i think the bird has outsmarted me

[grayghostandgreyparrot]

Hi. I'm new to the forum. I have a 2 year Grey. The problem, I'm having is that he/she will only talk when I'm not there. I think it's speaking to get me to come back and pay attention to it, but won't talk when I'm there. The minute I walk away it will talk again. I can hear it from a different room "practicing" new sounds/words but the minute I come over, it just stares at me and maybe whistles. I get it. It can see that I'm interested in it when it talks and is using this to "train" me. Any ideas on how to change things around?

 

Also, I've been reading the work of Dr. Irene Pepperberg and her modelling method of training. I was thinking of buying a toy parrot that records your voice and plays it back. Has anyone tried this? I don't want to waste the money on the toy if it's not going to work. It's just hard to find someone to help me with the modelling method. I thought the fake parrot might work.

 

Thanks.

[judygram]

Some greys are closet talkers, they won't talk in the presence of anyone, you will have to sneak back to hear what he/she is saying.

I don't think the fake parrot will work, they repeat what they hear and he/she would only be scared of it.

I am not that familiar with Dr. Pepperberg's method of training but if you are reading her material then it should give a good idea of how to go about it.

[abbie21187]

I have one bird ( a canary winged bee bee) that is a closet noise maker/ talker. When I'm in the other room he makes noises, laughs, says Uh Oh, his name, etc. He clams up as soon as he sees me. My Grey does not talk yet but practices constantly while I'm around her or not.

 

I think there's very little you can do to change it, it just depends on the bird.

[grayghostandgreyparrot]

Thanks. I'd never heard of closet talkers. My parrot will make other noises in my presence like bark or the beeping of the microwave. It's just the human words that it won't do when I'm there.

 

Dr. Pepperberg's method is modelling. She will have a human assistant help her. She will say a word, then the human assistant will repeat. Then there is an exchange of some commodity, food or toy. When the human doesn't repeat correctly, the human is told "no" and ignored until the correct response is given. The exchange it bilateral. The assistant will also make requests of the Dr. and give her a treat or "punish" her for the incorrect response. The bird learns by modelling this exchange between Dr. P and her assistant. Thus I thought I could use the toy as my "assistant". As we all know, it takes dedication to train our parrots and it's not always easy to find an assistant to help you multiple times a day for these training sessions.

 

Below is a video of her demonstrating her training method.

 

[bmatrow]

I have heard of this before. Read about it somewhere and I can't recall exactly but the posts I had read they didn't have much luck with it. Now I'm not saying it wouldn't work as every grey is different. But the best success I have read about is just talking to your grey. As far as weather your bird will remain a closet talker or not again just depends on the bird.

[MarcusCAG]

The original post has been removed.

Edited April 1, 2016 by MarcusCAG

[JeffNOK]

When I get my grey, I am going to take her to work with me. I am a teacher of English to international students of college age. I was thinking about using the Model Rival method perhaps using some of my students. I was thinking about doing it just ten minutes a day during the lunch hour. I don't know how often Dr Pepperberg did it with Alex, but I don't want to overdo it.

Edited October 2, 2011 by JeffNOK