My name is Stephanie, and I live all the way over the Atlantic, in Sweden; the home of IKEA and Swedish meatballs!

I’m really exited about the opportunity of writing here on the BirdTricks blog, in the company of some really great bird trainers at that. I think places like these where you can learn from each other and exchange experiences no matter where you are in the world are super important, so I’m really excited about being a part of that.

Animals have been my biggest passion for as long as I can remember. When I was 5, my aunt asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. “I want to be a zoologist”, I answered. (Literally! I didn’t even think you knew what that meant at five years of age, but apparently I did.) My passion for birds really took off when I was about 7 years old and got my first two parakeets from a friend of my mom’s who couldn’t keep them. They weren’t that tame when I got them, but they grew on me very quickly and it all went down hill from there, so to speak. In addition to birds, I’ve always shared my living space with other critters as well.

 

These include dogs, rats, crabs, frogs, hissing cockroaches, rabbits, the numerous wild animals I brought home and cared for until they could be taken in by wild life rehabs, etc.  My poor mom never really knew what I’d bring home next!

 

 

My current career path started when I was in “gymnasiet”, which I suppose is sort of the Swedish equivalent to upper high school. I studied zoo-keeping for three years at a school here in Stockholm which is essentially a zoo in itself, with close to one thousand animals of about a hundred different species including lots of parrots like macaws, greater vasas, cockatoos, greys and amazon parrots. The school is also home to a lot of other neat birds like a pair of ravens, golden pheasants, doves, starlings, ducks, finches, and of course a lot of  interesting mammals, reptiles, amphibians… You get the idea.
So in addition to history and maths, we got to learn about ethology (animal behavior), animal nutrition, basic veterinary medicine, and how to practically do zookeeper stuff like planning (and cleaning, lots and lots of cleaning…) enclosures, plan and implement enrichment programs, educate visitors, and lot’s of other things you need to know if you’re going to work with animals.
If you want to check it out, the school has a blog where you can look at pictures (and maybe use Google translate if you want to know what’s going on?) right here: http://djurhusbloggen.wordpress.com/.

 

 

Even before I started school I was one of those kids that was always out in the woods looking at animals, and when I wasn’t doing that or spending time taking care of my own ones; I had my nose deeply buried in books. When it comes to working with animals, and especially when it comes to training and enrichment, I find that experience gets you a long way, but you will never be able to make the most of that experience without the proper knowledge to interpret it with.
I love knowledge, and I’m constantly trying to keep myself  educated and up to date by taking classes on everything from animal training to wildlife rehabilitation, always reading up on the latest studies on enrichment and animal behavior, and just generally being out there doing my thing as much as I can, constantly learning and gaining new experiences.

 

 

Right now, a few years after I finished “zoo-keeper school”, I’ve begun teaching enrichment and training, mostly to pet shop staff and local bird clubs. I’m also helping people that are having trouble with their own parrots.
And, in just a few months, I’ll finally begin to study biology at the University of Stockholm, which means I’m well on my way to becoming a zoologist/ethologist, just like I said I would be when I was a kid! After that, who knows what I’ll be doing? It will involve animals in one way or another, at least that’s for sure.
In addition to that, I’m also working on a bunch of non-profit projects to raise money for the World Parrots Trust; a really great organization that helps parrots both in the wild and captivity.

 

 

Of course, I also have birds of my own!  I share my life with an adopted Senegal parrot named Molly, age unknown though we know she’s older than ten, and a bit bald for some reason but perfectly healthy. I also have a 6 month old Jardines parrot named Nova.
We’ll be having another feathered addition soon, but I won’t jinx that by talking about it just yet.
Until just a few weeks ago I also had another little Senegal called Hagos.  Sadly, he had to be put to sleep due to illness after having been with me for a little over ten years.  Still miss him like crazy every day.

 

 

Lastly, since there’s already a lot of great trainers writing here, the main focus of my posts will be on the different aspects of environmental enrichment. Hopefully I will be able to share some valuable knowledge with you guys, and learn from you as well!
In many ways, keeping parrots in Sweden is a bit different from keeping parrots in America, which I think will make this even more interesting. That’s one thing I love about working with both people and non-human animals; you never stop learning and it never gets boring. What more can you ask for?

