall tree standing in secondary growth. When first noticed they were climbing about on the face of the trunk, frequently stopping to feed on lichen. The feet were spread far apart and were at a 45* angle to the body. The projecting tail-shafts were in contact with the trunk only at their tips and there was no pressure on the tail feathers to spread them against the surface of the trunk; in other words, when feeding the parrots were using their stiffened tail feathers for support, although this was not at all obvious at first glance. While nibbling at the lichen they paused every two or three seconds to lean back from the trunk and, turning their heads right around, surveyed behind them as if aware of exposure to predators. They moved in all directions over the trunk and branches, even descending head first and upside-down on the undersides of lateral branches. Head movements were very rapid, but the birds’ progress over the branches was without the jerky motions so characteristic of treecreepers, nuthatches and sittellas.

The other reason why we don't see them in captivity is because of their very different nesting habits from other parrots. Like most of our birds in captivity they are cavity nesters but the surprise comes in when you find out who it is they nest with; Termites! I find this the most fascinating and, in the long term, perhaps the most dangerous way for a species to survive. This kind of symbiotic reliance the parrot and termite have is known as Coevolution and the birds are found living in only active termite nests year round.
When you think about coevolution think about hummingbirds like the Swordbill. This bird's bill is as long as its body due to it's reliance on certain passion flower species. It's handy when you are the only bird in town that can eat from a big flower, but if the flower disappears too quickly that bill costs a lot of energy to maintain if you don't use it. So you either adapt or go extinct, fortunately for the Swordbill it still can eat from other flowers and has even been seen at nectar feeders. This is the same idea with the Pygmy parrots, but they do not look as flexible evolutionay-wise as the hummingbird because they seem to rely solely on the termites for a nest. Could this be for hygienic protection? Do the termites benefit at all? If they don't then it is not coevolution. No one seems to know the answers yet. But if the termites leave the forest so do the pygmies.

Special Evolved Features
Created by the author
(c)

So pygmies show many peculiarities that few people know about. But their amazing adaptability to their environment is enough to get anyones head to spin, a parrot? Are you sure that's what it is? Yup. And that makes it even more amazing. Species like this can only stay around to help educate people about the amazing feats of nature if they are preserved in the wild for future generations. As educated parrot owners the preservation of wild birds puts itself on our shoulders. We need to keep learning and participating in the animal community to keep it alive. What is "it"? The birds, amazing feats of nature, or the curious animal community? I leave that to you to decide.

Sources:
Forshaw's Parrots of the World 1978 ed.
Parrots of the World 2010 ed.
Wikipedia
World Parrot Trust
Internet Bird Collection
thefeaturedcreature.com
animalpicturearchive.com

Our December Gift to Mother Nature

2010-12-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

For those of you parrot lovers that live in the United States you know that there are (or were) two distinct species of native parrot here, the Carolina Parakeet and the Thick-billed Parrot. But if you didn't know that we held two lovely and distinct birds of the psittacine order in the U.S., then surprise! I trust that you will now be dutifully taking time to learn about these interesting ad exciting animals, no?

So anyways the exciting news! Take a gander at what the press has to say about attempting to get one of our parrots back into a thriving situation. Image by Andrew Zuckerman.

By FELICIA FONSECA, Associated Press Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press – Thu Dec 16, 2:11 pm ET

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – The federal government has agreed to draft a recovery plan for an endangered parrot with a historical range that included Arizona and New Mexico.
Environmentalists sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over what it said was a decades-long delay in developing such a plan.

The two sides settled the lawsuit this week.
About 2,800 of the adult thick-billed parrots still live in the wild, mostly in northern Mexico. Environmentalists say the last credible reports of naturally occurring flocks in the U.S. are from southeastern Arizona in 1938 and southwestern New Mexico in 1964.

A Fish and Wildlife spokesman says the agency will review Mexico's recovery plan and have a U.S. version available for public comment in 2012.

So there it is folks! Starting almost a full year from now we get a recovery plan for our parrots! And from the sound of things it wasn't easy to get. I don't think I could blame the Fish and Wildlife Service for perhaps putting up a fuss either. It is not cheap or easy to grow native parrot populations especially when there has not been one in seventy-two years, and this species hasn't had huge flocks to begin with! This doesn't look like a cinch.

The plan is going to take many years, but wouldn't it be worth it? How amazing would it be to have our own native parrot species? How proud would you be to visit Arizona just to go watch our own parrots flying in their natural habitat? I would have to make it a yearly trip to visit, just as a treat for myself.

We missed our chance with the Carolina Parakeet and I hope that this chance is all that we need for our proudly native Thick-billed.

