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!

For those of you who don’t know me yet, my name is Mel Vincent and I live in Melbourne, Australia. I’m a wildlife rescuer, vet student and animal trainer. I share my life with 8 FIDs (feathered children), a dog and cat.

I have been involved in wild animal rescue for as long as I can remember. As a child, I often had my latest rescue with me at school in order to keep up with orphaned animal feeding times.My parents tried very hard to curb my behaviour and turn me into a ‘real lady’ but gave up after an incident where I filled my brand new sewing basket with butterflies and spiders (I wanted to see how their mouthparts worked). Mum screamed when she found them. Oops. Fortunately for me, my father proved very handy at building enclosures to keep whatever animal I was caring for out of my sewing basket. Mum was eventually pacified, especially when I took to knitting (with the aid of a feathered friend). Mind you, I had to break my hip before she could get me to sit still for long enough!

Mel at 13, with a pet budgie

When I left school, I jumped in to a university degree where I studied professional writing, psychology and history. I moved through a huge range of careers, one moment I’d be teaching ballet, the next I was working in retail management. I flicked between tutoring in English as a second language, or singing and playing in a band. I even ran my own jewelry design company. Basically I did anything that would support my ‘hobby’ of rescuing and training animals. In my spare time, I was attending every animal husbandry course I could find. I was also attending multiple animal behaviour training seminars and classes. My poor cattle dog was put through a LOT of different types of training.

Moono the red heeler at dog school

It took a natural disaster to make me realize that I may have missed my professional calling. In finding myself dealing with animal bushfire victims, I realized that people were always going to know me as someone to call to help animals in need. I felt I had a responsibility to get the qualification to better be able to deal with that. The certificates and short courses were no longer enough for me. I joined several wildlife rescue organisations and completed their training courses but still not satisfied I turned back to university.

Mel releasing a rehabilitated mother ringtail possum with her 2 babies

I am now halfway through a university degree in Animal & Veterinary Biosciences. I have become the type of nerd who enjoys reading medical journal articles as bedtime stories. The course that I’m doing can lead to being a vet, or a multitude of other animal-orientated careers. I absolutely love it. It’s amazing how much you can learn in a course like this and not just about animals. The course includes botany subjects (well let’s face it plants are what most animals eat) and a lot of human medicine too.

Examining a rescued Tawny Frogmouth

I accidentally became a bird person just before I started to seriously study animals. I say accidentally, because I didn’t choose to go out and buy a bird. I had grown up with them, but I hadn’t ever really appreciated them. My galah, Morgy, had her own ideas about my potential and decided to move in one day. She literally ran into my garage and bit anyone who tried to remove her. She had a leg band that told me she wasn’t wild and she was screaming “Hello Cocky” as if it was the world’s biggest insult. I spent over a year looking for her owner without success. If they had been looking for her – I would have found them. I have no doubt she was abandoned. I suspect this may have been due to her enjoyment in taking chunks off the nearest human. Apparently the more blood she drew, the happier she was.

Morgy the Eastern Galah vocally refusing to interact

So I found myself on the internet, somewhat cynically listening to Chet’s spiel about his cure for a biting bird. It was all very well for him to say it worked, but I had the queen of the vampire birds living with me. It’s not like I was uninformed on animal training. I’d attended enough courses. I’d even taught my dog to skateboard. Ok, I was still struggling to convince my cat that my bed is not the place to leave live snails – but overall I wasn’t bad at animal training.
Fortunately for me, Chet proved me wrong. With the aid of the birdtricks course, the queen of the vampire birds became a valued household member. Ok, she still seems to find it amusing to throw things on the ground in front of my mother (who is a neat freak), but the change in Morgy is quite amazing.
Before I really knew what hit me, I had become a bird person and the willing slave to a whole flock of birds. I enrolled in every bird course/subject I could find. I even fly interstate to parrot seminars. I’ve found myself working with my birds whenever I’m not studying them. Thanks to the trick training course, Morgy and her sidekick Merlin even go out to schools and events with me, to help train kids on what to do if they find injured wildlife and how to look after parrots. They have a whole routine worked out where they inform the children that they’re smarter than them, proceed to make me look ridiculous and give constructive information on how much they dislike vegetables (just like the children) but are supposed to eat them. Merlin drives his point home by throwing snow peas at the kids. It is possible that I have found the only legal way to throw vegetables at small, annoying children without being charged with assault!

