June 5, 2025 • 46 mins
Barbara Bingham, CPBC, CPBT-KA is devoted to reinforcing good behavior in all animals using natural strategies from behavioral science. Experience with a variety of species such as marine mammals (notably including Hawaiian Monk Seals), horses, cats, dogs, small mammals, reptiles, and birds, gives Barbara an advantage in considering options for each individual. She is passionate about sharing the science of behavior and learning as a foundation for solving challenges and improving relationships.
She is a certified professional bird trainer through the International Avian Trainers Certification Board, and a certified parrot behavior consultant by the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. Her extensive training experience includes work with a variety of species such as marine mammals (notably including Hawaiian Monk Seals), horses, cats, dogs, small mammals, reptiles, and birds
Barb lives in Ahwatukee, AZ with a horse, a cat, a Scarlet Macaw, a Military Macaw, a Triton Cockatoo, a Congo African Grey, and a Sun-day conure.
In this episode:
Screaming is one of the common problems companion parrot owners face. Barb and Lisa will share their own personal stories (their own and their clients’) with pet parrots as well as discuss tips for problem solving. This begins with a conversation about Applied Behavior Analysis.
Among what you will learn by listening…
Why do pet birds vocalize?
What are positive strategies for problem solving a screaming parrot issue?
Is it a realistic goal to have a bird that is always quiet?
For more information on Barb, please visit her website at www.harmonyanimalbehavior.com. For more information about your Lives Touched By Pets Podcast host, Lisa Desatnik, please visit www.SoMuchPETential.com.
She is a certified professional bird trainer through the International Avian Trainers Certification Board, and a certified parrot behavior consultant by the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. Her extensive training experience includes work with a variety of species such as marine mammals (notably including Hawaiian Monk Seals), horses, cats, dogs, small mammals, reptiles, and birds
Barb lives in Ahwatukee, AZ with a horse, a cat, a Scarlet Macaw, a Military Macaw, a Triton Cockatoo, a Congo African Grey, and a Sun-day conure.
In this episode:
Screaming is one of the common problems companion parrot owners face. Barb and Lisa will share their own personal stories (their own and their clients’) with pet parrots as well as discuss tips for problem solving. This begins with a conversation about Applied Behavior Analysis.
Among what you will learn by listening…
Why do pet birds vocalize?
What are positive strategies for problem solving a screaming parrot issue?
Is it a realistic goal to have a bird that is always quiet?
For more information on Barb, please visit her website at www.harmonyanimalbehavior.com. For more information about your Lives Touched By Pets Podcast host, Lisa Desatnik, please visit www.SoMuchPETential.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Live's Touch by Pets, a show for those
who love and are loved by pets. I'm your host,
Lisa de Satnik, certified trainer with so much potential in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I'm really glad that you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Here's a complaint of many parrot owners. My bird screen's
way too often, way too loud and just playing. I
can't stand it. Here's the thing. Birds communicate with their sounds.
If you live with a parrot and you're struggling with
your bird's excessive screaming, this episode is for you. My
(00:47):
guest is a friend, a colleague of mine, Barbara Bingham.
Barbara is a very talented, certified professional bird trainer and
a certified parrot behavior consultant based in Air, Arizona. She
lives with five birds, a cat, and a horse and
consults with a lot of pet parrot owners on their
(01:09):
behavior issues. Are you ready to learn? Let's get started.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Barbara and I go back so many years. We were
just talking about that off air. It's been a I
don't want to date myself, and it's been a really
long time.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
It has been.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
I think we met through Susan Friedman, doctor Susan Friedman,
who's one of our favorite people and mentors.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Susan is the one who
got me involved in just wanting to learn about animal
behavior from.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The get go.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I mean, I was an animal person when I was little.
I was the kid that would come home with everything,
but nobody knew about animal behavior back then. I really
got started studying behavior when back then I got a
third bird. I no longer have three birds, but I
(02:10):
got my third bird, who was Barnaby, my African gray
who thought the coolest thing to do was to scream,
and that was not cool with me by any stretch.
And everything that I was reading online was about negative stuff,
and so I just started searching. And back then Yahoo
(02:30):
groups were around Susan Handa's group that was teaching parroto
owners around the world about applied behavior analysis as it
relates to parrots. So I jumped on and totally changed
my relationship with my pets.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And that's also.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
The reason why Barnaby to this day is a prolific
human talker and screams far far less. But yeah, that's
when I first met her, and I had no idea
what applied behavior analysis this was, but well, that's what.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Happened to me as well.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
I heard her speak at a conference for ABMA Animal
Behavior Management Alliance, great group, and everything's just fit into place.
I hadn't known about applied behavior analysis, but it makes.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
So much sense.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
And that's what's so fun to talk with clients about
and spread the word because that's how we can deal
positively with all our animals idiosyncrasies which are natural to them,
but they're so tough.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
When we bring them into the house.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
It's such a cool way to look at behavior.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
It is really works for all behavior.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
It's even humans, although humans get all their so much
reinforcement and outside that it's doesn't work quite the same way.
It works the same way, but not as well because
they can go get reinforcements somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Well, but I do, Yeah, I have used it's I mean,
you know, it's just how I think now a lot
of times and my dealings with people, and that would
be a fun conversation to have at another time. But yeah,
when I was doing public relations my previous career, I
was really helpful. Then I was helpful when I was
(04:33):
working with some troubled young kids.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It's helpful just.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
In my relationship with with kids and with my parents
and everything. But yeah, I mean so applied behavior analysis
is what really did me in. And then I couldn't
stop learning because and then, you know, because of my
days of public relations, I needed. I just felt this
(05:01):
desire to share the word. And so this is long
before I ever consider doing anything professionally, but I reached
out to an editor of a local magazine and said,
we've got to share this stuff, and she was.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Like, yeah, we do.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Susan actually helped review my articles for the first few
years to make sure I was on point, and that
column is still going strong to this dale all these
years later.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
But that's wonderful, and that's Susan. She's so generous with
her information. And the big takeaway that I like to
give people is that to take responsible responsibility for your
animal's behavior, because we are their whole world. When we
(05:50):
take them into our house, we control everything, and we
want to give them control of their behavior and in
a way that works for us and works for them.
And that's what behavior Applied behavior analysis does for me
and for others. It's it's a new world and it's
(06:13):
so fun to share and sow you.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Know what, because I bet you there's a ton of
people that are going to hear this that have no
idea what we're talking about. Why don't we share what
Applied behavior analysis is.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Applied behavior analysis takes a part behavior and looks at
why the behavior is occurring, the antecedent, what's happening before
the behavior and then specifically a behavior, not looking at everything,
but looking more more finely and seeing what the antecedent
(06:53):
is and what the behavior is, and then what the
consequence is. And as you know, the consequence are so
important because they drive the behavior. It's the future behavior
that we are affecting. We can't do anything about what
has happened already, but we can change our behavior to
(07:14):
change the animal's behavior.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Exactly so, and by antecedent, we could be talking about
the animal's medical condition. We could be talking about the environment,
the proximity of the animal to whatever it is. We
could be talking about time of day, the amount of
rest the animals had, you know, all kinds of things
(07:37):
that factor into making that behavior more plausible to happen.
