Interview with Parrot Behavior Consultant Liz Wilson (CVT, CPBC)

If you subscribe to the very popular Bird Talk Magazine (found at the check-out stand of every major pet store chain I’ve ever been in), you may already know the name of this month’s Best in Flock interview subject. Liz Wilson has been writing the “Parrot Psychology” column in Bird Talk Magazine since 2001.

Liz Wilson is a certified veterinary technician (CVT) and certified parrot behavior consultant (CPBC) who has been working with companion parrot behavior for over 20 years. In addition to numerous veterinary articles published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA), The Journal of Avian Medicine and Surgery (JAMS), and the Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine, she also wrote or co-wrote eight separate chapters in various veterinary textbooks.

Liz Wilson also founded and currently chairs the Parrot Division of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC), and serves as the Education Vice President of the Phoenix Landing Foundation, a non-profit parrot welfare organization.

In this interview, Liz talks about her experiences as a parrot behavior consultant, solving parrot behavior issues, and resources for people who want to develop better relationships with their companion parrots.

Best in Flock: Please tell our readers about your background as a parrot behavior consultant.

Liz Wilson: To make a long story a tad shorter, I have a bachelors in elementary education w/ a minor in psych. I taught elementary school, then worked with disturbed children and then did crisis counseling with adults (all of which proved very useful many years later). Then I bagged working with humans (I thought) and went back to school to become a veterinary technician. I’d owned all kinds of exotics including parrots, so it was a natural for me to specialize in avian and exotic animal nursing. After 20 years of that, I left veterinary medicine and started working on my own as a parrot behavior consultant. Incidentally, I do not call myself an avian behavior consultant as some of my colleagues do, as I know nothing about ostrich or penguin or hummingbird behavior. In my opinion, parrot behavior people calling themselves “avian behavior consultants” is almost equivalent to dog behavior consultants calling themselves “mammal behavior consultants.” (After all, there are almost three times as many bird species on this planet as there are mammal species!)

What exactly is an animal behaviorist?

Liz Wilson: Here in the USA, an animal behaviorist is someone with an advanced degree in animal behavior or ethology. I am not an animal behaviorist, as I do not have such a degree. This is why Sally Blanchard started calling our field “parrot behavior consulting” years ago – to stay off the toes of those with graduate degrees. Differences exist in other countries, I hear.

What does an animal behavior consultant do, and what do they not do?

Liz Wilson: An animal behavior consultant works with the gestalt of the parrot’s life – in other words, the entire environment and human society around the animal, as well as the animal itself. Therefore, 99% of my work is not actually with the animal itself – it is with the owner. An unlike veterinarians, animal behavior consultants do not proscribe prescription drugs nor do they make medical diagnoses.

What is the most common reason someone calls you for help?

Liz Wilson: Generally speaking, there is a glitch in the relationship with their parrot, preventing it from being truly fulfilling (because the bird is aggressive, screams excessively, whatever). They want to try to fix the situation instead of throwing the bird away.

What’s the most interesting case you’ve ever seen? How were you able to help?

Liz Wilson: Probably the strangest consult I did was an in-home I did with a “phobic” Amazon who wouldn’t let the owners near her. She’d panicked so badly at the sight of them that she’d damaged the tips of her wings by constantly flailing about. By approaching her in a totally submissive manner (lying on my stomach on the floor with my hands hidden), I discovered she wasn’t “phobic” at all. Instead, she came waddling over to me, flashing her eyes and cooing with pleasure. I realized from observing her that she had something wrong with her feet so she couldn’t grip. As a result, she’d hurt herself by falling repeatedly off the owners’ hands, so had learned to equate the humans with pain – hence the fear response. I referred her to an experienced avian veterinarian who was able to help. Eventually, the bird’s behavior returned to normal, with her playing and acting like an Amazon.

What’s the difference between working with birds and working with other types of pets?

Liz Wilson: I have never trained cats to do anything, and haven’t trained dogs in years, so that’s tough for me to answer from personal experience. However, dogs and cats are both predators, so their responses to the environment are quite different from prey animals like parrots. It’s a fundamental difference in psychology and behavior. As a result, it can be very difficult for a dog trainer to train a parrot. Switching from horses to parrots is easier, as horses are prey animals as well.

Is there ever a point where you think a “problem parrot” (or the relationship) cannot be rehabilitated and you advise relinquishing the bird?

