Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

Sid Price just posted on his blog about the practice of “flooding” as a training technique. It is is response to the Birdtricks people posting recently about the so-called success of the method (which they call “perching”) with a blue and gold macaw. In this instance, the person put the bird on a chair back in between a wall and a refrigerator, so it could not escape, and forced it to be petted with a stick until it complied. This is a classic case of teaching by force, and through learned helplessness. They claim this method is good because it can be done by beginners who are not good at reading parrot body language. They also fall into the old, old trap of thinking that parrots must be dominated, and not allowed to make their own choices. In this antiquated training philosophy — utterly discredited by behavioral scientists — the birds are viewed as trying to “intimidate” people by biting.

Perhaps we should be teaching beginners how to read parrot body language instead, and earn their trust, and not how to just force them into submission? Birds learn to bite because it gets a message across — namely “NO!” to whatever you are doing. The Birdtricks method essentially says to the bird, your wishes do not matter, what matters is that I want to pet you whether you like it or not.

Submission is not the same as trust. It works not by building trust, but by breaking spirit. The result — at best — is a compliant, passive bird (likely with other behavior issues) not an active, trusting companion.

Sid’s post here: The Real Secrets of Training Success and Where to Find Them.

There are many articles by Dr. Susan Friedman and others on how real behavioral scientists and reputable trainers address these issues. See listings in the Training Directory (Most of this information is also free — not only free of charge, but also free of hard-sell marketing tactics that treat consumers like 2-year-olds.)

I’m continuing to practice flighted recalls with the Tiel, as is Hugh. He’s doing really well, but is still somewhat skittish in general. He’s doing great with the big birds though, even when he gets stalked by Carly or chased away by one of the macaws. Takes it in stride and finds a place to hang out peacefully, then sometimes flies back over to hang with the big guys. Calm and not easily intimidated! Thus his new name: Rocco (see link if you don’t know why.)

I’m also working on putting him in a carrier. He will go quite willingly into a small travel cage I use for Carly (it’s been his cage until I get a bigger one out of storage). This went surprisingly fast by giving him treats and meals in there. Now I’m working on an easier-to-carry carrier, a small plastic one with the metal front door. He’s been warier of this, particularly after I had to put him in and out of it twice fairly quickly one night last week when it was not trained solidly enough yet (and when I found myself at work with a dead battery). He got agitated with having the door closed the second time. But we’re getting it back on track. After letting him get used to being around it, then putting food on top of it, I’ve been offering him food inside the carrier, and am starting to place him inside when he is taking a treat from my hand. And tonight I was surprised to see that he had settled in for the night — not on a rope swing in the bedroom where he’s been sleeping — but out on the patio sitting just inside the doorway to the carrier. I was hoping he’d eventually find it cozy.

Here’s a picture I took this morning.

(No he doesn’t have an orange crest! That’s part of a toy.)

I’ve just started training a fully flighted, untame cockatiel that a neighbor found last week. I’m using methods I learned from the Bird-click group and Barbara Heidenriech’s workshop. Here’s a description of the first steps I’ve done. He did not like hands at all, and did not want to sit next to people. Each of these steps was done using very small increments, clicking and treating, and only moving on when he was very at ease with the previous step.

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