 

 

Also, I would just like to point out that since I’m Swedish and English is my second language, it is perfectly okay to point and laugh when I get the language part wrong.
Looking forward to this!

 

When you go to the BirdTricks Facebook page you see a whole lotta cute going on! Everyone posts adorable pictures of their birds and shares stories of their antics and accomplishments. It’s hard to not have a big grin on your face as you roam from post to post.

Then there’s BirdTrick’s YouTube where the Womach’s upload their videos of their own birds. Two big favorites are Bandit and Bondi, their rosebrested cockatoos, or galahs, as they are called in some parts of the world.

Bandit is a video star with his high energy personality and his sweet voice – blowing kisses and hiding under the sofa pillows. Bondi is not as much one to take advantage of photo ops, but she is one of the sweetest natured birds I have ever met. In person, she will charm you right into submission. People tend to get starry-eyed in her presence.

It could be said that both are ambassadors for their species as the Womachs use them to demonstrate how wonderful life with your birds could and should be. I worry, though, how many people have felt inspired to search out a breeder to get their own Bandit or Bondi to love.

I worry because I know that when they find one, they will not get Bandit or Bondi. The bird they bring home will have its own personality, its own preferences and its own quirks. It may talk, or it may not. It will be who it is, no matter how much you try to mold it into what you are looking for in a bird. This is true of ALL species.

Bandit and Bondi’s personalities are the culmination of two factors: 1) they are individuals (first and foremost), and 2) they are shaped by the Womach’s great work with them, the environment they provide and their lifestyle.

I firmly believe that you get out of a bird what you put into it. The more time and effort you expend on your bird, the more confidently it will interact with you and the brighter it’s natural personality will shine through. You must remember, though, that YOUR bird may be shy and reserved and less interactive by nature and not outgoing like Bandit or a people loving bird like Bondi. It will be exactly who it is – nothing more, nothing less.

It is true that we can look to the textbooks for information on what behaviors are typical for the species of bird we are considering bringing into our homes. We absolutely SHOULD do that. However, while behavioral propensities can be projected to a degree, personalities cannot. Don’t have the unfair expectation that your baby senegal will grow up to be like your friend’s senegal. It can lead to disappointment and cause problems in the relationship. Your bird can ony be what it is and it is unreasonable for us to expect anything more.

 

Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Foraging for a nutriberry: Galah “Bandit”

Foraging seems like a wild and time consuming idea for a lot of people, but it’s not and it is WORTH IT for your bird to build confidence. I can’t even explain how important it is for your bird not to be sitting around all day bored out of its mind. Boredom causes a huge percent of the behavior problems out there in birds today such as plucking, aggression and biting, etc…

So let’s talk about foraging for beginners, how to do it and what you need to get started today with your bird, I promise it’s EASY!

Photo by www.beadjam.com

Easy Foraging Tip #1: Non-treated pieces of wood, wooden beads, etc. (non-toxic)

Simply start your bird’s first day of foraging by placing these pieces of wood or wooden beads (or both) inside your bird’s food dish along with its pellets. The first day add a few, the next day add some more and then more and more until your bird has to go from eating around the wooden pieces to picking out the pieces in order to get to what he wants to eat.

Some birds will start playing with the pieces, or begin destroying them into small pieces which is great. That’s what you want. Make your bird work harder and harder as he has more and more beads and pieces to pull out of the dish to get to the pellets he wants to eat. Some birds may avoid them and eat around them and that’s okay too.

Photo by www.richwallerart.com

Easy Foraging Tip #2: Plain white paper.

You can either fold the paper like shown above or crumble little pieces up like this:

Have them be the same size as the wooden beads and add them into the dish as well. This will get your bird picking something up and tossing it out or shredding the paper that’s in the way of his food. You can put all different sized pieces in there and even wrap some pellets up in some of the pieces for him to see and discover.

Easy Foraging Tip #3: More white paper.

This time you’re using sheets of white paper. Take the sheet and lay it over your bird’s food dish half way or 1/4 of the way so your bird can still mostly see the food inside. By either mother nature or your bird, your bird will move the paper off of it. Do this for a few days until you can cover the bowl completely and your bird moves the paper off of its bowl to eat.

You should still have all the wooden beads and pieces of small paper inside the dish.