On a Cold Winter's Day

2010-12-13T08:31:00.000-08:00

Last week I was given a shocker, I found bleeding red scabs on Achilles's back. Before I found them on my cockatiel I noticed odd preening behavior from her. She would be perching perfectly happy and content when all of a sudden she would start to vigorously preen her back but it wasn't just her feathers, it was skin she was attacking. And while it may seem silly I just thought she was preening. I honestly thought she was preening the fluffier down feathers located near the skin. So I took little notice of it and thought it was just normal 'tiel behavior because if you own a cockatiel you know how much they love to preen. But one winter Sunday morning, while Achilles was preening on my shoulder and I was grabbing a cardboard box of corn chex for breakfast, I glanced over to see my bird pull (and I mean she pulled) a matted feather from her back and it was lightly spotted in blood.

After seeing that matted feather I calmly sat down with her and understood what was happening; she was irritated with her back and wasn't just cleaning it hardily. So I began to inspect her back to see where that blood had come from. She was still preening the same area so I simply started to "help" her preen it, which she likes, but this time I needed to move past all the thick, white cockatiel fluff to see her skin. After a little work I made my way through the forest of feathers and found the pink plains of skin. There it was, a little nick of epidermis slightly oozing with drying blood.

"Okay" said my brain to itself. "It's not bad, I'll just give her a warm bath and snip some fresh aloe for her. I bet it's just the dry winter air." And that's exactly what I did. But I found two more areas on her that had scabs or new wounds. This area is the worst one.

What was I to do? I really started freaking out now that I saw she was covered. My regular vet, and all other vets, are closed today. But should I take her to the Emergency Clinic? Probably not as she was not in a life or death situation, the damage on her showed that she must had been picking like this for a while. So what's a caring mother do? I whipped up a mix of oatmeal and home-grown aloe in a blender and filtered it out so that only a refined liquid was left. The process was a bit messy and I had to be careful not to get it on her feathers, as they would never dry out if the mix touched them. I kept a close eye on her all day and the problem appeared to be solved, she wasn't scratching any more.

The next day she was taken to my regular avian vet and Achilles was sent home with a clean bill of health, a bottle of lotion and a bottle of baytril. My vet said she probably got a cut that she scratched at and she didn't stop scratching. She also gave me high praise for doing what I did for Achilles because she was half healed already. I took a look while apply her new cream that day and by golly, she was already healing wonderfully.
Three days later and she looks fully healed. Five days later the meds ended and she's still fine. One week later and she still seems to be doing well. The photo below is what she looked like after three days.

But this all leaves me wondering how it all got started. If it was a scratch that started it how was something able to scratch her? I had to go through a forest of soft feathers before I got to her skin but could something else get through? Could it not be a scratch but instead a crack of dry skin from the cold weather? The vet did say her skin looked a little dry. And as I continue to hypothesize I begin to think about allergies, infections, bugs and boredom! Innumerable possibilities but only one answer. It remains an enigma to me.

Most Evasive & Least Invasive Training

2010-09-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

As if evasive/invasive wasn't confusing enough (I dare you to say that five-times fast) I now present to you my latest concoction! Explaining away -at least half-way decently- why it is a great idea to train the most evasively and least invasively, and how at least one person tripped up.

Without further ado I present a half asleep, half running on caffeine, and half particularly annoyed parrot trainer (did you notice? that adds up to 150%) VLOGGING, well it is more of a video reply but a vlog works too. Don't you love this tiny font? It is so annoying!

And if you are so inclined to look FWCAS (Florida West Coast Avian Society) kindly provided the materials to build this toy I made last night at their final meeting at the Animals By Nature Store.

All the favorites for a cockatiel

Up and Coming: Deconstructing the Womach Brothers!

2010-08-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've figured it has been a long time since my last audio blog post, and with any luck this next topic will be a video blog! The first one I have ever done I might add...

So anyway the topic will be about that annoying duo of internet "Parrot Training Experts" known as the Womach Brothers! I currently have not kept too up to date with what new and nasty schemes that they have devised to poison the minds of the honest and gentle animal-lovers out there, nor have I noticed much activity from one member of the brotherly band of behavior bashers on the net. But I'll ask around and do some of my own research before I throw everything together to analyse it.

Lastly I just want to mention that if you have any input about this topic I would love to hear what you know/have to say. Posting is open to everyone so feel free to write something. If there is one thing that will need to be pointed out again and again in the upcoming video it will be to read body language, body language, body language!!

The Antipodes Island Parakeet

2010-07-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

Something that caught my attention recently was a parrot called the Antipodes Island Parakeet, and the reason is because -unlike many parrot species- they scavenge and kill for meat. According to Wikipedia, a very scholarly source I am sure:

The Antipodes Parakeet or Antipodes Island Parakeet (Cyanoramphus unicolor) is endemic to the Antipodes Islands, one of two parrot species found on the islands. It is the largest species in the genus Cyanoramphus at 30 cm (12 in) long. The parakeets eat leaves, buds, grass, and tussock stalks, as well as sometimes feeding on seeds, flowers, and will scavenge dead seabirds. The Antipodes Parakeet also preys on Grey-backed Storm-petrels. It will enter burrows to kill incubating adults, even dig at the entrance if it is too small.

