Animalia
FAQ - after you bought your bird
We hope to outline some common questions or issues parrot owners have here with answers/suggested solutions. This is not intended as complete advice as we are unable to assess the bird's behavior before giving advice in this format. It is meant to serve as a starting point to inform people of some methods that have worked for us. We do not claim these are perfect nor appropriate in all situations. These methods are inadequate for wild birds, they are intended for hand tame birds that are just getting a bit bitey NOT for aviary birds or those formerly tame birds that have become truly aggressive or problematic in other 'ingrained' ways.
My bird started biting me
More often than not this is caused by something you are doing and probably the most common cause is not being confident and assertive enough.
There are various opinions on training birds and we are not trying to put all the knowledge into one place here but our belief is that you cannot train a bird with only positive reinforcement.
Things you can do to discourage biting behaviour:
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Be more confident, do not pull away when the bird reaches for you if you present your arm/hand/finger and say 'up'. More often than not recently weaned properly raised birds are simply testing the perch - that is to say they want to see that what you are expecting them to get up onto will hold them, it also helps them balance as they move across.
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Slightly but sharply twist your wrist if it is sitting on your hand and biting. Accompany this with a sharp 'NO'. A short sharp drop of your hand or arm also works well (only about 30mm drop not a huge shake). It puts the bird off balance and makes it pay attention. This is not generally the effect it is going for with a bite and it usually works very quickly to discourage the behaviour.
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A sharp push with one or two fingers against the beak when it bites (again accompanied by a strong 'NO'). You do not want to strike and injure the bird but do not want it to be confused with playing or patting either.
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Put the bird back in its cage. You need to be careful here because they can also train you to take them 'home' this way if htey want to get back to the cage. You need to consider what the bird wants and not give it what it wants for bad behaviour.
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You want to make being out and on you a favourable experience to being in the cage. Potentially offering treats only when it is out and behaving well for instance and not giving seed like sunflower in the cage. You do need to consider the amount of food the bird ends up getting overall though and not starve them. You can usually find favourite treats like pine nuts or dried banana chips etc they will work for.
Positive reinforcement is preferable to negative but both can be used together to achieve your goals. It is generally not very effective to punish the bird for pooping where you dont want it to and much more effective to offer reward for pooping where you do want it to for instance. Biting is a different question in my view and in this instance punishment has been more effective in my experience. It is very important that the punishment is related to the behaviour and is proportional. The point is to let the bird know first of all what the wrong behaviour is and then CONSISTENTLY taking action if needed.
My bird is too noisy, screams for attention.
This is a tough one. The best thing to do is not to get to this point in the first place because fixing it takes a ton of self-discipline.
Basically you need to ignore the bird when it is being noisy and reward it for being quiet. In this case punishment for bad behaviour generally does not work - by punishment I mean covering the bird, shaking the cage or a raft of other things people tend to resort to.
These things give the bird attention and that is ultimately generally what it wants. Impossible as it may be you want to ignore the noise and only respond some time after (not immediately after) with a treat, or taking it out of the cage etc. Do not immediately upon it being quiet give it a treat becaue the link then becomes the silence AFTER THE NOISE. You may choose to put a noisy bird in its cage if leaving it out is not convenient or practical, they key then is to minimise internaction and have the cage away from people. Again be careful that it is not traning you to take it home...