And then there's the immediate ones that are like for example,
bird that bite you, you can't bite a hand that's
far away from them, right, So so proximity is definitely there.
(07:57):
There are things that we're going to talk about with
regards to screaming with a dog. There's so many different things,
and we talk about antecedent arrangement to help to solve
problems too. That's management.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
And we've become aware that everything around us and the animal.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Affects their behaviors.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
So if a stranger, a guest, or a trainer comes
into the new to the animal's environment, a new person,
it really changes the way the animal will behave And
so a lot of times I like to have videos
(08:42):
of what's going on. Videos first give you a really
great perspective, but it also shares how the animal behaves,
how the bird behaves in its home without all the
new people and attention from the training. So that's so important,
(09:05):
and that's that's one of the big ways to change
behavior is to rearrange something in the environment.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Mm hmmm, exactly. Now we're kind of off on a tangent.
I love to do, but this is really important because
when we talk about screaming, we've got to look at
what are the reasons for the screaming and what is
reinforcing the screaming? What from your perspective, what do you
(09:38):
think what are some of the causes of problems screaming
that you've seen.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Well, first we want to look at why are they screaming?
Because all behavior has a function. We don't just.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Behave just willy nilly out of the blue.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
We a all every living being behaves for an end
to get something, basically, to get something or get away
from something. And when we hear screaming, it's not to
bother us. It may be that they just are enjoying
their well being and they are just enjoying being alive.
(10:23):
But what we can do, and it may be to
get people to come often, and it may be because
they're scared.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
But what we can do is redirect.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
How they scream, how they communicate, into something that's much
more pleasing to us, that works for them and works
for us.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, you know that.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The whole reason that I got started studying what we
started talking about was because when I brought Barnaby, who
then was a three month old Timnafrik Gray who loves
to imitate, and he came into my home and at
the time I had Chester, who was an Alexandrian ringneck
(11:09):
very not so nice scream, but he didn't scream that much.
Chester was just a ham that got into everything. But
when I brought him home, he thought the coolest sound
to imitate was Chester at like some god awful decibel.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
All day long.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
So what Susan taught me is, again, when we're looking
at Aba, is you know he's communicating, which is just
what you said. So we started looking at Okay, So
first of all, what can I teach him to do
instead of that? So we started thinking about a whistle, right,
(11:57):
But then I didn't realize that fricking Greg can whistle
at the same decipal level.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
As he could seem.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
And I very quickly learned that was not going to work.
So thankfully, you know, I just started when I came in,
and I'm embarrassed that I taught him that I'm mommy,
but I did. And so I would come into the
room and I'd announce mommy here, and he started picking
that up.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And so.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Very early on, I just when he would scream, I
would go completely silent, and then if i'd hear mommy here,
I would bolt into his room and give him stuff
to do. And you could tell when he started catching on,
because no sooner did I get out the room than
I'd hear Mommy here running back.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
And that was getting so tiring.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
But that's so important, isn't it is?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Because he was, yeah, he was seen value and that,
and there wasn't any value. I just seemed to not
hear him when he'd screams, so he didn't want to
do that so much. But then I had to come
up with a different plan because I didn't feel like
driving into his room every second. So then we had
(13:18):
to you know, then we look at the enrichment piece,
so how can we give him a lot more to
do so that he would need to do.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Call me less?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And so it was that kind of three pronged approach
that really made the huge impact. And to this day,
you know, I no longer have Chester. There's so many
different stories I could share about having Chester. But to
this day, that's why I have a prolific human talker
(13:50):
in Barnaby is because I don't hear screams. And so
what's interesting though, is that, if so, I do have
one other bird Dreyfus, who's really really pretty old for
her age, and she's for the most part really really quiet,
(14:12):
but every once in a while she'll let out of
scream and so Barnaby. It's so interesting because I can
tell if he wants to communicate with Dreyfus, he'll scream,
but if he wants to communicate with me, she'll scream,
and he'll say, Barnaby's a good boy.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
That's adorable.
Speaker 5 (14:36):
So a couple of things I wanted to point out
is when you say you don't hear screams, you actually do,
but you're closing them out of your head so that
you're pretending you don't hear them, and that makes it
much easier to ignore if you just if you just
say I don't, I don't hear it, and when actually,
(14:59):
in reality, you do, but you're telling yourself you don't
so that you don't react.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
It's funny that.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
I have six birds, and one of them's in African gray,
and fortunately nobody has picked up on each other's screaming.
So that's whenever I have a bird over, I'm concerned
that it might that my birds might pick up on
the screaming of the new bird, because that's often what
(15:28):
they're coming to learn is to vocalize in a different way.
But my birds haven't picked up the screaming. It's interesting
how well this works. When I first got my scarlet macaw,
he was screaming and biting and most of the words
(15:49):
started with an F. And the reason was because that's
what he was taught the previous owner who gave who
gave him away, was banging on the cage and saying
you effort, and that's what that's what Ari learned.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
His name was Rambo, but he had.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
He was saying bad Rambo, and everything with Rambo was
negative and punitive. And so I don't think it's important
to change a bird's name, except.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
When they have such a negative association with that.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
And so I changed his name to Ari, and I
gave him attention for everything that wasn't objectionable. And to
this day he still remembers them because they always have
that back, that behavior in the background. You don't forget
a behavior, but it doesn't work. And so the only
(16:54):
time he uses it is if the cat runs under
his cage or something. He'll go you effort and or
what are you doing? And that'll come back. But generally
he's or not generally always he doesn't use the words
that I don't reinforce. And that's what's so important about
(17:15):
screaming is if you give any attention, even laughing, then
it reinforces them for what they just did. So if
they're screaming and you sigh, then the bird goes.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yay, I got attention.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
It made a difference, and I'm going to scream again
in order to get attention. And it may even be
bad attention. It may be that you somebody goes and
covers the cage, but they're coming towards the bird. The
bird wins, and it's it's not a competition. What it
is is a work to get the bird to understand
(17:56):
how to communicate with us in a way that works
for us and works for him or her. Yeah, so
our behavior is everything. And taking responsibility for what your
bird does, or your other animals and even spouses and
people kids, taking responsibility for your behavior affecting their behavior
(18:21):
is so important, right, big piece, And.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You have a house full of birds, and we're not
talking about just the little cockatiles. We're talking about big
birds with big voices, and a cockatoo is among them,
and they have very loud voices. So what do you
do to control the volume.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
In your house. How do you handle that?
Speaker 5 (18:50):
So all the birds I have were given to me
or thrown at me. One of them, the cockatoo, was
actually left. I said I can't take anymore. And they
finally left him on my front porch in the summer
and called me and said, we can't take it anymore.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
He's yours.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
And I did have them come back and sign them
over and give me more information on what he was
used to, because we want them to come into our home.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
With some consistency.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Consistency is so important and we don't want to repeat
what isn't working. But it's good to know their food
and things like that, so we don't change everything at once.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
And what I did with Boo was he was honestly.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
One of the worst birds I've ever met, and now
he's one of my best friends and he's just wonderful.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
He would scream.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
Horribly, incessantly, NonStop, and I had to do what you're
talking about, don't hear him? And when I don't hear him, yes,
of course, it's driving me crazy. But I don't give
him any attention, any signal that I'm that I do
(20:14):
hear him, And when he's doing anything else, then that
is more acceptable. So he's making other noises and sometimes
being quiet. Although it's hard to reinforce quiet. We can,
but it's much easier to reinforce another sound. So that
(20:38):
he learned that screaming chases people away, and all other
sounds that I had to teach him are get attention.