I thought to myself "Wow!" what an amazing example of the evolution of a species! With the change in behavior of being prey and a vegetable and berry forager, to learning hunting tactics and being the predator! With some bird of prey species being, genetically, closely related to parrots (sorry guys but pigeons win when it comes to being evolutionarily closest) it become much easier for the layperson to connect the dots without having to look at haphazard strands of DNA. I wonder what other changes in behavior and physiology will occur if meat became a more staple part of it's diet? (group dynamics, beak, claw, eye modification)

But that doesn't mean that you should feed Polly a greasy chicken leg once a week to make sure she gets all the protein she needs. It's very likely she is already getting a great amount of protein from those pellets and beans that you are feeding her, some species do not well on a high protein diet and kidney damage will occur. Just make sure you know about your bird's species and pick up a few good books about parrots and what they eat. A great source would be Forshaw's Parrots of the World, I am finding myself constantly consulting this for the bird nutrition/cookbook I am starting to help write. Forshaw's book will never go out of your use!

An example from the book, did you know that:

Feeding observations from all parts of the island showed that 65% of the diet of C. Unicolor was leaves of the Poa tussock and sedges, with other important foods being seeds (12%), berries (9%), and fragments from corpses of penguins and other birds (7%).

This shows that meat, even for parrots that are becoming adapted to eat it, do not eat (as of yet) it as a main source of food and is likely a replacement protein source because the birds cannot find it elsewhere.

Life is cool isn't it?

Parrots as Pets...wait, PETS?!

2010-07-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

So I've been obsessed with these magnificently winged and eccentrically colored birds, they have been put into a phylogenetic group known as parrots! It is this obsession that has gripped me since I was eight years old because that is the year a budgie named Polly came into my life. Any time I saw a parrot on a billboard advertisement was cause for celebration. Seeing a parrot on an educational television program gave me even greater joy, it would cause my ears to prick up because I wanted to hold on to every word the show's host had to say about these fantastical creatures. It was as if my life depended on me knowing those words. And when I got close to a real, live parrot? I worshipped it. My eyes would be wide with excitement, goosebumps would raise my hairs up, and I was filled with a desperate longing to be privileged enough to hold such a magical creature.

Given my history of absolute infatuation with the psittacine species, imagine my surprise when I heard -out of the mouth of my own mother- that parrots should be deemed unsuitable as pets, period! My initial reaction was o_O? To place a emoticon on it.

This got me to thinking, there seems to be two loud voices supporting two opposing radical views in the pet trade of parrots. One over-encourages parrots as pets while the other completely discourages them. PETA discourages parrots as pets at all costs and it is very prominent on the internet they err on the "Parrots are hard to care for, emotionally, financially, and they involve a lot of your time. They need to fly otherwise they are depressed! They cannot be kept in cages because it was not meant to be! They are too hard to care for so they need to be sent back to their homeland to be set free."
-nonPETA, usually the people who own parrots- say "Parrots are hard to care for, emotionally, financially, and they involve a lot of your time. But they are SO hard to care for I doubt you could EVER have a single parrot as a pet. They are so mean, they bite, kids cannot play with them, and they only bond to one person, why just look at my bird as proof! Imagine living with this for 60 years?!" And I would reply with a "Yikes!" When was the last time they actually tried to read the bird's body language?

You can clearly see that these two views are complimentary, they fully embrace the idea that parrots should be completely discouraged as pets. They have their reasons, but I find that these people focus way too strongly on one side of the argument; the pitfalls. "Time, money, and more time!" And what about the highlights of caring for such an animal? Are they touting any of the highlights? Let's go to the next extreme case: the pet shop and the large breeder.

I find that both the shop and larger scale breeder tend to stand in on the same views: "Parrots are a cool exotic pet you can show off. They'll love you for 60 years and they love to play, especially the macaws. Macaws are like the dog in the bird world and love to play rough and tumble games, get this $1,000 macaw!" Of course these are only the most extreme of cases, many shops and breeders are more level-headed. But this should be something to be aware of.

So what is my point? I've just shown that some people over-encourage parrots as pets without giving downsides, and some people under-encourage them as pets without including all the upsides. So why is this important, why does this issue of people not getting the full view worry me so? It is important to have a balanced view of aviculture because without it aviculture will fail. If there is too much focus on how "cool" your new pet is going to be, with fewer people taking aviculture seriously, then the quality of aviculture will fail. More birds, but more birds will also suffer a low quality life, and from the stories I have heard when parrots where being imported by the thousands this is exactly what happened.

If there were too many parrots as pets...

When parrots where being imported there was no information about how these animals survived in the wild, what they ate, how they flocked, or when they are active. We were just in the baby stages of American aviculture. But if importation started up again and any person who wanted a cheap parrot could get one, would you doubt a repeat situation? We know that a pellet-based diet is so much better than an oily, seed-based one, yet the standards in every shop is to feed a basic seed mix. And they encourage their customers to feed their birds the same as well? Are we really out of the dark ages yet? And I still see the common misapplied mistakes and misunderstandings of basic behavior science in every corner of the bird world. Bad advice, and bad techniques are thrown around willy-nilly, not unlike in the days of importation.