Teaching kids Wildlife Awareness with Merlin's help

I now have a permanent flock of 8. I live with 4 galahs, 2 rainbow lorikeets, a musk lorikeet and a male eclectus. Working in animal rescue, you can probably work out that they all have long sob stories associated with how they came to be with me permanently. They all have amazing personalities. My house is never quiet and my life is never boring. I’m quite sure if it ever becomes quiet and boring, I can rely on one or more of the FIDs to come up with sounds loud enough to convince a neighbour that I’m strangling a small child and need to urgently be reported to the police for child abuse. The complaint may not be entirely unfounded because if Pepi (my eclectus) doesn’t stop doing his best imitation of Justin Bieber (off-key), then the strangling noises may yet become more realistic. I’m not very successfully trying to convince him that two hours straight of “Baby Baby Ohhhhhh” is enough.
I look forward to sharing my blog posts with you all, because if there’s one thing I know about the guys at birdtricks – they’re contagious and attract some amazing people to the online world of parrot discussion.

My name is Heather Scott, and I am the bird trainer and presenter at the Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife and Falconry Centre, which is a small zoo in Sheffield, England. Dave clearly stated: “It’s important to mention you’re on the other side of the pond, since you guys talk funny” so there you have it!

Bonnie, Green-winged Macaw, about to land

In April 2010, I was lucky enough to land this dream job; I present the Parrot Displays which feature all the favourite tricks (bike-riding, skateboarding, basketball, talking and lots more!), along with the Aerial Antics display which includes free-flying Green-winged and Hahn’s Macaws, and birds of prey including Hawks, Falcons, Owls, a Black Kite and a Kookaburra, also not forgetting our stunning White Storks (although they can’t fly just yet, just walk and sort of skip!).

Heather with Kookie the Kookaburra, photo by Laura Martin

As well as presenting the displays, I am also responsible for training all the birds, preparing their food, cleaning their enclosures, providing enrichment, and generally looking after them.

I’m really pleased to begin writing blog articles for Birdtricks.com as I’ve found them to be an incredible resource in terms of training advice and practical information on keeping parrots happy and healthy. Also, as I’m sure many of you do, I feel like I know them quite well even though we haven’t met in person and love seeing their Facebook posts.

I guess mine is a slightly different perspective, as the parrots I train and look after are not my own (although if I could, I would take them all home!) but I do spend a great deal of time with my feathered friends and hope to share fun stories with you about them alongside the useful stuff. Training the Macaws for free-flying is my biggest achievement and I still feel really proud every time I see them soaring up high, circuiting round and round until I call them back in to land!

Bonnie and Alfie, Green-winged Macaws, ready for take off! Photo by Laura Martin

I’d like to point out that I had no previous experience at all with parrots before this so it has been a very steep learning curve for me and I’m still learning new things all the time! Before my first day of the job, I spent a couple of weeks researching as much as I could about parrot care and training but nothing could have prepared me for the amazement of my first day working with them. Just “wow!!” was basically the feeling, I could not believe how incredible it felt just to have a parrot willingly step onto my hand and how lucky I was to see such beautiful birds so close.

I wonder if everyone remembers that first moment?

Ché and Esteban, Hahn's Macaws, photo by Laura Martin

As the weeks went on, I was stunned as I discovered how individual their personalities were and it’s safe to say they secured a place in my heart from day one (and that’s even with Jasper, our African Grey, taking a massive chomp on my finger as a result of my clumsy, inexperienced and nervous attempt at picking him up!)

As this blog is about parrots, I’m just going to sneak in a little something about the meat-eating birds I work with, who are also spectacular! Alfie the Turkey Vulture, for example, is a very impressive bird and clever enough to learn tricks too… trouble is he’s a real character (sometimes a very mischievous boy actually) who has stolen sandwiches and nipped at my ankles many a time! I don’t fly him in the displays anymore but we did have some good days!