So I would I would when he was quiet or
stop screaming, I'd say come, you know, come here, Hi,
(20:59):
things like that, and he did pick those up because
those started working for my attention and the screaming chased
me away, chase people away. So what he does now
is he'll go hi, really quietly, and it's adorable and
(21:19):
it's and he knows. One of the things that really
gets me is if he says I love you, which
is something I've told him. I didn't teach it to him,
but he's picked up and he'll say I love you
or hi, and then I come running. And nowadays I
(21:41):
don't have to come running. I can just say that's nice,
or I love you too, some response. But at the
time when he was learning, every single time I had
to drop what I was doing and had to is
a good word for it, because if you're not consistent.
(22:01):
He won't learn the animal, the bird won't learn what
to do instead, and they will resort to what has
worked for them, which is the screaming. So the screaming
did not work with me in my home, and.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Other behaviors did.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
If he was playing with a toy, I would run
in and tell him good and high, and if he
would make another vocalization, then I would literally drop what
I'm doing and run in and tell him how good
it was. At first, then he learned what got attention
and what didn't, and I could say I hear you,
(22:44):
I'll be there, or you know, wait, I'll be coming,
and just the contact would be enough that he learned
I would be becoming soon enough, and that that worked
much better than so the screaming diminished and then went away.
It's still there if people.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Come in, and.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
If people come in my house, what he does now
is laugh, and that always gets attention. But if we're
looking at the other birds and ignore him because there
are other birds and other things to do in life
besides pay attention to booth the cockatoo, then he will
(23:34):
at some point resume screaming. But what I try to
do is make sure that I acknowledge his laughing, and
if we can, we'll go over there and give him
attention so that it's always being reinforced.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
And the screaming we leave the room.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
So they do resort to screaming if they aren't getting
what they want for a while, But if you're consistent
and make it a priority, then you won't hear screaming anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
The other thing you probably are doing too is giving
them a lot more enrichment. Yes, talk about the role
of enrichment when it comes to screaming.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
And as you say, Lisa, it's so important to give
them enrichment, which is something else to do.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
And so he has toys.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
A lot of times they don't play with toys right away,
and you have to give them attention for playing with toys.
Teach them. They learn that playing with toys gets attention.
Saying things softly and sounds that we like get attention.
And so that's what they learn to do in order
(24:51):
to get attention, and all the screaming will subside. All
of us want to all of us be for a reason,
and a lot of birds they're so social and they're
so intelligent that they will do what works to get attention,
(25:13):
and so If they're screaming and the people say quiet,
then that's getting attention and it's actually reinforcing the screaming.
You'll hear more screaming when you say quiet. You'll hear
more screaming when you walk over and cover a cage. Now,
everybody's an individual, so your mileage may vary, and what
(25:36):
we do is we look at the future behavior. If
what you are doing is working, you will notice that
the screaming becomes less and continue doing what you're doing.
If the screaming increases or maintains, then what you're doing
isn't working. Even if it's a textbook answer, it i
(26:00):
won't work for all individuals.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
So there's no recipe.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
There's always ingredients that we use and we then look
at what the results are. So if your results are
getting better behavior in the direction you want, then you
continue that. And if they're not, even if it's something
that you've been told will work, it's not working for
(26:26):
your individual then you have to change something. And there's
so many there's so many objects we can change and
behaviors for us we can change. So we change something
in the environment, which is it might be even moving
the cage to a different place.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Whenever we're in a different room.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
Think of going to a new classroom or walking into
a store, and you behave differently. You behave differently with
friends than with new people, and so everything you change
will change behavior. Behavior is constantly changing, learning how to
(27:12):
get what we want, how to get what they want,
and how to not get what we don't want, how
to stay away and avoid behavior we don't like. The
problem is understanding that some of the behavior we intend
to be punishing or reduce the bird's behavior is actually
(27:35):
reinforcing it. And that's where looking at future behavior and
deciding what works and what doesn't work for that individual
bird now. And it also matters what happens if a
bird is raised. If it's raised by the parents, it's
a lot less attached. It will become attached to the
(27:57):
people because it's social. And if the people treat it
nicely and reinforce the attention the bird gives to them.
With proper attention to the bird, then you get to
have a great relationship and life becomes harmonious and wonderful
if you're attending, giving attention to what you're doing and
(28:23):
how the bird is reacting, how the bird is behaving
back to you.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
However, a lot.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Of birds are raised as the babies are taken, the
chicks are taken, and they're raised by people, and they
become very attached to people. And both parent raised and
hand raised birds can be wonderful companions. But there's a
tendency with a lot of the hand raised birds raised
(28:54):
by people that they become very attached to having a
human around. And so we have to understand this and
be very gentle and forgiving with how the bird is behaving,
because everybody's just doing the best they can sure survive and.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Get what we want right.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
And so, knowing applied behavior analysis that it's the antecedent,
it's something that cues the behavior to occur, and then
very importantly, it's how we react, how the consequence makes
the bird behave and invites the bird to behave in
(29:38):
a certain way. So the consequence is very very important.
It's also easy to it's a good idea to change
behavior by changing the environment the antecedent and making it so.
One of the ways to curb screaming is to give
(29:59):
the bird a ten now and then enough so that
they don't need to scream. Why is your bird screaming
it's scared. In that case, maybe we don't have it
right by the dog park window. Although some birds would
find that really interesting. Some birds would start screaming every
(30:21):
time because they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
We don't know why they're.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Screaming, but it encourages them to scream, so we can
move the bird. Yeah, some birds are doing contact calls
because they're social and they want to know where the
other members of the flock are, and you're one of
the members of that We as people humans in their
(30:47):
homes are one of the members of their flock, and
it's important to them that they know where we are
and that they're getting attention from other members of their flock.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
And so they make.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
Contact calls in the wild, and they will do that
with us, and that's a distinct, repetitive, often annoying sound
that they make and they want us to answer, so
we can. At first we can answer and say I
hear you, and then we can also change there. We
(31:21):
can make a sound like high from the other room
and teach them that that's a better contact sound and
then reduce our our responding to the annoying to us
be contact call and changing that too. If you say hi,
I'll give you attention, and that means consistently running into
(31:47):
the room and giving them the attention at.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
First, so they learn this is what works. This is
my new contact.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Call, which is exactly what I did with Barnaby.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
And it works so well. Some of the birds, even
even African grays, have had a background. Where the African
gray I have was actually they were.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
Scared of him, so they kept him in a room
and didn't take him out, and they didn't want their
dogs to bother him. So he was actually closed in
a room bigger than a closet, but it didn't have
any windows, and he had no contact with people, and
so he picked up sounds and was actually he's he
(32:34):
says a few words, but basically he's a joy because
he's learned to whistle and hum and click and all that.
