Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain

by Abbott, Georgi

  “Good bird. Bad bird. Good bird. Bad bird. Do you think I really care? If being a bad bird means I get to chew up your eyeglasses, which do you think I really care about? Besides, once I hand them back to you, you'll tell me 'Good bird'. So it all works out in the end.”

  “Mom makes me toys, I keep taking them apart, mom keeps putting them back together. That's teamwork. And it's great enrichment for moms so they don't get bored and cranky.”

  “"Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching." That speaks volumes to me. If that's the case, mom is the best teacher in the world!”

  “As most of you know, my cousin is Murray the Magician (as seen on America's Got Talent). I'm going to get him to teach me how to saw a man in half. It's my kind of thing eh? But he probably won't let me practice on a real live man - he'll probably start me on a little boy.”

  “Mom took me on a snack safari this morning. She hides my little bowl of pine nuts and challenges me to find them. I sit on her hand and tell her where to go by leaning in different directions. It was tough this morning but I finally found them in the fridge and yelled "THERE'S the snacks!" My reward is getting... to eat as many as I want. My belly's gonna burst!”

  We haven’t spend a lot of time training Pickles, other than teaching him good behavior but there have been a few things along the way.

  In my last book, I explained how we potty-trained Pickles and this came in handy. When he’s on his playstand or cage, he doesn’t always go to designated pooping areas but that’s not what’s important to us. When he’s with us, he tells us he has to poop so we don’t get pooped on and neither does the furniture. He poops on demand before being asked to step up so we always know he won’t have to poop right away.

  There was the one time though, when I asked him to poop before I had him step up, that he said “YOU poop” and we had a bit of an argument. I told him he wasn’t stepping up until he pooped and he said “NO”. I figured he didn’t need to poop, maybe he’d already gone, and so I got him to step up.

  Half way through our walk around the house, he started shaking his butt and shouting “No, no, no, no, no!” I started waving my hand in the air, the hand he was perched on, to distract him and when my hand came too close to the chains on a hanging lamp, he took the opportunity to latch on to them and refused to let go.

  These chains loop between two hanging lamps in the bedroom and just a couple of inches from the wall. The minute Pickles was upright on them, he shot a nice sloppy poop – straight on to the wall. “Gotta poop!” he said. “Kinda late, wouldn’t ya say Pickles? Look what you’ve done!” I said as I watched his big dump slithering down the wall.

  I went to get a Kleenex to wipe it up but by the time I returned, Neeka had almost finished the job and Pickles was hanging his head watching the clean-up saying “Good BOY! Wanna cookie?” Neeka looked up for his reward but puke was almost what he got for his efforts because I was standing there gagging. This had been an exceptionally large bundle of slimy bird poop and my stomach was churning. I cleaned up the rest of the poop on the wall but it left a clean streak on a somewhat dirty wall so I ended up washing the whole damn thing. Oh well, it was scheduled for painting the next week anyway.

  We train Pickles to do little things, like beaking the last book I wrote as Pickles’ signature when people buy the book direct from me. This was something people started requesting on Face Book and at first I had to delay shipping until I could get him to do it. Then, sometimes he’d refuse but even worse, he would get mad and grab the book with both his talon and his beak and refuse to let go. He’s ruined a few books by grabbing the cover and puncturing it.

  Neil and I made a plan. One of us would hold the book up to him and the other held his bowl of pine nuts, just out of reach. “Beak the book for a snack” we’d tell him and the minute he grabbed the signature page with his beak, the bowl of snacks was presented to him, which made him let go. Now he wants to beak any kind of book we have in our hands and is disappointed if it’s not ‘his’ book and beakable.

  We may not train him to do tricks or identify items or count to 10 but every day there is some sort of training in progress. The training never stops when it comes to his behavior as life is always changing and new situations tend to crop up daily.