Liz Wilson: Absolutely. Some people refuse to take responsibility for the mistakes they made – and we all made mistakes with our parrots! It’s entirely the parrot’s fault, not theirs – which is NEVER the case. If they won’t take responsibility, then they won’t change their behavior – and if they won’t change their behavior (which is usually accidentally rewarding the bird for misbehaving), the parrot won’t change, either. There are also some really untenable situations, like having an aggressive male cockatoo going after small children and putting them at risk. Most owner-parents are simply not able to deal with something like that. It’s also very difficult to teach people who think they already know everything. (I have on occasion interrupted owners who are telling me how to do my job, to ask them, “If you understand everything about what is going on and how to fix it, then why am I here?”)

There is a preponderance of “Get Your Bird to Stop Biting in 5 Minutes”-type of ebooks and video programs on the Web. Google anything related to parrot training and you’ll find self-described “bird whisperers” selling their “secret systems”. What do you think about these products?

Liz Wilson: It saddens me to see people with little or no experience with parrots or understanding of their psychology, trying to cash in on the problems that parrot owners can have with their birds. Simple rule of thumb is that it takes time to create a problem and it takes time to fix it. Anyone that promises a quick solution will be popular, as people frequently don’t want to put in the work to improve things. However, owners will gain no long term resolution with a quick fix. If you don’t address the reason for the unwanted behavior, then getting rid of that behavior won’t fix anything except temporarily. Problems will crop up again, as the core issue is still unresolved.

What resources do you recommend to people with pet birds who are exhibiting problem behaviors like screaming or biting?

Liz Wilson: There is a plethora of information out there in books and the internet, but people need to understand the basics to be able to evaluate how accurate the information is. I recommend a basic book like Blanchard’s “Companion Parrot Handbook”, and have heard excellent things about “A Parrot For Life” by Rebecca O’Connor. Books by Barbara Heidenreich are also quite useful. Out of curiosity, I did a search for the topic of “excessive screaming in parrots” and immediately got 188,000 hits – but keep in mind that not all those sources will be useful. That’s why new owners need good books like the ones I’ve mentioned.

What’s one question that you wish people would ask but never do?

Liz Wilson: A few owners have asked me this but unfortunately most don’t:

“What am I doing wrong and what do I need to do to fix things?”

One of Our Videos Has More Than 25,000 Views!

I was just checking stats for our YouTube channel, and one of our videos has well over 25,000 views on it.

Which one, you ask? Of course it’s the one of Stewie screaming his little sun conure head off. None of the others come even close.

Okay, so my little video star isn’t nearly as popular as everyone’s favorite dancing cockatoo (with 3 million views!), but I still thought 25k views was pretty impressive

Pionus Parrot Learning to Fetch

Finally I have some video to share of Mika (white capped pionus) working on her retrieving skills!

[updated: I've noticed some criticism of this video floating out there, so I want to make a couple of points: 1) This is NOT her regular cage. I just needed a surface to work on that I could wheel in front of the camera. 2) She is not food deprived. She has plenty of food available all day, but she will work for treats because she WANTS to. 3) I made this video to demonstrate the how's and when's of bridging with a clicker. I purposesfully avoided praising her because one of the mistakes that newbie trainers make is that they'll confuse the bird with lots of noise and mistimed clicks. Don't worry, she gets lots of praise and affection outside of this 5-minute demonstration video.]

Before we got to this point, we started with her standing on her regular cage’s door and taking the pink ring from me and then letting go again. Then I upped the criterion so that Mika would get C/T’d only when the ring landed in my hand.

When it finally “clicked” for her that she needs to put the pink ring in my hand, I set up her travel cage in front of the camera to document a practice session.

In our previous sessions we only worked on the door of her cage so she didn’t need to move much, just lean in one direction or the other. This video shows Mika’s first session on a surface where she has to walk in different directions to get the object into my palm. I also didn’t hand her the ring, making her fetch it herself. She did better than I expected given the new, higher criteria, demonstrating that she understood the end goal.

We’ll continue working on this trick for a while to get Mika’s retrieve really solid and generalized to a couple different options. But one thing I want to be careful about is making sure that Mika continues to enjoy playing with foot toys by herself and doesn’t start to think of every toy as simply an object that needs to be retrieved to me.

Scritches for Everyone!

After a whole year of watching Mika enjoying head scratches, Stewie has decided that he’s going to allow me to touch him. Not just touch him, but rub his neck and pinch the keratin off his new feathers! Pin feathers are itchy and uncomfortable and, in the wild, parrots engage in allopreening to help each other get rid of the hard substance that protects the feathers as they grow in.

In our homes, where they don’t have other parrots to preen them, they have two options: either live with the icky pin feathers and wait for them to fall off on their own, or let the humans help.