But he's not he's an African gray. He's not so
prolific with words. So we always need to consider that
the individual and their learning history may influence behavior. And
(32:58):
it's not that he can't learn words, if I made
that a priority. But I really enjoy the sounds he makes,
and so I will repeat back the sounds and play
bird sounds for him or take them outside and it's
a joy to hear him happily vocalizing, right, but not talking,
(33:20):
that's his choice.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, when I had Chester, so Chester didn't scream a lot, thankfully,
But it was funny because the dynamic between he and
Barnaby so Chester was just if anybody has had ring next,
they're just so comical, and he would do all these
(33:45):
funny things that you couldn't help but laugh at. The
problem was when he was doing it, it was kind
of egging Barnaby on to then start screaming. So part
of my strategy had to be I have to make
make sure that Chester is so busy that he's not
going to be thinking about how do I tease Barnaby?
(34:07):
So you know Chester, they're also voracious tours and so
you know, making sure Chester had a ton of stuff
that he could go through and chew and do things
and work through really created harmony in my house. So
it wasn't a part of my strategy there was. It
(34:27):
wasn't just about Barnaby. It was also about Chester. You know,
anytime you've got dynamics between living beings, there's that dynamic.
But making sure, definitely that they've got stuff to do.
Numerous clients that I've had about screaming issues, a lot
of it has so much gone out of the way,
(34:49):
gone away when we've just added so much enrichment to
the bird that the bird no longer has as much
need or desire to need to do those contact calls
because he's so busy with other things. And so that
has really been wonderful, you know, happens a lot. And
(35:11):
then there was another one we were working on and
that worked really well. But one problem she had was
when she'd go into the laundry room and she'd turn
on the washing machine, that was a trigger for her
bird to start screaming. So before she went strategically she
would give him stuff to do before she would go
(35:35):
in there to do the dryer, and then she was
you know, she could do it, come out he was
still busy with things. She'd give him a little bit
more and then that tended to solve her problem.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Mean, you know, there's just so many different ways. As
you said, it's about, you know, what can we do
to arrange things so that there practicing it last, and
then what skills can we teach them that they can
do instead. And you know, enrichment, and no matter whether
we're talking about dogs or cats or birds, it's so
(36:12):
important when it comes to to behavior issues and behavior.
Speaker 5 (36:18):
And enrichment also helps with If my birds start chewing
on some wood in my house, I've taught them no, no,
not as a punitive, but no as information. No, that's mine,
this is yours, and I hand them something that they
(36:38):
are allowed to chew.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
So we always want.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
To fulfill their needs, but we can do it in
a way that works for us as well. Right, one
of the enrichment things that I like is to give
the bird a bell. It has to be a bell
that you're going to that is not going to be
super annoying. Most of all of my birds that I
(37:03):
have came to me because they were screaming and biting
and Copper my son, Sunsenda Sunday.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Kanyer was screaming is shrill all the time.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
And what I taught him he would ring a bell
and I would give him lots of attention. Again, i
would stop what I'm doing and make him the focus.
I would stop what I'm doing when he rang the bell.
And so now instead of screaming. He will go and
ring this bell, and it's changed our lives. I don't
(37:39):
mind the bell being rung, but the screaming can drive
you nuts.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Yea.
Speaker 5 (37:45):
Again, you can't react to the screaming, but you do
give a lot of attention to the other things that
they're doing, and you could change behaviors.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
So well.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
You can also manage the behavior, as you said, giving
them something before you leave or before something you have
an important phone call. I give my birds pellets, and
it's a complete diet. So it's wonderful that they don't
(38:18):
pick out certain peanuts and sunflower seeds and then safflower
seeds and leave the rest of the food. So I
give them pellets, which has a nutritious formula for every bite.
And not everybody uses pellets, but I do. And so
all the fresh foods I save for when I'm going
(38:42):
to be having a phone call or I'm just about
to leave, I'll give them their fresh foods. And that
not only is that a signal that has that become
a signal a queue that they're going to be on
their own for a little while, whether I'm there or not,
but it also gives them something to do and they
(39:04):
look forward to the times when I'm not around because
that's when.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
They get their fresh foods.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
And I also don't give them nuts and treats unless
they're being quiet or they're doing something I like. Often
they're so quiet, they're so occupied now with their toys
and stuff. I can walk around and just give them
(39:30):
treats for breathing and doing what they do all the time,
and that's fun. It doesn't have to be a trained behavior.
It's just for good behavior. There's so many times when
we think I don't want the screaming, I don't want
the biting, when the better way to look at that
(39:53):
is what do I do want? So I do want
them to eat their food when instead of screaming, I
do want them to ring a bell instead of screaming,
I want them to play. We don't have to have
expensive toys. We can give them a bottle cap, we
can give them a yogurt container, a piece of paper,
(40:17):
and we can also give them enrichment where we put
some food inside the paper. That might be confusing at first,
so maybe we just lay a piece of paper over
their food bowl and they have to pull it off
and then or push it off and then they can
eat their food. And then we can gradually, in approximation
(40:42):
small steps, we can teach them that the food is
in the paper, it can be on the paper. Then
we can start twisting it and give them enrichment. Stick
it around their cage and they can walk around. They
can climb around and gather their food through a fun
way of finding it and cracking it or unwrapping it.
(41:09):
Because in nature, we certainly don't find birds going to
the grocery store or having a ball set out, so
it takes a lot of their time is spent foraging
and playing, and that is something that we need to
(41:30):
reproduce so that they don't spend all their time waiting
for us and screaming together in so many different ways,
and it depends on the individual, what the individual, what
works for that individual.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
That's and appropriate.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
Yeah, and it's always future behavior, isn't.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
It It is?
Speaker 3 (41:56):
This has really been fun. You and I we could
talk for hours about all this stuff because we're so
passionate about it. But I think some of the takeaways
I guess to summarize for people. One is, you know,
you really want to look at the function of the behavior.
So we're looking at the behavior and what are you know,
(42:19):
the consequences of the behavior they do. What right to
look at what's reinforcing it, but also look at things
in the environment, things that are happening before the behavior
that are setting the motion for that behavior. Those are
called antecedents, and so that can be anything from providing
(42:40):
more enrichment for your bird with location. We've talked about
lots of different ways that you can manage things so
that you're making it less likely for your bird to
need to do these behaviors, and then you're also watching
for as far as consequent quenches go, that you're not
(43:02):
reinforcing the problem or the unwanted behavior, why you can
be teaching new skills that work for both you and
your pet. And so I think those are kind of
the big takeaways that I'm seeing from this.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Yes, and it's always the individual.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
We can give them something that we think is good
for them, but if they don't, if they're not interested
in it, then it's not useful. However, we can give
them looking at it and playing with it and touching
it attention and teach them.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
To play with it.
Speaker 5 (43:41):
Yeah, it's all up to us and how to make
our behavior work to get their behavior, which works to
get our behavior, and it becomes a conversation rather than
a demand and a monologue from us or from them.