  We had to train Pickles to stay aloft when we had the flyshop as it was dangerous to have him walking around when we had customers. We’ve kind of slacked off with that in recent months because now it’s not so urgent that he stays off the floor, and it’s cute to watch. But back then, it was crucial and we had to stop Pickles as he was climbing down from his perches at every opportunity.

  We were at a loss with training him so I signed up with PBAS (Parrot Behavior Analysis Solutions) for some much needed help on PR (Positive Reinforcement). I highly recommend PBAS for anyone experiencing behavioral problems with their birds. Just do a Google search on “PBAS, parrots” and you’ll find a Yahoo Group page to sign up for on-line help.

  I’m going to copy/paste some information about Dr. Susan Friedman and her behavior classes (with her permission, of course) …

  [Beginning of quotes] “Dr. Susan Friedman is a psychology professor at Utah State University who has pioneered the application of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to captive and companion animals. ABA, with its roots in human learning, offers a scientifically sound teaching technology and ethical standard that can improve the lives of all learners. Students from 22 different countries have participated in Susan's online courses, Living and Learning with Animals for Professionals and Living and Learning with Parrots for Caregivers. She has written chapters on learning and behavior for three veterinary texts (Behavior of Exotic Pets, Clinical Avian Medicine, and Manual of Parrot Behavior), and is a frequent contributor to popular magazines. Her articles appear around the world in ten languages. Susan has presented seminars for a wide variety of professional organizations around the world such as the Association of Avian Veterinarians, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, Moorpark College Exotic Animal Training and Management program, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She has been nominated for the Media Award given by the International Association of Behavior Analysis for her efforts to disseminate to pet owners, veterinarians, animal trainers and zookeepers the essential tools they need to empower and enrich the lives of the animals in their care.

  About the course: Our goal is to provide a practicum to Susan Friedman’s LLP students and anyone else who is interested in improving their Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) skills to prevent and solve behavior problems with their companion parrots.

  Our emphasis is identifying the observable functional relations between behavior and the environment, and positive-first teaching solutions.

  There are only two steadfast rules:

  To change the behavior of your parrot you must change your behavior first;

  Positive-first teaching solutions are applied to each other as well as our birds.

  Please don’t hesitate to ask questions. We are a work in process. Mistakes are our best teaching-learning opportunities. Make several every day.

  The three fundamental tenets of the scientific analysis of behavior are as follows:

  Behavior has function.

  Future behavior is related to past consequences.

  Thoughtful antecedent arrangement of the environment enables us to facilitate and maintain successful behaviors.

  The ABC’s of Behavior

  S.G. Friedman, Ph.D., Utah State University

  Published in Original Flying Machine, Issue 9: Nov-Dec, 2001.

  Originally Presented at the Grey Poopon Challenge Conference, Dec. 1000

  Background

  I once had a psychology professor who started every class shaking his head chanting, “Behavior is nothing if not complex.” Truer words were never spoken, and when it comes to the complex behavior of our companion parrots, we definitely have our hands full. With the potential for feather plucking, picking, shredding, and cl
ipping … incessant screaming, screeching, calling and shrieking … not to mention biting, nipping, gnawing and clawing – I’m never quite sure who to turn to for help, Dr. Kinner or Dr. Seuss! Reducing problem behaviors seems especially complicated. I have this image in mind of the desk toy with silver balls hanging from strings attached to a wooden frame. The moment you pull back one of the balls and release it, the others are set in motion and continue clicking against one another for a long time before they finally come to rest. Like this toy, behavior sets in motion a cascade of perpetual interactions so that analyzing any one behavior in isolation is essentially meaningless. Behavior is part of an endless reciprocal interaction among an individual’s genetics, behavioral and the environmental context in which the behavior is performed.

  In the face of such complexity, no wonder we all have moments where we feel overwhelmed and empty-handed when working with our parrots. To improve our ability to understand and influence our parrots’ behavior, we need a systematic approach which provides an organized framework and simplifies the seeming complexity that threatens to obscure our view.

