Helping A Bird That Won’t Interact With Anyone Or Anything

Morgy checking cracks

Morgy foraging on her zombie play-stand.

 

In my last post, I mentioned that my Galah/ Rose-breasted Cockatoo had suffered from something I called “learned helplessness”. I said how happy I was that she had taken possession of my new parrot stand because that’s a big deal when you have a bird like Morgy. A few people pounced on that and sent me questions saying that their birds also don’t play and should they be worried about that? How do you fix that? I thought it was worth sharing a bit more about what I’ve been through with Morgy to answer those questions.

 

Morgy literally ran in my garage door and moved in. So I didn’t buy her, she moved in of her own accord. Despite really searching, I never found her previous owner so I don’t know a lot about her history. I know from her legband that she was a wild caught bird put into the pet trade at some stage. She wasn’t tame, but she did talk. At the time an untamed legally trapped wild caught galah retailed for about AUD $50; financially speaking she was easy to replace and probably not valued by her previous owner. I wasn’t really shocked that no one seemed to be looking for such a ‘bitey’ vicious bird.

 

fake sleep

Morgy, used to fake sleep rather than interact.

 

I knew my neighbors had seen her being chased by cats in the weeks previous to running into my garage and that she hadn’t coped in the wild probably because she hadn’t been wild for many years. She settled into the cage I bought with an almost audible sigh of relief. Finally, the stupid human had worked out that she was supposed to sit in a cage and get a bowl of food.

 

At the time, the aviculture world was drastically different to what it is now. The average pet store didn’t stock pellets or bird toys. If they did they were tiny plastic things with mirrors designed for a budgie. Birdtricks.com was in its infancy. Chet and Dave weren’t cool yet. (As shown by them wearing the world’s dorkiest shirts in their videos.) The online bird community was tiny. It was safe to say that in most houses, birds ate seed and stared at walls. It wasn’t much of a leap to come to the conclusion that Morgy had been one of those birds. There are two reasons why I explain all of this.  Firstly, it’s about time someone made fun of those shirts.  Secondly, I’m trying to help paint the picture of how Morgy’s behavior became what it was. It’s likely she spent years without toys or without any stimulus at all.

 

sleeping on stand

A common sight when Morgy first came to me.

 

Patty has already done a comprehensive post on Birds That Don’t Play With Toys. Morgy however, didn’t fit any of the profiles described in that blog. Morgy showed no fear response to toys, she knew how to play (I worked on that), it wasn’t just disinterest because she was offered a wide variety of toys. The difference with Morgy was that she was almost catatonic. I could do pretty much anything to her environment and food and she’d just sit on the one perch and stare off into space, or sleep.

 

Learned Helplessness is when an animal (or human) becomes conditioned to believe or act like a situation is inescapable or unchangeable no matter what they do. They effectively give up interacting as there is no point in doing so, whatever they do will make no difference, they have no control. They will fail to respond to anything, even if presented with an opportunity that will result in a reward or the removal of an unpleasant stimulus. It is a type of depression.

 

staring1

Toy hangs untouched. Morgy staring off into space...

 

In Morgy’s case, it was as though she had learned you sit on a perch and you go to eat from a food bowl. End of story. Nothing else happens. Convincing her otherwise was like hitting my head against a brick wall. Interrupt her staring trance – she’d bite. She never shied away from my hands. Just stood her ground and stared off into space. There were only 2 things she seemed to want to do, eat from her food bowl and stare into space. She saw a vet and had no underlying health conditions, so that wasn’t the problem.

 

foliage

Morgy surrounded by foliage eating a single nut. In the next aviary, the others are frantically destroying theirs without pausing to enjoy a single tiny nut.

 

It crossed my mind that maybe she just didn’t know how to play with toys. Maybe at that stage that was true, but it wasn’t just the lack of playing that bothered me. It was her lack of interaction with absolutely everything that convinced me it was learned helplessness. She’d come in from the wild, yet she didn’t know what to do with foliage? She showed only basic interest in food. You could knock over a chair next to her cage and she wouldn’t even look at you. She was completely disengaged.

 

Merlin destroying perch

My galah Merlin, he destroys toys completely. No part is left untouched. He's fast and methodical.

 

I wanted Morgy to be engaged, to play with her toys and interact with her environment but focusing on ‘not playing’ wasn’t the answer to that. A large part of learned helplessness is that the animal has learned that they have no control, no say in anything that happens to them. I needed to develop a way to communicate with Morgy to allow her to be able to say yes and no. I needed to show her that she did have control of what happened to her. To achieve this I turned to trick training. Insert Chet and Dave’s dodgy shirt videos… I started Morgy on the trick training course.

 

There’s a myth surrounding trick training. If I had a dollar for every time I hear someone say they don’t want their birds to be circus animals, so trick training is a waste of time… To me, it’s not about training your animals to perform circus tricks, but a way for both you and your animal to learn to communicate with each other. Ok sure, at the end of the day my bird can wave, bow, spin, nod and shake her head amongst other things but that wasn’t the biggest takeaway from the training. The real result is that I can ask my bird to do something rather than tell it, it must do something. I’m not forcing my animals to perform. Instead, they have learned my signals and I have learned there is so that I know when they don’t want to do something and vice versa.

 

Morgy on bed

Morgy on my bed. She's waiting for me to throw a wooden bead at her. We play a version of galah soccer here. It took quite a while to get her to this point.

 

In Morgy’s case, it really helped. She responded well to going on a training diet and training. It got her interacting. Trick training didn’t completely cure the learned helplessness but it did drastically help the situation. The training gave Morgy and I the basis to start communicating. It was the first step in getting her to interact with the world again.