R becomes working together, living in harmony and peace, which
(44:04):
is very possible with an alien species.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
It's so fun.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
I love it, Barb.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
Tell people how they can find you if they if
they're looking, We've got it in the show notes too,
But go ahead and share that.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
My website is Harmonyanimalbehavior dot com and that will have
a contact page. You can also find Lisa and me
and other certified parent behavior consultants through the International Association
of Animal Behavior as Consultants I double a BC, I AABC,
(44:42):
and they will have a list of all the parent
behavior consultants and you can see who works for you
or works near you. I think that actually zoom works
very well with working on behavior, actually because we don't
go into their home and so they're not distracted by
(45:04):
a new person. And also because so many of these
are giving you ideas and seeing how you can apply
them and to see that it works, and giving you
ideas if you need some new new thoughts of tweaking them.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
So Harmonyanimalbehavior dot com is me Okay, I'd love to
talk with you great.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Well, thank you so much. This is really really fun.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
I hope this is a lot of good information to
share with folks, so.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
We'll do this again sometime. Thank you have a different issue.
Speaker 6 (45:47):
Thanks, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please
consider subscribing to my podcast, come back often, and tell
your friends. If I can be of any help to
you and your pet, Please reach out to me via
my website www dot somuchpotential dot com and for a
(46:11):
lot more information, fun and videos, please follow me so
Much Potential on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
See you soon.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Live's Touch by Pets, a show for those
who love and are loved by pets. I'm your host,
Lisa de Satnik, certified trainer with so much potential in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I'm really glad that you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Here's a complaint of many parrot owners. My bird screen's
way too often, way too loud and just playing. I
can't stand it. Here's the thing. Birds communicate with their sounds.
If you live with a parrot and you're struggling with
your bird's excessive screaming, this episode is for you. My
(00:47):
guest is a friend, a colleague of mine, Barbara Bingham.
Barbara is a very talented, certified professional bird trainer and
a certified parrot behavior consultant based in Air, Arizona. She
lives with five birds, a cat, and a horse and
consults with a lot of pet parrot owners on their
(01:09):
behavior issues. Are you ready to learn? Let's get started.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Barbara and I go back so many years. We were
just talking about that off air. It's been a I
don't want to date myself, and it's been a really
long time.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
It has been.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
I think we met through Susan Friedman, doctor Susan Friedman,
who's one of our favorite people and mentors.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Susan is the one who
got me involved in just wanting to learn about animal
behavior from.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The get go.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I mean, I was an animal person when I was little.
I was the kid that would come home with everything,
but nobody knew about animal behavior back then. I really
got started studying behavior when back then I got a
third bird. I no longer have three birds, but I
(02:10):
got my third bird, who was Barnaby, my African gray
who thought the coolest thing to do was to scream,
and that was not cool with me by any stretch.
And everything that I was reading online was about negative stuff,
and so I just started searching. And back then Yahoo
(02:30):
groups were around Susan Handa's group that was teaching parroto
owners around the world about applied behavior analysis as it
relates to parrots. So I jumped on and totally changed
my relationship with my pets.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And that's also.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
The reason why Barnaby to this day is a prolific
human talker and screams far far less. But yeah, that's
when I first met her, and I had no idea
what applied behavior analysis this was, but well, that's what.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Happened to me as well.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
I heard her speak at a conference for ABMA Animal
Behavior Management Alliance, great group, and everything's just fit into place.
I hadn't known about applied behavior analysis, but it makes.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
So much sense.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
And that's what's so fun to talk with clients about
and spread the word because that's how we can deal
positively with all our animals idiosyncrasies which are natural to them,
but they're so tough.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
When we bring them into the house.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
It's such a cool way to look at behavior.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
It is really works for all behavior.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
It's even humans, although humans get all their so much
reinforcement and outside that it's doesn't work quite the same way.
It works the same way, but not as well because
they can go get reinforcements somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Well, but I do, Yeah, I have used it's I mean,
you know, it's just how I think now a lot
of times and my dealings with people, and that would
be a fun conversation to have at another time. But yeah,
when I was doing public relations my previous career, I
was really helpful. Then I was helpful when I was
(04:33):
working with some troubled young kids.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It's helpful just.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
In my relationship with with kids and with my parents
and everything. But yeah, I mean so applied behavior analysis
is what really did me in. And then I couldn't
stop learning because and then, you know, because of my
days of public relations, I needed. I just felt this
(05:01):
desire to share the word. And so this is long
before I ever consider doing anything professionally, but I reached
out to an editor of a local magazine and said,
we've got to share this stuff, and she was.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Like, yeah, we do.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Susan actually helped review my articles for the first few
years to make sure I was on point, and that
column is still going strong to this dale all these
years later.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
But that's wonderful, and that's Susan. She's so generous with
her information. And the big takeaway that I like to
give people is that to take responsible responsibility for your
animal's behavior, because we are their whole world. When we
(05:50):
take them into our house, we control everything, and we
want to give them control of their behavior and in
a way that works for us and works for them.
And that's what behavior Applied behavior analysis does for me
and for others. It's it's a new world and it's
(06:13):
so fun to share and sow you.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Know what, because I bet you there's a ton of
people that are going to hear this that have no
idea what we're talking about. Why don't we share what
Applied behavior analysis is.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Applied behavior analysis takes a part behavior and looks at
why the behavior is occurring, the antecedent, what's happening before
the behavior and then specifically a behavior, not looking at everything,
but looking more more finely and seeing what the antecedent
(06:53):
is and what the behavior is, and then what the
consequence is. And as you know, the consequence are so
important because they drive the behavior. It's the future behavior
that we are affecting. We can't do anything about what
has happened already, but we can change our behavior to
(07:14):
change the animal's behavior.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Exactly so, and by antecedent, we could be talking about
the animal's medical condition. We could be talking about the environment,
the proximity of the animal to whatever it is. We
could be talking about time of day, the amount of
rest the animals had, you know, all kinds of things
(07:37):
that factor into making that behavior more plausible to happen.
And then there's the immediate ones that are like for example,
bird that bite you, you can't bite a hand that's
far away from them, right, So so proximity is definitely there.
(07:57):
There are things that we're going to talk about with
regards to screaming with a dog. There's so many different things,
and we talk about antecedent arrangement to help to solve
problems too. That's management.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
And we've become aware that everything around us and the animal.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Affects their behaviors.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
So if a stranger, a guest, or a trainer comes
into the new to the animal's environment, a new person,
it really changes the way the animal will behave And
so a lot of times I like to have videos
(08:42):
of what's going on. Videos first give you a really
great perspective, but it also shares how the animal behaves,
how the bird behaves in its home without all the
new people and attention from the training. So that's so important,
(09:05):
and that's that's one of the big ways to change
behavior is to rearrange something in the environment.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Mm hmmm, exactly. Now we're kind of off on a tangent.
I love to do, but this is really important because
when we talk about screaming, we've got to look at
what are the reasons for the screaming and what is
reinforcing the screaming? What from your perspective, what do you
(09:38):
think what are some of the causes of problems screaming
that you've seen.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Well, first we want to look at why are they screaming?