And if parrots should never be pets...

Need I say that if PETA gets its way then there will be no parrots, as pets, breeders, in zoos or otherwise? All those crazed animal rights extremists have been shouting is "Set the birds free!" without a thought of how parrots need to learn how to survive. There is no well thought out conservation efforts on their part, all they know is that is it "not natural" for a bird to be clipped and put in a cage so, through the difficult effort of a false dichotomy *sarcasm*, assume the birds are depressed and are living a horrible life. Extremists play on human emotions, not human thinking ability. This would be why they over-use images of beaten, starving, manged, and dead animals on their websites. They use sex to sell ideas too. They will do anything to attract attention to their shameless cause that is brimming with under flatulence of the brain. And if there are no animals to pique interest from kids then conservation efforts would not pull in new recruits from the pet industry.

If the majority have a balanced view on parrots...

Aviculture thrives on participation and growing interest from the public, from local bird fairs and club meetings to far reaching events like Houston Parrot Festival and the International Parrot Convention in Loro Parque, Tenerife. To keep it thriving we need people with calm, balanced views, people who are not hard headed and are willing to check information sources if an already established idea in aviculture needs to be revised. People can still breed parrots, and people will always need to rescue parrots, so long as there is such a thing as aviculture. Young people still need to be brought into this ever decreasing interest and if they are, there will be more support for habitat conservation as well. With an educated "balanced" view there will be parrots to play with, toys to buy, and species to save.

The middle ground is this: parrots are perfectly good pets if people are ready and well planned for them (Anyone got a Will?). Which is what I need to tell my mom...

My view? "Parrots are fun, messy, will be your forever companion if you are committed to understanding them, smart, cost a frickn' lot of $$, they help you meet cool people that like parrots too, are super fun to learn about, are fun to train, and a definitely worthwhile to have as pets. Responsibly caring for and learning about a wild animal encourages peoples' interest in what is outside their little suburban bubble, it encourages them to conserve and care for the world outside themselves; a selfless act. And in the case of this college student; it got her onto a career in preserving what evolution has molded into the psittacine species."

It is parrots in captivity that led me to love them, it is that love that keeps me spoiling the one I have, and it is this one bird that keeps me wanting to pursue a degree in Biology so I can further help the world to understand, love, and preserve these practically mythologically beautiful creatures.

Workshops and Conventions? Oh My!

2010-07-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

If you guys don't know about a little place called Ara Ptero then I need to know; Where have you been?

This is a bunch of stuff taken at the May 2010 3-day immersion free flight Workshop. Hosted by the spunky Linda Hodgens and taught by the renowned Barbara Heidenreich.

You can catch Ara Ptero within the upcoming months at the AFA convention in St. Pete, FL and NPRPF's Houston Parrot Festival in 2011.

Freely Flighted Macaw

2010-07-11T06:43:00.000-07:00

I just came across a beautiful post on another blog highlighting a professional photographer's experience with a lovely Blue-throated Macaw named Ingrid. I think you should check it out.

Arguments from Authority: A Common Mistake

2010-06-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

The pet shops in our town do not have the highest ethical or medical standards. Animals in one particular store are handled roughly or chased around the cage until they step up or give in to the intruding hand. Out of the 10 years or randomly dropping into this store not once have I seen the budgerigar and cockatiel cages or their dowel rod perches free from a nice coating of bird droppings. The base diet of their animals (except the carnivores) is seed -but I must mention that they sometimes they do try to make the large parrot diets a little more healthy by occasionally offering mixed frozen veggies-, and lastly (and most horrifically of all) they regularly buy and swap birds without a care about how healthy the bird is. There is absolutely no oversight in screening for health problems in the birds, there is not even a minimum 30 day isolation period for new birds. This scares the be-he-jeebers out of me; especially when I see birds sneezing with runny noses, bobbing tails, labored breathing, ratty feathers or just sitting tired in a corner on a bright, sunny morning.

From the description that I gave above I doubt that any distinguished pet owner would want to purchase anything from that store, it is simply not worth the risk.
Let's call the man who owns the store Rob. Now Rob has been working in the business of animals for 30 odd years and is considered a well respected "expert", according to the locals, in his profession. He can tell you how to raise any kind of creature; from Chameleons to Chinchillas.