Easy Foraging Tip #4: Using more white paper… and a rubber band…

Place the white paper over the food bowl and this time poke a hole in the center of the paper and wrap it around the food dish so it holds a bit tightly but don’t secure it with anything.

Once your bird is examining it curiously and moving it off the food dish, then secure the paper down with a rubber band and the hole poked in the middle to try to get your bird to start from the hole and break open the rest of the paper to get to its food inside.

Easy Foraging Tip #5: Now do a little less with what ya got.

Now do the same thing with no poked hole. Just secure the paper around the food dish and don’t poke a hole, leave that part up to your bird.

Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Foraging: Galah “Bandit”

These tips will get you started on very basic and super simple ways to get your bird to start knowing about what foraging is all about in easy steps for both of you. Once your bird has this mastered, secure down more layers of paper to make it thicker and harder for your bird to break through.

If you’re more of a video type of person, I made this pretty awesomely unorganized video demonstrating it all for you:

Have fun and get creative, the possibilities with foraging are endless!

As I was driving the other day, I was thinking about the huge contribution that Irene Pepperberg and the amazing Alex made to our knowledge of avian cognition. Without she and Alex, and our acceptance of her findings, I wonder if the avian community would be using terms like “enrichment” today.
Life was uncertain for Dr. Pepperberg. She became outcast among her peers. Grants to fund her work were hard to come by and it must have seemed to her that her career was always on the verge of collapse. We owe her a debt of gratitude for her perseverence.
We, who spend our lives with birds, were amazed with Alex’s feats, but I doubt that many of us were very surprised. We routinely watch our birds doing things that defied the scientific world’s former claims. Birds are now ranked alongside small primates in their demonstration of intelligence – a position they have earned. HA!

I wonder where humans went wrong that we saw fit to coin terms like “bird brain” or “dumb animal”. Somewhere we lost sight of the fact that WE are classified first as “mammalian” and as “human” second. We have gotten the idea into our head that because we evolved to develop “big brains” that we are better than the rest of the creatures that inhabit this world.
The fact is, our big brains have made us vulnerable in many ways. Our brain, only 2% of our body weight, uses 20% of our total energy intake, increasing need in that area. Our infants are unusually helpless and remain dependent for a very long time.
If WE are taken out of our “natural” environment and forced to live in the extreme conditions faced by most of our wildlife; foraging for food and determining what is safe and most nutritious to eat, building shelter from the elements, etc., most of us would be dead within a week. When a animal is placed in our environment, they adapt to survive.

Yes, our big brains have invented some amazing technlogy (some of which we are now dependent on). And the human life expectancy has increased through the advancement of the sciences. But to say that we have evolved as “superior” is just wrong.
Evoution means “change”, not “improvement”. Each species on this planet has adapted over millions of years to become exactly what it needs to be to survive in a changing world environment. All life is perfect, just as it is. And as to the intelligence of these “lower” species, we are not smart enough to judge it with any certainty and are continually surprised to find how little we know.

In my early days of bird ownership, pre-internet, doing right by my birds was a lot of guess work. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I came upon learning that an all seed diet, then the norm, was inadequate. I discovered this in two ways: 1) by going to the library and studying the diet of my species wild counterparts, and 2) observing them descending on the vegetables on my plate at dinnertime. That was a hard to miss clue.

I didn’t exactly struggle with bird care – I intuitively knew that my birds needed more than what was recommended by the “experts”. I made do with the few bird toys that were available in pet stores and constructed many from household items made of paper, cardboard and wood – I observed what they “got into”. I have very few books that don’t have chewed-on pages – so, obviously, paper is a cockatiel delicasy. Observation is the most effective learning tool we have.

Years later, a friend turned me on to the bird forums. I was SO excited. I found a place where I could share stories with fellow bird owners who wouldn’t cringe when I went on about my life with the birds and would laugh when I posted pictures of the sweet potato stuck to my living room wall. I learned untold amounts about different, sometimes easier, ways to acheive what I was trying to accomplish. There were products, toys, gizmos out there that I was completely unaware of.

But after a while, I started to feel inadequate. I felt like my birds were missing out because I didn’t have all the fancy bird things that my new friends had. I started spending money, lots of it. I wanted my birds to have the best of everything. I spent hours filling my shopping cart at online bird stores. I dropped a fortune on a playstand that took up half the living room.