For two years, Stewie has not wanted me to touch him. He was all about preening me — trying remove moles from my neck, pulling on hairs, removing errant schmutz — but has not wanted my hands on him. Don’t get me wrong, Stewie is very affectionate. He gives me kisses, lets me smother him with kisses, crawls into my shirt… but he let me know that he doesn’t like hands coming at him or touching him and I always respect his personal space. Not respecting his no-touching rule would mean getting bitten, but more than that it’s a matter of maintaining trust and open communication. No hands invading where they aren’t wanted.

But for some reason in the last couple of days, Stewie has welcome neck and head rubs, scritches and help with his pins. Not sure why I even tried — I stopped trying to touch him long ago — but something about how he was all fluffy with his head down just said “scritches please”. After all, that’s the position Mika adopts when she want scritches.

Breaking pin feathers is a delicate operation; even if you’re careful, you could rub that feather the wrong way, which hurts. But Stewie has been very tolerant and patient with me.

Because of the fact that Stewie is kind of a bitey bird, I’m careful to watch his body language very carefully and always stop long before I think he’s getting antsy. I only break up two or three feathers at a time, at most and then take a break. When Mika is done with scritches, she just pushes me away, but I think that if I were to irritate Stewie he’d let me know a little more forcefully.

This foray into helping Stewie preen is a huge leap for us. These types of breakthroughs… with a bird who was aggressive and distrustful for months after I got him … is really the best part of working with a rescue parrot.

Scritches for everyone!

3 Common Clicker Training Mistakes

Clicker training is a fantastic method for taming and training parrots, effective on everything from little budgies and cockatiels to ornery cockatoos. It’s amazingly simple and easy to do, and yields really fast results. The basis of clicker training is positive reinforcement/operant conditioning, and the “secret” of the clicker is that it’s a simple way to communicate. As soon as your parrot starts to understand that “click” means “good, now here’s your reward”, it opens up so many possibilities.

If you don’t know anything about clicker training birds yet, please start by signing up for the Bird-Click discussion group, where you’ll find a wealth of resources in the list and in the files, or by reading the book: Getting Started: Clicker Training for Birds.

If you’ve started clicker training and aren’t seeing great results, check to see if you are making any (or all) of these three common clicker training mistakes.

Mistake #1: Clicking But Not Delivering a Treat

A click is a promise of a treat. If you click for the desired behavior but don’t follow up, you are breaking the implicit contract of clicker training your bird. “Click” always means treat, even if you made a mistake and clicked for the wrong thing.

However, after the behavior is well established and you are sure that your bird understands what you’re asking for, you can phase out the clicker. You should continue to reward the desired behavior, but a treat is no longer required 100% of the time. (In other words, you can treat without a click, but a click always means a treat is coming.) In fact, variable reinforcement can actually be much better at creating a stronger behavior (both bad and good).

Solution: Perfect your clicker timing and always deliver a treat after clicking.

Mistake #2: Not Using a Consistent Marker

As I mentioned in my clicker training myths post, there is nothing magical about the clicker that causes the bird to do what you want, but it has several advantages: it is a distinct and sharp sound that can mark a very precise point in time; it is a consistent noise that always sounds the same; it doesn’t sound like anything else the bird is likely to hear during non-training times. The bird understand that the click has one simple function: to signal that they did the right thing and earned a treat.

You can choose not to use a clicker device as a marker (or “bridge” to the reward), but using a verbal marker is not as precise and could cause training (and learning) to go much slower. If you choose to use the word “good” as a bridge rather than a mechanical click, be conscious of using the same intonation, inflection and timing every time. If your supposed marker is just a combination of long sounds all strung together — “gooooooood. good. gooooood biiiiiirrrrd” — your bird will probably understand that you’re pleased, but have no clue what specific thing is generating the praise, which is the whole point of the marker.

Solution: Use a clicker. If you can’t use a device that makes a distinct, sharp sound, then clicking with your tongue would still be preferable to using a word.

Mistake #3: Using the Wrong Training Reward

The first “trick” you should start teaching your bird is targeting, but even before that the first step of training is figuring out what your bird’s favorite treat is. “Treat testing” involves offering your bird several high-value food items and seeing which one it consistently eats first. Whatever that is, is what your bird prefers most and will probably be willing to work for.

Birds are not like dogs in that their owner’s approval is enough to make them jump through hoops (figuratively or literally). They need to know there’s something in it for them. You don’t have to use food as a reward but it tends to be the easiest to deliver. Things like a head rub could potentially be used as a reward, but only if the bird finds it rewarding enough to work for it. Giving scritches to a bird who barely tolerates them, in other words, is not the correct way to C/T.

The problem with rewards is that we (as humans) tend to focus too much on what we ourselves think should be rewarding, not what actually is to our training subject. Remember: a reinforcer is only a reinforcer if it causes the behavior to increase. I.e., if your bird isn’t eagerly working to get that reward… it’s not much of a reward.

