Being Non-Confrontational with New Birds
Umbrella Cockatoo’s first day out – see his posture, turning away from me? He is feeling uncomfortable.
One of the things we all love as owners is introducing a new bird to the flock. I love that feeling of knowing someone new is there, tucked safely away for now in a separate room. Quarantine serves an important role in health, but it has an added advantage of allowing your bird to hear the rest of the household without having the shock of having to ...
Setting Up Obtainable Goals for Rescued Parrots
Setting up obtainable goals for rescued and re-homed parrots: What is progress, and how do you know if you’ve made it?
The question of knowing whether you’ve progressed at all can be surprisingly difficult to tell! With our neurotic pet-shop cockatiel, for instance, we had to decide what was her personality, and what was emotional ‘damage’ from her past. Progress for her came in very tiny steps. It took time for me to get that a super-quiet bird may be that way because it is ...
Using Your Energy When Working with Birds
African Grey
Energy is very important to parrots and how they react to us. Our birds can sense our every mood change, reading both your body language and the way you look to them in UV. They can perceive many more colours than we can, and – as the Island Parrot Sanctuary once put it to me – because of that, they know you better than you know yourself. They can see your mood.
One of the things I try and do with new or ...
Why Social Dominance Theory Does Not Apply To Flocks
Aggressive Senegal Parrot
Dogs and parrots are very different creatures, but as humans, we often try to draw comparisons to their behaviour. Canines being a creature that most everyone has had experience with, a lot of owners will try to draw connections.
For instance: The theory of height dominance. The idea is that birds move up high to try and ‘one-up’ their people.
First, let’s look at a parrot’s motivation for climbing up out of reach. A bird ...