  As Simple as ABC

  One such approach to understanding specific behaviors is known as ABC analysis. The letters stand for the three elements of a simplified behavioral “equation” which includes the antecedent, behavior, and consequences. With this strategy, we seed to identify through careful observation the events and conditions that occur before the target behavior – antecedent, as well as identifying the results that follow the behavior – consequences. This simple analysis, when paired with keen observation skills and creative problem-solving, will help us clarify the way in which the basic components of behavior are interrelated. It is this clarity that leads us to important insights and teaching strategies.

  How To

  There are six steps to analyzing the ABC’s: (1) describe the target behavior in clear, observable terms; (2) describe the antecedent events that occur and conditions that exist immediately before the behavior happens; (3) describe the consequences that immediately follow the behavior; (4) examine the antecedents, the behavior and the consequence in sequence; (5) devise new antecedents and/or consequences to teach new behaviors or change existing ones; (6) evaluate the outcome.

  Let’s look at one example: Veda, my otherwise charming Alexandrine Parakeet, Psittacula eupatria, bites fast and forcefully when I ask her to step onto my hand from inside her cage. Seeing the problem in isolation and decked-out in its full complexity, we might hypothesize that she is aggressive, territorial, hormonal, defensive, or dominating. Alternatively, she could be recalcitrant, stubborn, uncooperative or simply a stinker who is also spoiled rotten! Any one, or all, of these hypotheses might be accurate, but in terms of problem-solving, they serve only to label the behavior, not solve it. And, since they do not describe observable behaviors per se, one can never really be sure about the accuracy of the label.

  The ABC Analysis

  What follows is my analysis of Veda’s biting behavior using the ABC approach:

  First, the background and setting: When asked to step onto my hand from inside her cage, Veda often, but not always, bites me! She does not bite under any other circumstance or in any other situation. She does it any time of the day and with all her family members. However, once out of her cage, Veda steps up and down without hesitation, from all locations, including the top of her cage. For three or four hours each day, Veda plays happily on her tree perch in the family room, enjoys cuddles, and generally relaxes by preening, playing with toys and nibbling. She is by all other measures an outstanding companion bird.

  Step 1: Describe the behavior in observable terms.

  Veda widens her eyes, tightens her grip on her perch, pulls her body back and waits in this position for a second or two. If I don’t move my hand she bites it hard.

  Step 2: Describe the antecedents.

  Any time I walk up to Veda’s cage, I greet her to let her know I’m there. I open her cage door, slowly put my hand in front of her and say, “Step up, Veda.”

  Step 3: Describe the consequences.

  I remove my bitten hand (hurt and annoyed), and Veda stays in her cage. Case, or should I say door, closed.

  Sep 4: Examine the antecedents, the behavior, and the consequences in sequence.

  Any time I walk up to Veda’s cage, I greet her to let her know I’m there; Veda widens her eyes, tightens her grip on her perch, pulls her body back and waits in this position for a second or two. If I don’t move my hand, she bites it hard. I remove my bitten hand (hurt and annoyed), and Veda stays in her cage.

  Let’s stop her for a minute to examine the insights that resulted from this analysis, as it helped me clarify several important things. First, far from being a biter or having a biting problem in any chronic or generalized sense, I learned that Veda displays a very specific set of responses, in a specific location with a different antecedent than I had originally assumed. Before analyzing the ABC’s of Veda’s biting heavier, I had not realized that she tenses her body, pulls away from her perch and widens her eyes in a valiant attempt to warn me to withdraw. How remarkable!

  In this light, it becomes so clear that the critical antecedent to her biting is not my putting my hand in her cage; it’s ignoring her non-aggressive communication, requesting me to remove it. Only when I ignore her communication and persist does she resort to biting. So, who set the silver balls in motion this time, Veda or me?

