In my shop I occasionally hear stories about difficult,
demanding or unmanageable birds. The owners are baffled.
They had carefully selected a domestic, hand-fed bird
and raised it lovingly, catering to its every whim.
In my opinion, that is what caused the problem.
Often people expect more of their birds than the birds
can possibly be: quick to tame, friendly to everyone,
brilliant talkers, quiet when not talking, nondestructive
and compatible with all other household pets. This is
just not realistic. A hand-fed domestic bird does not
need to be tamed, in the classic sense, but it does
need time, patience and understanding while it adjusts
to its new surroundings and learns to accept the new
people in its life.
Routine That Backfire
Like children and Pavlov's dogs, avian pets are conditioned
to react and respond to their owners. Like children
and other types of pets, birds need discipline to be
enjoyable. If you let the bird out of its cage every
day when you come home from work, it will expect its
door open daily at 6 o'clock. If you feed your bird
table food while you have dinner, you have established
a pattern that is difficult to change. If you run to
the cage every time you hear a squawk, your bird soon
knows how to fetch you. The consequences of such human
actions are trained owners and spoiled birds. Remember,
birds live a long time, and changing undesirable behavior
patterns after years of reinforcement is a challenge
not easily understood by the pet.
Some problems also occur when the novelty of owning
a bird wears off, especially when you get sick of seeds
spewed all over your floor or grapes squashed into your
new wallpaper. There will be times when you have to
work late, have company for dinner or simply are too
tired or busy for parrot playtime. This break in your
bird's routine can create a screaming maniac, but it's
what the bird was carefully conditioned to do by you.
Snow White, a beautiful baby umbrella cockatoo, was
allowed out of her cage all the time. Left to her own
devices, she soon learned to slide down her cage stand
and wander, chewing most objects she came in contact
with. After several months and the demolition of several
pieces of woodwork, furniture and telephone cords, the
owners tired of her, her mess and the destructiveness
they had allowed her to learn. They locked her in a
cage, which was totally foreign to her, and assumed
she would be fine.
Rather than restoring peace and order, this action
resulted in screaming from a very unhappy pet that had
never learned to enjoy a cage. The owners covered the
cage, they shook the cage, they even threw water at
Snow White, but nothing made her stop. She was banned
to a back room, alone, with nothing or no one to relate
to. In a few days, Snow White was totally neurotic;
she had plucked out all the feathers she could reach.
Is this a problem of bird behavior or human behavior?
It is certainly an instance of bird abuse. Situations
like this do happen, and overindulgent owners are to
blame.
Ideally, a bird should not be given any more attention
the day or week it joins your household than you plan
to give it for the rest of its life. It must learn to
play happily in its cage by itself. It must learn that
you won't be there all the time to pick it up when it
screams. It should, however, be included in your life
at a level you can consistently enjoy.
What's For Dinner?
Even though bird care experts recommend feeding people
food to pet birds, avoid feeding these treats on your
own eating schedule. I didn't learn this until
too late. Because I used to share my meals with my birds,
at dinnertime now I am forced to turn off the lights
in the kitchen and retreat to the family room to experience
a relatively (although not totally) peaceful meal. The
alternative is to eat in the kitchen to the chorus of
macaws and Amazons demanding their share of the bounty.
Interesting foods are both nutritional and diversionary.
The few minutes you spend chopping apples, oranges,
pomegranates, melons, broccoli and celery into a wonderful
salad are well worth the time spent preparing the offering
to hold a bird's attention and keep it quiet long enough
for you to have a decent phone conversation. Sections
of corn on the cob, fresh peas in the pod or a small
helping of cooked spaghetti are nutritional treats that
help combat boredom.
Naughty or Normal?
Most breeders and responsible bird shops will provide
some sound advice on how to care for and train new avian
pets. Magazines, books, other publications and tapes
will also offer training tips, but the person that raised
your bird as a baby knows its personality best. Listen
carefully to the insights he or she provides you about
your particular bird.
Each bird is an individual, but most birds go through
predictable, sometimes obnoxious, stages. The teething
stage usually happens between 3 and 6 months of age
of small birds, and occurs somewhat later in larger
birds. Of course, birds don't have teeth, but they do
spend time exploring their world with their beaks. Like
children and puppies, young birds chomp on anything
available without realizing that their bites hurt. With
consistent verbal discipline and manual diversion you
can teach your bird that it's okay to bite food and
toys, but it's not okay to bite people and other pets.
Next come the terrible tows, not necessarily when the
bird reaches the chronological age of 2 but, like a
2-year-old child, when its personality matures enough
to test limits. A young bird asserts itself through
stubbornness, defiance, mischief and destructiveness.
This is the time for tough love. If you lose control
during this stage, you may never regain it.
Rebellious adolescence includes some of the same behaviors
and pouty attitudes of the terrible tows, but the motivations
are different. Birds are affected by rascally hormones,
as are humans. Young, sometimes very young, birds make
their owners blush by masturbating on toys, hands, perches,
tennis shoes… whatever. Ignore this behavior;
to a bird, masturbation is not bad, naughty or inappropriate.
Owners who want a strong bond with their birds often
do not bargain for the possessiveness and jealousy that
accompany that bond. As the bird makes the transition
from adolescence to full sexual maturity, it is not
unusual for the bird to want an exclusive relationship
with the owner as its mate.
Some birds, especially sexually mature Amazons, may
fear competition from visitors. Their methods of dealing
with interlopers include the aerial assault: flying
directly at the stranger. Someone unprepared for the
buzzing is likely to react defensively, swatting the
bird and thereby reinforcing the aggressive behavior.
Excitement, stress or threatening situations may also
cause birds to strike painful blows to their owners,
who are then hurt, both physically and emotionally.
This lashing out is better understood by observing pairs
of breeding birds. Many species have fiery relationships,
alternating cuddly/kissy mutual preening and copulation
with bickering, biting, screaming and knocking one another
to the bottom of the cage.
Raising a Well-Adjusted Pet
To condition your bird to positive, desirable behavior,
avoid repetitive schedules except for feeding and bedtime.
Vary the routine for everything else.
Pet birds thrive on stimulation (with some time for
rest as well). You can provide this with appropriate
toys (varying them periodically), car rides, baths on
the patio when the sun is warm and simply moving the
bird's cage to a spot with different or better view.
You are not being cruel if you limit the amount of time
your bird spends outside the cage. A spacious cage with
attractive (chewable) toys provides desirable haven,
a place where your bird feels happy, secure and comfortable.
If you don't treat the cage as a place for punishment,
your bird will regard it as a home, not a jail.
A bird that is outside its cage for extended periods
of time may become independent to the extent that it
doesn't really need or seek your companionship. Of course,
you want to have time together, but it should be on
your schedule, not the bird's. By keeping its wings
clipped, you can help control aggressiveness and counterproductive
independence.
Well-adjusted birds are not biters. Many spoiled birds
have not learned to amuse themselves, so they quickly
become bored. Some will scream; others may self-mutilate.
Neither birds nor owners are very happy.
Correcting undesirable conditioning is difficult and
sometimes impossible. It requires endless patience,
dedication and fortitude. Methods to accomplish this
vary, depending on the problem, the bird and the general
situation. It is much easier to provide proper training
from the start than to attempt lengthy corrections once
the damage is done.
Play with your bird, love your bird and entertain your
bird, but also remember to give your pet the space and
understanding it needs to be what it is: a bird.
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