You know what I disovered? My bird were no happier or healthier than they were before having all the bells and whistles. I had been doing things just right all along and I soon returned to my former ways even if they were a bit old-school. They worked, and my birds were thriving. Bub-bye Poop Off, hello again vinegar and water, my old friend. The rarely used Cadillac of a playstand found a new home with a lady with several macaws.

In the end, it isn’t about what you don’t have, it’s about how well you make use of what you DO have. I would rather spend my money on excellent food and great toys than on some device that trains me to be lazy. Yes, for years, I had many chair backs fall victim to my birds’ beaks in lieu of a playstand, but isn’t that part of the charm of life with parrots? Okay, maybe not, The point is that we don’t have to go broke because we have birds.

If your bird has a great diet, is fulfilled and enriched, and you have training abilities that ensure a happy co-existance with its human flock, I say you have everything that you need. If someone invents a self-cleaning cage, however, I will surely sell my car to get one.

There are so many aspects to the training experience for both the trainer and the parrot. It’s about bond building and mutual trust. It’s wonderful enrichment for a caged bird. It’s about cooperation. Mostly, though, it’s about communication. It provides a common language through which a human and a parrot can begin to converse and understand one another. It is exciting and deeply rewarding for everyone.

That I would suggest that someone NOT train their bird is troubling to me, especially when it is such a positive thing. But there are circumstances when the time is not right – more troubling is the idea of someone failing so miserably at training that they will hesitate to ever pick up the target training stick again, or that a bird would be so put off by the experience that is unreceptive to the experience in future attempts. When all the proper elements are in place, it is difficult to fail.

The following are four scenarios that will tell you that you are not in the right place to consider training. Instead of attempting a start knowing that there are hurdles blocking your path to success, place your efforts today on correcting those problems for when you DO begin:

 

YOUR BIRD IS ON A SEEDED DIET: The reward your bird receives for performing a requested task is crucial to successful training. Most birds are motivated by a food reward. The bird performs to your approval, you click, and it receives a favorite treat.
It just so happens that seed is a preferred food for most birds. If your bird receives seed regularly and that is its expectaion, the motivation to “earn” treats is greatly diminished and the training process falls apart. Please read this article on how to convert from a seeded diet.

YOUR BIRD IS NOT IN GOOD HEALTH: This is particularly true of birds on a seeded diet. They often suffer from serious vitamin deficiencies without their owner’s awareness that can affect their general mood and willingness to train. Birds with known illnesses might be difficult to train as they are sometimes unable to complete tasks because of ill health.

Additionally, a bird whose mood is altered by surges of seasonal hormones is not a good candidate for training. They can be temperamental and aggressive during this time and it serves everyone to wait until the breeding season passes.
The plan is to always set your bird up for success and an ill or moody bird might not succeed. It would be a frustrating experince for you both.

NOTE: This does not apply to birds that are handicapped but are in otherwise good health. You would simply tailor your training expectations so that they don’t exceed physical limitations.

YOU ARE UNWILLING TO USE FOOD MANAGEMENT: As stated above, birds are food motivated. Food management is simply an adaptation of your feeding schedule that ensures your bird is hungry enough to to be willing to work for food during a training session. When done properly, hunger is not excessive (overly hungry birds do not train well) and there is the perfect window of opportunity for you to train your bird and for your bird to get a full tummy. Win/win.

YOU ARE NOT MOTIVATED OR IN THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND: Sometimes we are our own biggest obstacle in training. There are times when we are not at our best, perhaps grouchy and impatient. Our birds are highly receptive to our emotions and will surely recognize that you are feeling aggitated or pressed for time. Their reaction to this will be skittishness and it will interfere with their ability to focus on the task at hand.

If you are in the midst of a stressful time in your life and are unable to decompress before a training session, it is better not to train at all. (That said, some people find that disconnecting from life and concentrating on their bird is the ideal release from daily pressures.)

Each of these scenarios have one thing in common: they all lead to potential failure in training. I have included links in each section to offer further explanation and guidance on how to move past these road blocks. Please take the time to read them so that you can begin training with all the tools you need to succeed.