Because all behavior has a function. We don't just.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Behave just willy nilly out of the blue.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
We a all every living being behaves for an end
to get something, basically, to get something or get away
from something. And when we hear screaming, it's not to
bother us. It may be that they just are enjoying
their well being and they are just enjoying being alive.
(10:23):
But what we can do, and it may be to
get people to come often, and it may be because
they're scared.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
But what we can do is redirect.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
How they scream, how they communicate, into something that's much
more pleasing to us, that works for them and works
for us.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, you know that.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The whole reason that I got started studying what we
started talking about was because when I brought Barnaby, who
then was a three month old Timnafrik Gray who loves
to imitate, and he came into my home and at
the time I had Chester, who was an Alexandrian ringneck
(11:09):
very not so nice scream, but he didn't scream that much.
Chester was just a ham that got into everything. But
when I brought him home, he thought the coolest sound
to imitate was Chester at like some god awful decibel.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
All day long.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
So what Susan taught me is, again, when we're looking
at Aba, is you know he's communicating, which is just
what you said. So we started looking at Okay, So
first of all, what can I teach him to do
instead of that? So we started thinking about a whistle, right,
(11:57):
But then I didn't realize that fricking Greg can whistle
at the same decipal level.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
As he could seem.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
And I very quickly learned that was not going to work.
So thankfully, you know, I just started when I came in,
and I'm embarrassed that I taught him that I'm mommy,
but I did. And so I would come into the
room and I'd announce mommy here, and he started picking
that up.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And so.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Very early on, I just when he would scream, I
would go completely silent, and then if i'd hear mommy here,
I would bolt into his room and give him stuff
to do. And you could tell when he started catching on,
because no sooner did I get out the room than
I'd hear Mommy here running back.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
And that was getting so tiring.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
But that's so important, isn't it is?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Because he was, yeah, he was seen value and that,
and there wasn't any value. I just seemed to not
hear him when he'd screams, so he didn't want to
do that so much. But then I had to come
up with a different plan because I didn't feel like
driving into his room every second. So then we had
(13:18):
to you know, then we look at the enrichment piece,
so how can we give him a lot more to
do so that he would need to do.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Call me less?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And so it was that kind of three pronged approach
that really made the huge impact. And to this day,
you know, I no longer have Chester. There's so many
different stories I could share about having Chester. But to
this day, that's why I have a prolific human talker
(13:50):
in Barnaby is because I don't hear screams. And so
what's interesting though, is that, if so, I do have
one other bird Dreyfus, who's really really pretty old for
her age, and she's for the most part really really quiet,
(14:12):
but every once in a while she'll let out of
scream and so Barnaby. It's so interesting because I can
tell if he wants to communicate with Dreyfus, he'll scream,
but if he wants to communicate with me, she'll scream,
and he'll say, Barnaby's a good boy.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
That's adorable.
Speaker 5 (14:36):
So a couple of things I wanted to point out
is when you say you don't hear screams, you actually do,
but you're closing them out of your head so that
you're pretending you don't hear them, and that makes it
much easier to ignore if you just if you just
say I don't, I don't hear it, and when actually,
(14:59):
in reality, you do, but you're telling yourself you don't
so that you don't react.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
It's funny that.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
I have six birds, and one of them's in African gray,
and fortunately nobody has picked up on each other's screaming.
So that's whenever I have a bird over, I'm concerned
that it might that my birds might pick up on
the screaming of the new bird, because that's often what
(15:28):
they're coming to learn is to vocalize in a different way.
But my birds haven't picked up the screaming. It's interesting
how well this works. When I first got my scarlet macaw,
he was screaming and biting and most of the words
(15:49):
started with an F. And the reason was because that's
what he was taught the previous owner who gave who
gave him away, was banging on the cage and saying
you effort, and that's what that's what Ari learned.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
His name was Rambo, but he had.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
He was saying bad Rambo, and everything with Rambo was
negative and punitive. And so I don't think it's important
to change a bird's name, except.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
When they have such a negative association with that.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
And so I changed his name to Ari, and I
gave him attention for everything that wasn't objectionable. And to
this day he still remembers them because they always have
that back, that behavior in the background. You don't forget
a behavior, but it doesn't work. And so the only
(16:54):
time he uses it is if the cat runs under
his cage or something. He'll go you effort and or
what are you doing? And that'll come back. But generally
he's or not generally always he doesn't use the words
that I don't reinforce. And that's what's so important about
(17:15):
screaming is if you give any attention, even laughing, then
it reinforces them for what they just did. So if
they're screaming and you sigh, then the bird goes.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yay, I got attention.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
It made a difference, and I'm going to scream again
in order to get attention. And it may even be
bad attention. It may be that you somebody goes and
covers the cage, but they're coming towards the bird. The
bird wins, and it's it's not a competition. What it
is is a work to get the bird to understand
(17:56):
how to communicate with us in a way that works
for us and works for him or her. Yeah, so
our behavior is everything. And taking responsibility for what your
bird does, or your other animals and even spouses and
people kids, taking responsibility for your behavior affecting their behavior
(18:21):
is so important, right, big piece, And.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You have a house full of birds, and we're not
talking about just the little cockatiles. We're talking about big
birds with big voices, and a cockatoo is among them,
and they have very loud voices. So what do you
do to control the volume.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
In your house. How do you handle that?
Speaker 5 (18:50):
So all the birds I have were given to me
or thrown at me. One of them, the cockatoo, was
actually left. I said I can't take anymore. And they
finally left him on my front porch in the summer
and called me and said, we can't take it anymore.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
He's yours.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
And I did have them come back and sign them
over and give me more information on what he was
used to, because we want them to come into our home.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
With some consistency.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Consistency is so important and we don't want to repeat
what isn't working. But it's good to know their food
and things like that, so we don't change everything at once.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
And what I did with Boo was he was honestly.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
One of the worst birds I've ever met, and now
he's one of my best friends and he's just wonderful.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
He would scream.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
Horribly, incessantly, NonStop, and I had to do what you're
talking about, don't hear him? And when I don't hear him, yes,
of course, it's driving me crazy. But I don't give
him any attention, any signal that I'm that I do
(20:14):
hear him, And when he's doing anything else, then that
is more acceptable. So he's making other noises and sometimes
being quiet. Although it's hard to reinforce quiet. We can,
but it's much easier to reinforce another sound. So that
(20:38):
he learned that screaming chases people away, and all other
sounds that I had to teach him are get attention.
So I would I would when he was quiet or
stop screaming, I'd say come, you know, come here, Hi,
(20:59):
things like that, and he did pick those up because
those started working for my attention and the screaming chased
me away, chase people away. So what he does now
is he'll go hi, really quietly, and it's adorable and
(21:19):
it's and he knows. One of the things that really
gets me is if he says I love you, which
is something I've told him. I didn't teach it to him,
but he's picked up and he'll say I love you
or hi, and then I come running. And nowadays I
(21:41):
don't have to come running. I can just say that's nice,
or I love you too, some response. But at the
time when he was learning, every single time I had
to drop what I was doing and had to is
a good word for it, because if you're not consistent.