Recently Rob hired a co-worker of mine, Kasey. Kasey and I love learning about animals, and apparently she had been learning a lot more about animals at Rob's store. Kasey is a nice person, and since joining Rob's staff she has been enthusiastically learning about our little fuzzy, feathered, and scaled friends. She starts up conversations with "Did you know?" questions about exotic animals, and when she talks about them she has an excited light in her eyes. Animals add a touch of magic into people's lives, and it is this kind of excitement that I like to see in people.
After hearing about Kasey's new job and talking excitedly with her about animals, I noticed that some of her newly gained knowledge was not quite right. She said "Did you know that prairie dogs need a companion? If they don't have one they become depressed and die." And after hearing that (who doesn't know of that same fallacy with lovebirds?) I tried to get her to question that statement. I replied "Well people used to say the same thing about lovebirds and other kinds of parrots, but we now know that this is not true. Like any animal they need to forage, play, socialize and stay busy." Kasey looked a little confused but she did agree that animals do need these things. She told me, being full of conviction, that Rob must be right because he owns the shop and has a lot of experience. I give Kasey kudos for being an eager learner, but it seems that she was absorbing too much information from authority figures without researching and fact-checking the answers.

And besides there is nothing terribly wrong with accepting what Rob says, the expert with 30 years of experience under his belt, as nothing but true gospel right? With all of his experience he must know how to do it all right, right? Wrong.

This is a classic case of "Trust the Authority Figure" AKA an argument from authority. This is how many consumer products -both effective and bogus- make a selling point as well. Phrases like "supported by scientific research" or "four out of five doctors recommend" or "a new study shows" are all examples you see and hear of every day. So how do we know when something is true? Here is a short and simple guideline I pulled from page 223 of the book "Appeal to Expert Opinion."

1. Expertise question: How credible is E (Rob) as an expert source?
2. Field question: Is E (Rob) an expert in the field that A (Prairie dogs) is/are in?
3. Opinion question: What did E (Rob) assert that implies A (Dying from no companion)?
4. Trustworthiness question: Is E (Rob) personally reliable as a source?
5. Consistency question: Is A (dying from no companion) consistent with what other experts assort?
6. Backup evidence question: Is A's (Rob's) assertion based on evidence?

You can probably already see the problem with a short, simple, and broad checklist such as this. It can lead people who are not as adept with critical thinking astray, or to start asking the wrong kind of questions and getting the wrong conclusions. So let’s narrow the Expertise question down, just a tad.

1. What is E's name, Job or official capacity, location, and employer?
2. What degrees, professional qualifications or certification by license agencies does E hold?
3. Can testimony of peer experts in the same field be given to support E’s competence?
4. What is E's record of experience, or other indications of practiced skill in S?
5. What is E’s record of peer-reviewed publications or contributions to knowledge in S?

And to trudge this out even further you would need to research the history of the company through it's licenses, its health checks, possible felony charges, who they hire, and who likes/dislikes the company and for what reasons. But of course this is all just common sense. Apart from actually doing background checks sometimes people can tell what the history of a place just by looking around. It is a little mental checklist in our head; in a matter of seconds we make decisions on whether we like something or not based on pre-set criteria of how we like things to be, for one reason or another. From liking or disliking a glass of wine, to walking into the ambiance of a restaurant, we carry our speedy, handy dandy, little mental checklist wherever we go. The same applies to pet shops and how people care for their animals. Is the place clean? Are the animals treated with respect? Are the animals fed a healthy diet for their species? Are the employees empathetic, knowledgeable, and good listeners? These are some of the things on my mental checklist that I take with me as I walk into a pet store. And if I am found wanting I do not support them with my dollar.

To simplify the above 5 question checklist: Each of these require, a little friend of mine that I know as evidence. Is there evidence of high morals and professionalism? And in Rob's case experience in not necessarily evidence, but there can be evidence of a person's experience. And unfortunately for Rob (as stated in the very beginning) it is evident that he does not run his store in a professional, 30 year experience, manner, the evidence speaks against him. And when responsibly taken care of, prairie dogs will not die without another prairie dog. Case closed.

(but don't take my assertion as true until you know it is. Be a free thinker!)

I Need the Love to Be Real

2010-05-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I did not plan for it, but I went to our local and grimy flea market. It was a horrible day to do much of anything; other than to pant in the heat waves. In this particular market there are two shops I visit, both of them dealing in parrots. I have checked into these shops from time to time just to check in on the parrots; I need to make sure they are being treated fairly.

In first shop I spent about 30 minutes inside, I carefully looked at each bird that was stuffed in the 30 cages the shop had. In the back there is a young scarlet macaw named "Skittles" who was returned to the shop when only a baby, and that was an entire year ago. This macaw is unruly and untrained, the shop owner has tried to wheedle me into buying her on more than one occasion, but alas college students are not wealthy.
The shop owner likes to think he knows how to train a parrot and get it to like you. Yet this bird hates everyone. Has he heard of Barbara Heidenreich? Has he studied Applied Behavior Analysis, or does he even know what it is? The answers are; Yes. And no. I've been more than willing to give him my card with Barbara's business information on the back, and I've briefly mentioned how and why she trains all species of exotic beasts. And even with my perseverance of a gentle leading hand of "train like this, not that" I see no headway in his training techniques.

