Added a new grey yesterday...

[Zoom]

Lovely flock! It sounds like you have a very fun household. If you don't mind me asking, whereabouts in Canada do your parents live? I'm Canadian (Ottawa, Ontario) and I know a few crazy bird people....er, I mean bird-crazy people.

[Trinkapuppy]

Talon; I have been using target training with a clicker to shape behaviours and expand them into what I want. I found a number of videos, and have read several books on positive reinforcement. I have to say--I find the system is almost miraculous with birds, but I don't find it so effective with dogs. Maybe I just talk "bird" better than dog.

With Eshe, food doesn't work yet--not enough trust, and currently she will ONLY eat those garishly coloured pellets, which she doesn't seem to care enough about to work for. (really, every almond I give her ends up whole, on the tray underneath). She's also still a bit phobic, so husband and I have been using small amounts of "negative reinforcement". That is, when a desired behavior is executed, you remove the unwanted object from the place (in this case, we remove ourselves when she behaves correctly). We have been using this to teach her not to bite, but to be gentle and give us good body language, "no", or a gentle push away. We have made excellent progress in just a few days using this technique, and she's learning to trust us--that we aren't going to punish her when she behaves poorly. However, in order to get us out of her space when she doesn't want us there, she has to communicate with us. If she doesn't--if she just tries to bite us--we stay put until she remembers her manners.

I'm hoping to get some videos up and show some of the shaping processes for the behaviors, but if you haven't worked with clicker training, or don't know the psychology behind it, I cannot recommend Clicker Training for Birds by Melinda Johnson strongly enough. It's a bit dry, b/c it goes into the technical aspects for why it works--the deep psychology behind the training, more than just "here's how you do it", but I like knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing.

=0 )

 

Zoom--my parents are in British Columbia. =0 ) The entire family does originate from Ontario, though....being military, we are now scattered everywhere. My grandparents still live in North Bay, Ontario. They think those of us with parrots are nuts, though. LOL One of my aunts also lives there, but she's a dog rescue person, and decidedly NOT a bird person.

 

Edited to add an update for the day:

 

She is still pretty distrustful. Again, seeing the interaction in her formal home, this really is not a surprise.

Even so, she came and sat on my lap for awhile earlier today. She really REALLY wanted to climb to my shoulder, but she didn't get nearly as stressed over being in my lap as one might expect. She even let me give her some nice deep scratches over her head, and let me slide one finger under her wing without getting upset.

She still hasn't let me inspect her wings, but the bit I've seen from flapping, her primaries are all terribly chewed. Her previous owner admitted in an email that she (makes me want to cry) clipped her wings while the wings were folded, b/c she didn't know how to restrain her. I can only imagine the hack job that she's hiding. =0 (

 

She has terrible stress bars--the vet and I discussed, and believe that they are from the constant rehoming combined with a terrible diet. (Zupreem pellets, and NOTHING else. She won't even eat sunflower seeds or almonds. The fruit and veggie skewers I have given her have been reduced to so much dog forage....but at least she's getting it in her mouth!!!)

You can see the chew job she's done on her tail, and the flash really highlighted her stress bars well.

 

And Oh, my gosh. She just stepped up while I was videoing her getting a scritch (my parents want to see her progress.) and after she stepped up, she actually let me, briefly, open a wing.

Every primary, secondary, leaving only the tertiaries...cut to the level of the coverts. I cried for her. Literally. It breaks my heart. That's not a close wing clip...that's someone who has NO idea what they're doing. My gosh, what this girl must have gone through.

 

You can see in this video how gentle she's gotten about moving my hand away from her when I do something she doesn't like. Still working on figuring out what she likes for head scritchies. Previous Owner just patter her head, so scratching is either long forgotten or brand new for her. BUT. Instead of biting when she's not thrilled, she just pushes my finger away. I don't go back to scratch more unless her body language says that it's OK.

She surprises me at the end of this scritch with a stepup. The sudden ending is because I was not expecting this, and didn't have my arm positioned correctly to prevent that rapid climb to the shoulder. Once I got her on the other hand--properly held--she stepped up to my husband and let him scratch her for once (she's pretty female oriented). I then took her to her sleeping cage and put her in, but she clearly said "no" and walked out, so she's currently sleeping on top of her cage door. If things go like last night, she'll go to her sleeping cage right when we go to bed. I'd like her to get more sleep, but I want her to know that she gets clear say in what happens to her. She does nap a lot, too, at least. Unlike Jynx.

 

BTW; can you hear the noise she makes right as I start recording? At first, I thought that was a growl, but she seems to make it as a greeting. Does anyone recognize that grunting noise, or is it something that is all her?.......

Edited June 13, 2011 by Trinkapuppy

[Trinkapuppy]