(22:01):
He won't learn the animal, the bird won't learn what
to do instead, and they will resort to what has
worked for them, which is the screaming. So the screaming
did not work with me in my home, and.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Other behaviors did.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
If he was playing with a toy, I would run
in and tell him good and high, and if he
would make another vocalization, then I would literally drop what
I'm doing and run in and tell him how good
it was. At first, then he learned what got attention
and what didn't, and I could say I hear you,
(22:44):
I'll be there, or you know, wait, I'll be coming,
and just the contact would be enough that he learned
I would be becoming soon enough, and that that worked
much better than so the screaming diminished and then went away.
It's still there if people.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Come in, and.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
If people come in my house, what he does now
is laugh, and that always gets attention. But if we're
looking at the other birds and ignore him because there
are other birds and other things to do in life
besides pay attention to booth the cockatoo, then he will
(23:34):
at some point resume screaming. But what I try to
do is make sure that I acknowledge his laughing, and
if we can, we'll go over there and give him
attention so that it's always being reinforced.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
And the screaming we leave the room.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
So they do resort to screaming if they aren't getting
what they want for a while, But if you're consistent
and make it a priority, then you won't hear screaming anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
The other thing you probably are doing too is giving
them a lot more enrichment. Yes, talk about the role
of enrichment when it comes to screaming.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
And as you say, Lisa, it's so important to give
them enrichment, which is something else to do.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
And so he has toys.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
A lot of times they don't play with toys right away,
and you have to give them attention for playing with toys.
Teach them. They learn that playing with toys gets attention.
Saying things softly and sounds that we like get attention.
And so that's what they learn to do in order
(24:51):
to get attention, and all the screaming will subside. All
of us want to all of us be for a reason,
and a lot of birds they're so social and they're
so intelligent that they will do what works to get attention,
(25:13):
and so If they're screaming and the people say quiet,
then that's getting attention and it's actually reinforcing the screaming.
You'll hear more screaming when you say quiet. You'll hear
more screaming when you walk over and cover a cage. Now,
everybody's an individual, so your mileage may vary, and what
(25:36):
we do is we look at the future behavior. If
what you are doing is working, you will notice that
the screaming becomes less and continue doing what you're doing.
If the screaming increases or maintains, then what you're doing
isn't working. Even if it's a textbook answer, it i
(26:00):
won't work for all individuals.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
So there's no recipe.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
There's always ingredients that we use and we then look
at what the results are. So if your results are
getting better behavior in the direction you want, then you
continue that. And if they're not, even if it's something
that you've been told will work, it's not working for
(26:26):
your individual then you have to change something. And there's
so many there's so many objects we can change and
behaviors for us we can change. So we change something
in the environment, which is it might be even moving
the cage to a different place.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Whenever we're in a different room.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
Think of going to a new classroom or walking into
a store, and you behave differently. You behave differently with
friends than with new people, and so everything you change
will change behavior. Behavior is constantly changing, learning how to
(27:12):
get what we want, how to get what they want,
and how to not get what we don't want, how
to stay away and avoid behavior we don't like. The
problem is understanding that some of the behavior we intend
to be punishing or reduce the bird's behavior is actually
(27:35):
reinforcing it. And that's where looking at future behavior and
deciding what works and what doesn't work for that individual
bird now. And it also matters what happens if a
bird is raised. If it's raised by the parents, it's
a lot less attached. It will become attached to the
(27:57):
people because it's social. And if the people treat it
nicely and reinforce the attention the bird gives to them.
With proper attention to the bird, then you get to
have a great relationship and life becomes harmonious and wonderful
if you're attending, giving attention to what you're doing and
(28:23):
how the bird is reacting, how the bird is behaving
back to you.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
However, a lot.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Of birds are raised as the babies are taken, the
chicks are taken, and they're raised by people, and they
become very attached to people. And both parent raised and
hand raised birds can be wonderful companions. But there's a
tendency with a lot of the hand raised birds raised
(28:54):
by people that they become very attached to having a
human around. And so we have to understand this and
be very gentle and forgiving with how the bird is behaving,
because everybody's just doing the best they can sure survive and.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Get what we want right.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
And so, knowing applied behavior analysis that it's the antecedent,
it's something that cues the behavior to occur, and then
very importantly, it's how we react, how the consequence makes
the bird behave and invites the bird to behave in
(29:38):
a certain way. So the consequence is very very important.
It's also easy to it's a good idea to change
behavior by changing the environment the antecedent and making it so.
One of the ways to curb screaming is to give
(29:59):
the bird a ten now and then enough so that
they don't need to scream. Why is your bird screaming
it's scared. In that case, maybe we don't have it
right by the dog park window. Although some birds would
find that really interesting. Some birds would start screaming every
(30:21):
time because they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
We don't know why they're.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Screaming, but it encourages them to scream, so we can
move the bird. Yeah, some birds are doing contact calls
because they're social and they want to know where the
other members of the flock are, and you're one of
the members of that We as people humans in their
(30:47):
homes are one of the members of their flock, and
it's important to them that they know where we are
and that they're getting attention from other members of their flock.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
And so they make.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
Contact calls in the wild, and they will do that
with us, and that's a distinct, repetitive, often annoying sound
that they make and they want us to answer, so
we can. At first we can answer and say I
hear you, and then we can also change there. We
(31:21):
can make a sound like high from the other room
and teach them that that's a better contact sound and
then reduce our our responding to the annoying to us
be contact call and changing that too. If you say hi,
I'll give you attention, and that means consistently running into
(31:47):
the room and giving them the attention at.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
First, so they learn this is what works. This is
my new contact.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Call, which is exactly what I did with Barnaby.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
And it works so well. Some of the birds, even
even African grays, have had a background. Where the African
gray I have was actually they were.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
Scared of him, so they kept him in a room
and didn't take him out, and they didn't want their
dogs to bother him. So he was actually closed in
a room bigger than a closet, but it didn't have
any windows, and he had no contact with people, and
so he picked up sounds and was actually he's he
(32:34):
says a few words, but basically he's a joy because
he's learned to whistle and hum and click and all that.
But he's not he's an African gray. He's not so
prolific with words. So we always need to consider that
the individual and their learning history may influence behavior. And
(32:58):
it's not that he can't learn words, if I made
that a priority. But I really enjoy the sounds he makes,
and so I will repeat back the sounds and play
bird sounds for him or take them outside and it's
a joy to hear him happily vocalizing, right, but not talking,
(33:20):
that's his choice.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, when I had Chester, so Chester didn't scream a lot, thankfully,
But it was funny because the dynamic between he and
Barnaby so Chester was just if anybody has had ring next,
they're just so comical, and he would do all these
(33:45):
funny things that you couldn't help but laugh at. The
problem was when he was doing it, it was kind
of egging Barnaby on to then start screaming. So part
of my strategy had to be I have to make
make sure that Chester is so busy that he's not
going to be thinking about how do I tease Barnaby?
(34:07):
So you know Chester, they're also voracious tours and so
you know, making sure Chester had a ton of stuff
that he could go through and chew and do things
and work through really created harmony in my house. So
it wasn't a part of my strategy there was. It
(34:27):
wasn't just about Barnaby. It was also about Chester. You know,
anytime you've got dynamics between living beings, there's that dynamic.