For instance, he has recently brought in some help, a family member, a young lad about the age of 12 years. I spotted him when I first walked into the store, I obliged him a smile, and hoped that the techniques from his uncle had not rubbed off on him. I continued into the bird-dropping laden store and calmly presented myself to the scarlet macaw, Skittles, who was frustrated at being stuck in a cage. We talked and played for several minutes and Skittles had a nasty habit of screaming and biting her foot in frustration at random intervals of our playful interaction. So to help quell the beast I walked away from her, showed her my back, and started to interact with another bird for 5 seconds. After that I would resume our interactions. This worked very well, and after several more minutes the shop owner let her out so that she could hang outside the cage. Not long after that Skittles let out a bloody scream, so I just turned my back. But then I heard a immature person's voice come from the other side of the store that yelled "Be quiet!" and soon that young 12 year old came striding towards the bird threatening her with a large, wooden, plank. "You be quiet!" He demanded. And the bird shrank to the back of the cage with fear. The child still brandished the weapon; "You know what will happen if you are not quiet, ok?" and the child backed down, apparently deciding that that was enough to scare the bird to not be loud again. He placed the plank leaning against a stack of crap covered Bourke’s cages and left.
I could not have that child threaten and/or abuse the innocent macaw. So I hid the plank behind leftover construction material in the corner of the store. Apparently there are plenty of wooden leftovers to beat birds with. And why, why beat birds at all? Who gave these people the right to "train" birds this way? Whose gives these people the right to spoil the minds of young children with crap like this instead of the REAL science of behavior? We know why it is not good to use Positive Punishment and Negative Reinforcement, we know the reasons for using only the most positive and least invasive interactions.

Building a relationship with an animal by threatening to use a plank does not create real love or a real bond. It creates fear, aggression, and apathy, the animal now must comply with your demands (or else!) but he just doesn't want to. People are conditioning animals to avoid human contact, and then make the animals grudgingly accept it. That is not real love, it is not real passion for the living soul that is under your care. These actions are treason, treason of the heart to the poor animal and it splinters their imagination and their loyalty to you.

I will continue to be a pleasant, but persistent person to the owner. After all I now know that calm, positive interactions win hearts. Not grouchy, enemy-making, confrontational interactions. Just treat birds respectfully, like you do your customers.

Winging It

2010-03-12T08:31:00.001-08:00

Just a quick post on a new parrot book coming out in two days, "Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me" By Jenny Gardiner

By no means does this look to be a book on "properly" caring for a parrot, but instead it looks like it might be good for some fun reading. At 256 pages the book might be a bit too large for the subject matter, I would hope it's got a good story without having predictable outcomes. Here is the review I tore off Amazon for you. Sounds like it would have gone easier if the new adoptees knew a little about +R!

"A hilarious and poignant cautionary tale about two very different types of creatures, thrown together by fate, who learn to make the best of a challenging situation -- feather by feather.
Like many new bird owners, Jenny and Scott Gardiner hoped for a smart, talkative, friendly companion. Instead, as they took on the unexpected task of raising a curmudgeonly wild African gray parrot and a newborn, they learned an important lesson: parrothood is way harder than parenthood.

A gift from Scott's brother who was living in Zaire, Graycie arrived scrawny, pissed-off, and missing a lot of her feathers -- definitely not the Polly-wants-a-cracker type the Gardiners anticipated. Every day became a constant game of chicken with a bird that would do anything to ruffle their feathers. The old adage about not biting the hand that feeds you -- literally -- never applied to Graycie.

But Jenny and Scott learned to adapt as the family grew to three children, a menagerie of dogs and cats, and, of course, Graycie. In this laugh-out-loud funny and touching memoir, Jenny vividly shares the many hazards of parrot ownership, from the endless avian latrine duty and the joyful day the bird learned to mimic the sound of the smoke detector, to the multiple ways a beak can pierce human flesh. Graycie is a court jester, a karaoke partner, an unusual audio record of their family history, and, at times, a nemesis. But most of all, she has taught the family volumes about tolerance, going with the flow, and realizing that you can no sooner make your child fit into a mold than you can turn a wild parrot into a docile house pet. Winging It is an utterly engrossing reminder of the importance of patience, loyalty, and humor when it comes to dealing with even the most unpleasant members of the family. "

A New Level in Motivation

2010-02-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Ever thought about self rewarding behavior? I've heard about it sometimes when a behavior in parrots becomes comforting. Like that Moluccan Cockatoo that used to scream just for attention, but now he does it all the time with or without a reward. Or that feather picking African Grey that simply picks as a way to occupy his time, but now the behavior has become a self-soothing perpetuating behavior. Like the way I bite my nails...

These issuse might be considered a bit more simplistic in the way of behavior, compared to what Mr. Pink talks about (it is a simplistic task for an instant reward). But this gets me to wonder about how his topic could influence what behavior techniques we use in the world of animals. Crows and Keas as examples; these birds have shown extra ordinary abilities to quickly solve unclear tasks (Like Pink talks about humans in the video) for a food reward. Odly, he points out that this kind of bribery works poorly on us humans, compared to an alternative view he expresses.