Solution: Conduct treat testing and observe which treats your bird is most enthusiastic about. Remove that item from his daily diet and only use it as a training reward.

Learning to Clicker Train the Right Way

Here you’ve learned what not to do when it comes to clicker training. If you’re interested in learning how to do clicker training the correct way, please join Melinda Johnson’s Bird Click group on Yahoo or get the book: Clicker Training for Birds (from Amazon).

Please also see our previous post: Clicker Training Myths and Misconceptions

Parakeet Training: Budgies Doing Tricks

Some people are under the impression that budgies (budgerigar parakeets) aren’t trainable because they are so small. Quite a few people, in fact, think budgies aren’t even real parrots.

Not only are they parrots, check out this guy’s very entertaining comedy act comprised of trick trained budgies. (He’s saying “Allez, allez!” which means “let’s go” in French)

Now that you know just how entertaining budgies can be, don’t you feel sorry for those pet shop parakeets crammed into a small cage who never get let out and never get handled? Budgies, just like the larger parrots, need lots of mental enrichment and activity to keep them happy and well adjusted.

If you’re interested in training your parakeet to perform tricks, check out Melinda Johnson’s fabulous book: Clicker Training for Birds.

How Loud Is a Sun Conure (Redux)

Just a quick story: The other night, I got a call from the ACLU asking for a donation to support their investigation of waterboarding at Guantanamo. The whole time, of course, my orange ball of terror is “vocalizing” to express his unhappiness about me being on the phone. At the end of the call, the guy says “Ma’am, I just have to ask. What is that noise? Is that a bird?”. I say, yeah, that’s a parrot. And he says, “that sounds like torture!”.

You heard it first folks: The ACLU considers Stewie to be an instrument of torture! (I wonder if there’s anything in the Geneva Convention about sun conures.)

If you’re considering getting a sun conure and wonder how disruptive it could possible be (all those people warning you about the noise surely must be exaggerating, right?!), try playing this video every time you get on the phone.

Captive Foraging for Parrots

Foraging is an important activity for our pet parrots – not only does it keep them entertained and occupied , but it provides them much needed mental enrichment.

In the wild, parrots spend the majority of their waking time looking and working for their food. In our homes, parrots generally have all their food conveniently provided for them in a nice, neat little cup.

While we pet owners are certainly improving our charges’ lives by not exposing them to the dangers of starvation, we also remove from them a fundamental part of what they are designed to do. So why not do both? Why not provide all the food our parrots need to thrive and be healthy, but ALSO provide them with important foraging opportunities.

Hungry Parrot. Photo by Sangudo, used under Creative Commons license.

Foraging is important for pet parrots because, first of all, it gives them something to do. Boredom is the precursor to a lot of behavior problems.

While commercial foraging toys are often pretty cool (and my own birds might actually have most of the foraging toys available for purchase ), you don’t actually need to spend a lot of money buying and replacing these products. You may be surprised how easy it is to make your own bird foraging items.

Here are just two ideas for making your own cheap foraging toys:

* Get small, unwaxed Dixie cups. Put a treat inside and crumple the cup together so the treat doesn’t fall out. Your bird will have to open or chew the paper to get at the treat.

* Find some medium-sized rocks, wash and dry them thoroughly, then put them in a bowl with some treats. Your bird will need to move or work around the stones to reach the treats.

See? How easy is that? These are just some examples to show you that providing foraging activities doesn’t need to be expensive, and to get spur some creative brainstorming on your part. Once your birds learn to forage, you can even make them forage for all their food if you want.

There’s a great blog of LiveJournal that’s all about promoting foraging ideas for parrots: http://community.livejournal.com/captiveforaging. The Captive Foraging for Parrots blog includes reviews of foraging toys, instructions for making your own foraging ideas, and photos and videos of parrots engaged in foraging. Check it out for inspiration.

Conure Cuteness Overload

You couldn’t get any cuter if you tried!

2009 Endangered Species Day

“Happy” Endangered Species Day? Well, there isn’t a lot that’s happy about disappearing biodiversity, but in 2006, the U.S. Congress created Endangered Species Day to celebrate wildlife – and we should certainly celebrate increased awareness about endangered species. Endangered Species Day falls on the third Friday of every May.

So, today would be a good day to get involved with the World Parrot Trust’s work to save endangered parrots around the world. Click the banner below to see what you can do to make a difference.

p.s. Since a lot of captive parrot species are actually endangered in the wild, let’s also remind our legislators that banning the breeding and transfer of non-native animals is a pretty dumb idea too.