  It is also evident that by withdrawing my hand and leaving her in her cage, I was in fact reinforcing the biting. With each of these interactions, I was unwittingly, but explicitly, teaching Veda that biting is an effective and necessary way to get my handout of her cage; apparently so, since warning me non-aggressively did not work. I’m sure she would say it was nothing personal but that I was quite … dense! Can’t you jus hear her explaining this to our baby cockatoo? “Listen up, baby. No matter how kind and gentle you want to be, these humans respond to one thing and one thing only, aggression. Why, it’s a jungle out there!”

  Step 5: Devise new antecedents and/or consequences.

  After careful consideration of my options, in this case I chose o change the antecedents to decrease Veda’s biting. First, I no longer say, “Step up!” when I want her to come out of her cage. Instead I ask her, “Wanna step up?” If she displays the warning behaviors, I take that as an unqualified “No, but thanks for asking!” and I calmly remove my hand from her cage. I then leave her cage door open, allowing her to exit how and when she chooses. As an additional strategy, I trained her to step onto a perching stick for those rare times when staying in her cage is not an option. We practice stepping onto the stick a few times a week, for which she earns an avalanche of praise and kisses.

  Step 6: Evaluating the outcome.

  Changing the antecedents to decrease Veda’s biting has been a huge success. Of course it is not surprising that she no longer bites me – by heeding her warnings, I don’t give her the opportunity, or the reason, to do so. I continue to present my hand to her and ask if she wants to step up. If she tenses her stance, pulls away and/or widens her eyes I remove my hand and go on to other things (you know, like cleaning cages and changing water bowls, uh-huh)

  What has been very unexpected is that after a few moths of letting her decide how to come out of her cage, she now rarely declines my offer to take her out on my hand, choosing instead to step up nicely and hitch a ride! Who knows … maybe the freedom of choice was important to her or she benefited from more control over her own destiny; perhaps her trust level increased when I lowered my apparent dominance. These are all very interesting possibilities.

  Closing Thoughts

  In my opinion, we generally focus on consequences to influence behavior. This is especially true of negative behaviors that we want to decrease or eliminate. In this way, we limit ourselves to rewarding our punishing more or less. One of the exciting benefits of this simple analysis strategy is that it fosters careful consideration of the antece
dents, that is, the things we do to promote … or provoke … behavior. Antecedents should be brilliantly arranged to ensue that the appropriate behavior is facilitated. Doing so makes selecting consequences easy – when the appropriate behavior is facilitated. Doing so makes selecting consequences easy – when the behaviors are all acceptable, the consequences are all positive! I truly believe (and my experience working with children bears this out) behind every negative behavior is a poorly arranged antecedent.

  Some of you may have other insights to add to my analysis or other solutions to suggest. There is certainly more than one way to productively analyze a behavior and more than one useful solution to be devised. The right analysis and solution is the one that produces the desired outcome, fits the style in which you and your bird are comfortable interacting and improves your relationship with your bird. With Veda, all three criteria were met. In out reaching, we are limited only by our powers of observation, our creativity and our resolve to treat our parrots humanely and with compassion.

  Of course, behavior is not always as linear as it appears when analyzing the ABC’s; but I think the more important insight is that none of us, including our remarkable parrots, behaves in isolation from the events around us. Although analyzing behavior can sometimes be like walking into the hall of mirrors at an amusement park, other times behavior is very straightforward. It is a those times that a simplified approach to analyzing behavior is just what we need to increase our understanding and develop better teaching strategies. I have found analyzing the ABC’s of parrot behavior to be very useful for clarifying the related components of many, many different types of behavior. Once these relationships are clear, the path to creative, positive solutions and teaching plans become more clear as well. I hope you will try analyzing the ABC’s and find doing so a helpful addition to your parrot mentor’s toolbox.” [End of quotes]

  Now, that’s just one example for one specific behavior but by learning and practicing the ABC’s it can be applied to any behavior. This became second nature for me for a very long time but I have to admit, I sort of got away from it recently – I mean, I still used the basic principal but I had stopped using the ABC’s in my head. Rereading the above has reinforced my own thought patterns when dealing with Pickles and I’m excited about getting back to it.