Then again I remember some faint memory of the birds just standing around just looking at the food based reward puzzle, for several minutes, before attempting it. This is the same thing that humans do in trying to figure out multiple step problems, yet bribery works poorly. Could any of Mr. Pink's research be applied to animals? Can the Keas and Crows actualy perform better at thier tasks like the test subjects he talks about, and if so how do we go about setting up a task for animals like that? I hope I find out in my lifetime.

I've often dreamed about reaching a point with my animals where they can learn "just for the fun of it" but is this possible for creatures other than humans? Or will animals always do better at tasks if given a bribe for simple tasks, like us humans? The jury is still out on that one.

Don't forget to comment and share the insight you've gained from this video or any research you may have come across on the topic. This "New Science" stuff is always interesting!

Poicephalus

2010-02-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

It's not often that you see a great little Poicephalus in the news. I've only seen meyers and a female red bellied as pets. Some people say that red bellies are more interactive and less jittery than the meyers, yet other people claim the exact opposite. Who to believe? In my experience all three of the meyers I've met have been jittery around new people, they tend to be comfortable most around "their" people. And some of these birds have gotten outright nasty with me if I asked for a step-up! But the most recent meyers I know is a sweetheart with everyone. When you take the dear bird out of his cage his feathers automatically slick down and he is on the alert, and this would support the hypothesis that meyers are jittery birds. But I think there might be a little more to the story, the owner of the meyers has a lot of dogs, and a pair of cats always following us ,and the bird around. This could be causing the bird anxiety and be perpetuating a myth that meyers are a jittery parrot.

What about the meyers and Poicephalus you've met? What kind of characteristics have you noticed about them?

A New DVD

2010-02-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

Everyone who is into parrots knows about foraging. It plays an important role in parrot's lives, as well as all other animals on Earth. The creator of the Captive Foraging DVD, Dr. Scott Echols DVM, is coming out with a new series of DVDs on the care of birds.

I am currently unaware as to what the marketing price will be. I feel that $15 may be reasonalable, depending on the content. But the fact that a series of videos is coming out from a known, respectable professional in the feild of medicine is encouraging to me. It's a lot better than some run of the mill "expert" at the petshop on the corner.

Harness Training Update

2009-12-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

Achilles has always surprised me at how well she eats, it only took just a little encouraging when I first got her to try new bird food. This morning it was an organic breakfast of cous cous, cinnamon, blueberry baby food and papaya enzyme tablets. It smelled so good I was tempted to try it. But didn't :-P

This is how I'm starting to train her to wear stuff. I put this red rope thingy around her head and pet her with both my finger and the rope.

I pause the petting and let her hang w/the string.

And resume with the petting.

Sometimes things get itchy.

The Clicker Cure?

2009-11-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

Achilles has been being a bit of a grouch this week. About five months ago I stopped +R training sessions with her, I am not sure why but I suppose it was because I got busy and I saw no real reason to continue. That was a big mistake on my part.

Some of the "symptoms" Achilles had been expressing:

quickly lunging out and "hissing" increased

antisocial; did not want to step up or be with other people

falling from the hand more often

When I mention that she "falls" I mean that she wildly flaps her wings -sometimes wing flapping does not happen- and does a backwards somersault off the perch and onto the ground. I do not fully understand why she does this, since day 1 of fostering she has done this. But my hypothesis is that it might have something to do with being hard-of-sight. I read somewhere that blind pigeons fly backwards, and it is true that the only way I have seen Achilles fly is backwards. So flipping -or falling- backwards off a perch may be linked to this odd behavior.

Back to the point of a 'grumpy bird'; I decided to start up training sessions again. As soon as she knew I had millet she was offering behaviors like a pro! We then started something semi-new and mildly unliked; some sort of a red shoelace thingy. -I introduced this object before by petting her with both my fingers and the rope thingy. At some points in the indroduction she got 'mad' at the rope and I had to back off. But mostly (and by the end of petting) she accepted the new stringy object.- So we did some reps with the shoelace and she never had a problem with it. Of course she was working for millet, not head rubs but maybe she just accepts the string now. I will have to try again and see what the deal is with the stringy-rope-shoelace thing. With just several repetitions she was willingly laying her neck around the loop! That's a good start if I'm going to train her to wear a harness.

After the training session was over there appeared to be a marked difference in her behavior; her lunging diminished, and she was willing to interact. I did another session with her today and her falling has greatly diminished. Why?

Has anyone else heard of these great side-effects of training animals? I've heard of all the bad side effects of using punishment and -R, but what about the side effect of overall well being when using +R? This is new to me. Anyone have any papers or articles they want to lead me to about this phenomena?

Biting is Not An Option!

2009-11-12T10:28:00.000-08:00

Biting it mostly a communication problem, 99.98% of the time. In general birds will always communicate body language to you before it bites your sorry little hand. And when you do see the "language" they use it's a good warning to back off (tail flairing, eye pinning, pacing etc.).