 

grass forage

Ground-foraging is now a favorite activity and a good way to get her off her stare at the world perch.

 

The thing with learned helplessness is that it’s very easy to slip back. There are days when Morgy will ignore everyone and everything around her. Her tendency to sit on one perch and just stare off into space has made it extremely difficult to control her weight and I have some very obvious concerns about her health because of that. She is easily the most difficult bird in my flock to keep active.

 

Merlin hogging forage

Merlin hogging the foraging toy. Morgy left to sit and watch. She really needs her own.

 

I’ve found adding other galahs to my flock assisted to bring Morgy out of herself more. They look for each other, they call each other and they pass things between the bars of their respective aviaries. That said though, Morgy is caged alone because if left with other more active birds, they destroy all of the activities before she gets to do so (she’s slower at it). I tried a group aviary for a while but found Morgy was left staring off into space. She does have communal ‘out in the house time’ but definitely will tell you when she wants to go back to her own cage to escape the hyperactive craziness that surrounds my most outgoing Galah Merlin.

 

Merlin & Nemo

My other galahs Merlin and Nemo. Everything is fair game with normal engaged birds. Perches, toys, foliage everything gets touched in a day.

 

Continuing to train and interact with her is extremely important on a daily basis. If I am slack about it, she quickly reverts to staring. The training sessions can’t be too hard or too long because she is prone to giving up. Enrichment is something I have to be very aware of with her. When she wants to, she can crack the most difficult foraging toy in seconds but you’d never realize she’s as smart as she is with the way she goes off into a trance.

 

weighing Morgy

Does my butt look big on this? Morgy at the upper end of her weight problems.

 

Varying the way food is presented with the aid of The Natural Feeding System Cookbooks has been a very useful trick when it comes to getting Morgy to engage with her environment. I know I sound like a bad commercial in saying that but I don’t mean to. It’s truly exhausting having to be constantly creative with a bird like this and it’s extra exhausting when it isn’t your only high needs bird.  A book of healthy ideas is unbelievably helpful. The alternative is a depressed overweight bird and having come from that – I don’t want to go back.

 

untouched toys

That foraging toy has been played with but not emptied, the toy just lightly chewed not destroyed. It's progress but too easy to go backward.

 

So in answer to the people who are asking me if it’s a problem that their birds don’t play? I’d say yes it is a problem. You don’t want to let that develop to the extreme that I’ve been to with Morgy. I’d hope that it’s just an issue like what Patty covered in her post on Birds That Don’t Play With Toys, but if it’s more general disengagement, then I say from my experience don’t just focus on the toys but look more generally at training to fix the problem. It’s an ongoing, never-ending process but it’s worth it.

 

Morgy and I

Morgy and I - obviously the trick training worked to tame her.

Mel Vincent works as an animal rehabilitator out of Australia.

6 comments

Deepika

hi dis s deepika.. my cocktails name is cuckoo… it so scared wen I go near it.. before one month oly my frends gifted it for me.. it. is not allowing me to touch.. it bytes d cage fully nd it has broked many wooden pieces.. I am giving oly sunflower seeds for it.. I wanted it interact with me.. it gets so afraid and starts byting me wen I take my hands near it.. how to tame it… pls help me with ur suggestions

Deepika
anthony

my kakariki used to do the same as your galah morgy but now he has started to play with his gress and leaves and he is much more active

anthony
peter

my kakariki used to do the same as your galah morgy but now he has started to play with his gress and leaves and he is much more active

peter
Barbara Farley

Hi You and Morgy are in my prayers. I think you are doing wonderful. Here are some thoughts. Just because you and Morgy are together, does not mean that she feels that way. This you have stated in words and pictures. Then it gets back to this basic fact. It is love, language, and leadership that form the relationship and it is not one more than the other. So re-evaluate your situation. I like that you ask and your insight into other training to learn more. Keep going. One thing that no one has mentioned is that she is introverted. And some introverts go catatonic with the situation is too fast and too much in a session. In some animals this is their escape and when they come out of it and can be with an explosion of undesirable behavior. So to catatonic is she doing that? It would be eyes closed or soft with a glazed over look. Can’t move or won’t. And does she come out fighting in self defense. This you have not mentioned and that makes me question the catatonic thing. Here is another question. Can she look at you? Is her head lowered? Is she hesitant to move? Appears to be a slow learner? Look for tiny movements as she probably spooks quietly and freezes. If you have any yes to some of my questions and I will give you some ideas to work with. I am on facebook and you can post to my page if you desire more from me. No matter, you are in my prayers. Keep going. I feel all animals learn differently like us and each one has its own distinct dna. I appreciate you sharing as it helps all of us.lAs to the shirts, yes, but they are still great on the inside where it matters. Barbara Farley

Barbara Farley
Eric

My goffins quite often stares into space when in her cage. She does play with her toys periodically, but not what I would call frequently. It seems that she saves her energy for when she’s out of the cage, which is whenever I am home. Then she’s a bundle of energy and is hopping around to people, playing with her chew toys and being a normal goffins. I think her issue is that she is so dependent of people that she has a hard time entertaining herself. I’ve been working with her on that, providing her with foot toys that she can play with on top of her cage, so she associates out of cage time with independent play. It took a while to get her comfortable with sitting and playing on her play stand as well, but now she loves it. Also, I laughed out loud when I read your thoughts on their shirts……I guess we all have those bad wardrobe moments :)

Eric
Lin

Very good. Thanks.

Lin

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