But making sure, definitely that they've got stuff to do.
Numerous clients that I've had about screaming issues, a lot
of it has so much gone out of the way,
(34:49):
gone away when we've just added so much enrichment to
the bird that the bird no longer has as much
need or desire to need to do those contact calls
because he's so busy with other things. And so that
has really been wonderful, you know, happens a lot. And
(35:11):
then there was another one we were working on and
that worked really well. But one problem she had was
when she'd go into the laundry room and she'd turn
on the washing machine, that was a trigger for her
bird to start screaming. So before she went strategically she
would give him stuff to do before she would go
(35:35):
in there to do the dryer, and then she was
you know, she could do it, come out he was
still busy with things. She'd give him a little bit
more and then that tended to solve her problem.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Mean, you know, there's just so many different ways. As
you said, it's about, you know, what can we do
to arrange things so that there practicing it last, and
then what skills can we teach them that they can
do instead. And you know, enrichment, and no matter whether
we're talking about dogs or cats or birds, it's so
(36:12):
important when it comes to to behavior issues and behavior.
Speaker 5 (36:18):
And enrichment also helps with If my birds start chewing
on some wood in my house, I've taught them no, no,
not as a punitive, but no as information. No, that's mine,
this is yours, and I hand them something that they
(36:38):
are allowed to chew.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
So we always want.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
To fulfill their needs, but we can do it in
a way that works for us as well. Right, one
of the enrichment things that I like is to give
the bird a bell. It has to be a bell
that you're going to that is not going to be
super annoying. Most of all of my birds that I
(37:03):
have came to me because they were screaming and biting
and Copper my son, Sunsenda Sunday.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Kanyer was screaming is shrill all the time.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
And what I taught him he would ring a bell
and I would give him lots of attention. Again, i
would stop what I'm doing and make him the focus.
I would stop what I'm doing when he rang the bell.
And so now instead of screaming. He will go and
ring this bell, and it's changed our lives. I don't
(37:39):
mind the bell being rung, but the screaming can drive
you nuts.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Yea.
Speaker 5 (37:45):
Again, you can't react to the screaming, but you do
give a lot of attention to the other things that
they're doing, and you could change behaviors.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
So well.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
You can also manage the behavior, as you said, giving
them something before you leave or before something you have
an important phone call. I give my birds pellets, and
it's a complete diet. So it's wonderful that they don't
(38:18):
pick out certain peanuts and sunflower seeds and then safflower
seeds and leave the rest of the food. So I
give them pellets, which has a nutritious formula for every bite.
And not everybody uses pellets, but I do. And so
all the fresh foods I save for when I'm going
(38:42):
to be having a phone call or I'm just about
to leave, I'll give them their fresh foods. And that
not only is that a signal that has that become
a signal a queue that they're going to be on
their own for a little while, whether I'm there or not,
but it also gives them something to do and they
(39:04):
look forward to the times when I'm not around because
that's when.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
They get their fresh foods.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
And I also don't give them nuts and treats unless
they're being quiet or they're doing something I like. Often
they're so quiet, they're so occupied now with their toys
and stuff. I can walk around and just give them
(39:30):
treats for breathing and doing what they do all the time,
and that's fun. It doesn't have to be a trained behavior.
It's just for good behavior. There's so many times when
we think I don't want the screaming, I don't want
the biting, when the better way to look at that
(39:53):
is what do I do want? So I do want
them to eat their food when instead of screaming, I
do want them to ring a bell instead of screaming,
I want them to play. We don't have to have
expensive toys. We can give them a bottle cap, we
can give them a yogurt container, a piece of paper,
(40:17):
and we can also give them enrichment where we put
some food inside the paper. That might be confusing at first,
so maybe we just lay a piece of paper over
their food bowl and they have to pull it off
and then or push it off and then they can
eat their food. And then we can gradually, in approximation
(40:42):
small steps, we can teach them that the food is
in the paper, it can be on the paper. Then
we can start twisting it and give them enrichment. Stick
it around their cage and they can walk around. They
can climb around and gather their food through a fun
way of finding it and cracking it or unwrapping it.
(41:09):
Because in nature, we certainly don't find birds going to
the grocery store or having a ball set out, so
it takes a lot of their time is spent foraging
and playing, and that is something that we need to
(41:30):
reproduce so that they don't spend all their time waiting
for us and screaming together in so many different ways,
and it depends on the individual, what the individual, what
works for that individual.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
That's and appropriate.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
Yeah, and it's always future behavior, isn't.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
It It is?
Speaker 3 (41:56):
This has really been fun. You and I we could
talk for hours about all this stuff because we're so
passionate about it. But I think some of the takeaways
I guess to summarize for people. One is, you know,
you really want to look at the function of the behavior.
So we're looking at the behavior and what are you know,
(42:19):
the consequences of the behavior they do. What right to
look at what's reinforcing it, but also look at things
in the environment, things that are happening before the behavior
that are setting the motion for that behavior. Those are
called antecedents, and so that can be anything from providing
(42:40):
more enrichment for your bird with location. We've talked about
lots of different ways that you can manage things so
that you're making it less likely for your bird to
need to do these behaviors, and then you're also watching
for as far as consequent quenches go, that you're not
(43:02):
reinforcing the problem or the unwanted behavior, why you can
be teaching new skills that work for both you and
your pet. And so I think those are kind of
the big takeaways that I'm seeing from this.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Yes, and it's always the individual.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
We can give them something that we think is good
for them, but if they don't, if they're not interested
in it, then it's not useful. However, we can give
them looking at it and playing with it and touching
it attention and teach them.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
To play with it.
Speaker 5 (43:41):
Yeah, it's all up to us and how to make
our behavior work to get their behavior, which works to
get our behavior, and it becomes a conversation rather than
a demand and a monologue from us or from them.
R becomes working together, living in harmony and peace, which
(44:04):
is very possible with an alien species.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
It's so fun.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
I love it, Barb.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
Tell people how they can find you if they if
they're looking, We've got it in the show notes too,
But go ahead and share that.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
My website is Harmonyanimalbehavior dot com and that will have
a contact page. You can also find Lisa and me
and other certified parent behavior consultants through the International Association
of Animal Behavior as Consultants I double a BC, I AABC,
(44:42):
and they will have a list of all the parent
behavior consultants and you can see who works for you
or works near you. I think that actually zoom works
very well with working on behavior, actually because we don't
go into their home and so they're not distracted by
(45:04):
a new person. And also because so many of these
are giving you ideas and seeing how you can apply
them and to see that it works, and giving you
ideas if you need some new new thoughts of tweaking them.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
So Harmonyanimalbehavior dot com is me Okay, I'd love to
talk with you great.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Well, thank you so much. This is really really fun.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
I hope this is a lot of good information to
share with folks, so.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
We'll do this again sometime. Thank you have a different issue.
Speaker 6 (45:47):
Thanks, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please
consider subscribing to my podcast, come back often, and tell
your friends. If I can be of any help to
you and your pet, Please reach out to me via
my website www dot somuchpotential dot com and for a
(46:11):
lot more information, fun and videos, please follow me so
Much Potential on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
See you soon.
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