When I was first fostering Achilles I first had to teach her to step up without falling, then as time progressed I noticed she had 'moods' of when she wanted to step up. If she did not want to step up she would quickly lunge at my finger in protest -because she is legally blind she can't see when something is coming, so I assume that is why she did not choose to run away-. I got a little clever and taught her to train me! I use a "pre-cue", if you will, to see if she wants to step up -I use the word "Ready?"-. If she does not wish to stepup she says "no" by lunging out at thin air, instead of my finger. But if she wants to she lifts up her foot to come with me. Over time she has learned that she doesn't even need to lunge to say no, she just sits on her perch in quiet protest.

Attached is an MP3 about a little trip Achilles and I went on last month. It was a great learning/teaching experence about the topic of behavior and biting!

http://caitlinscraft.webs.com/Nov09Diary.mp3

You may want to check out these resources if you are not sure where to learn about the methods I am talking about. The PDF is from 4PawsU.com and the article talks about the common myth of dominance in animals and the use of aversives in training. www.4pawsu.com/dominancestatement.pdf
This next link is an overveiw of behavior. It defines verbage and tells you the consequences of each type of teaching (training) method. http://www.wagntrain.com/OC/

Desktop Backdrop

2009-11-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post something on my blog that, hopefully, you will enjoy to use. This is a female Red-tailed Black Cockatoo and I've spiced up her look somewhat. Perhaps she puts makeup on for the boys, *he he*. This pretty little girl lives at the zoo and hangs out with a handsome white-talied black cockatoo partner in "The Bat House".

If you need a different size for your computer screen I will be happy to add your size. Enjoy!

The Big Bang Theory and Operant Conditioning

2009-10-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the first night I saw this show and now I'm hooked. For all the animal trainers out there, I think this is hilarious! And the best part; I'm including this in my club's training lecture tomorrow, just in time!

Start at 55 seconds to get strait to the point.

(The video has been deleted, but you can still look it up, it's part 2 of the episode "The Gothowitz Deviation")

Simplest Steps to Teaching Step-up

2009-09-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I volunteered at the local zoo, and as usual they utilized my outstanding cleaning skills. Well okay anyone can hose down penguin poop and sift exhibit sand, but that's not the point, I'm just saying I stayed busy while I was there.

Every week I also bring by enrichment items for the birds to shred, and this time it was two large willow baskets filled with goodies and some sort of cardboard foraging toy I made from what was leftover in a box that was shipped to me last week, cheap and fun!

I usually get some free time to goof off with the animals and during that time I got to start working with a female Gang-gang Cockatoo. From what I hear she used to step up, but now she does it rarely and only with specific people. Take a listen to my diary to find out what happened, some of it is hard to understand because of my poor editing skills, and I will get better at that.

http://caitlinscraft.webs.com/SeptDiary.mp3 - Download and save to your computer to listen, you will need microsoft media player, or something that plays an MP3 *Revision: after a current self assement of the method used, rewarding with a "jackpot" at every step is not needed, even though it says to in the MP3. It is preffered to use jackpots less often, as I have learned from Cassie Malina last weekend.*

Disclaimer: I am not a professional trainer, everything I do is based on POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT theory and I get my information from top professional trainers in the field. One trainer that I highly recommend is at GoodBirdInc.com

Introductions!

2009-09-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Birds

This is Achilles, my personal pet. She was abandoned at a local Emergency Vet Clinic after she flew into a fan, the accident left her crippled. Her left foot and wing bone where broken, and she has permanent neurological problems with seeing. I fostered her and planned to adopt her out myself through Safe Haven Avian Placement Services, after keeping her for one year and not finding the "perfect" home I've claimed her as my own.

These guys are a part of my friend's flock. I've known them for about 6 years and get to pet-sit for them every month or so. Not shown are Cuarvo, Mango, and Savanna.

And every week sweet faces like these pop up! Volunteering at the zoo is quite an adventure.

The Mouse

This is Fidget, and what a better name for a twitchy little mammal!? She was pretty much an impulse buy, she sated my 'need' to have another pet. Mice are small, low maintenance, very cutie and very trainable! Fidget was not always sweet though, I picked her for her unique coat but her disposition was not calm and cuddly. All the credit for taming goes towards Positive Reinforcement, which is a part of Applied Behavior Analysis FYI.

Let's Blog!

2009-09-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

I figured that "The Sequential Psittacine" was an appropriate name for those few privileged people that like to know everything about their parrots, or just like to know what else is happening in "the bird world". I will attempt to present everything in an orderly fashion -hence the word Sequential- all while supplying a plethora of photos. Are pictures not the best part of a blog?

In the future I hope to post the latest happenings in my life, and the world of birds/parrots. You may get to see My cockatiel, Achilles, and all the other animal related things I do or run into.

And with that, let us blog!