Alfie the Turkey Vulture

So back to parrots; as well as Jasper, ’my flock’ consists of Rosie the Galah, Molly the Citron-crested Cockatoo, Coco the Blue and Gold Macaw, Ruby the Green-winged Macaw, Charlie the Blue-fronted Amazon, Barney the Eclectus and also the free-flyers: Bonnie and Alfie the Green-winged Macaw siblings, and Ché and Esteban the Hahn’s Macaw siblings (who only hatched in May 2011). I look forward to introducing them all to you at some point!

For more on the Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife and Falconry Centre, please visit our website and Facebook page.

We’re holding our third photo contest ever on our BirdTricks Facebook!

The theme this month is “In Flight”. We want to see your fully flighted bird in flight, the only catch? No outdoor flight photos unless you are a Freestyle Flyers Club Student Graduate! We don’t want this contest to be ‘who lost their bird first’ type of thing so please don’t take your UNTRAINED bird outside for a pretty flight photo.

The prize: ONE MENS SIZE LARGE BirdTricks.com embroidered polo shirt. (Pictured below)

You can submit your photo as early as today, and no later than January 15, 2012 at midnight EST. 

We will announce the winner on January 16, 2012 sometime (via facebook). All photos will be put into an album entitled “In Flight Photo Contest” on our facebook page and although you can obtain “likes”, this photo contest is going to be judged by the one and only Dave Womach! He will pick the winner. We thought we’d change it up and since he does coach the Freestyle Flyer’s Club, we thought it would be fitting! And especially since all the previous contests have been judged upon how many votes you can get, we thought this would be a nice break from that.

Submit your photo by clicking the “photo” icon at the top of our FACEBOOK page and uploading it directly to our WALL. If you see it added into the album you will know it’s in the running. If it’s not in the album, give us time to put it in or repost it to make sure we see it.

Note: “TAGGING” the page in your submission photo will not make us see the picture and will result in us not seeing it to be able to submit it. We will comment on your picture to let you know it has been submitted so that you know it was received.

P.S. If you are interested in teaching your parrot flight training or even free flight training, email info@birdtricks.com to find out how you can get Dave to personally coach you for 3 months with your bird!

We’ve kept you waiting long enough.  So here it is: Coming May 2012 to Silverwood Theme Park in Athol, ID – BirdTricks.com Presents “ParrotFX, the Ultimate Parrot Stunt Show.”

We are currently producing the show, so stay tuned. I’ve conceptualized this performance as a theatrical parrot production, and not your typical parrot-info-show.  Combining my experience as a magician and producer, with the knowledge of training parrots, this is sure to be a production to impress.

If you have any specific ideas of something you’d love to see please feel free to suggest them below and we’ll try to fit them in.  The production will run for 6 months, and is free with admission to the theme park.  This is a great homecoming for me as I performed magic in this theater back when I was 17, and grew up just 90 minutes away.  In fact, Jamie grew up about 15 minutes away from the park.

We have several conceptual drawings, but I’ve only attached a few for you to see.  Stay tuned as we slowly release more details, and behind the scenes footage of our training.

If you’re interested in seeing the show, please let us know and we can update our exact dates and times so you don’t accidentally show up on a day off.  Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

Photo by Dave
Location: Orlando, FL
Pictured: African Grey “Cressi”

Betcha Haven’t Trained Your Bird THIS! 

Not only dogs and elephants get trained the “drop it” command. How would you like to be able to cue your bird to “drop it” and actually have it listen – and drop whatever is in its mouth at that time? I think this command is AMAZING and every bird companion person should train it for safety purposes alone!

If your bird gets ahold of something it shouldn’t have, or that is toxic or dangerous, you need a way to be able to get your bird to drop it immediately without causing harm to your bird. I can’t count how many times I’ve tried ripping chapstick from the death grip of what is my African Grey’s feet! Cressi just loves the stuff, and I do too, but I actually like to use it on my lips and not destroy the entire thing piece by piece until it’s unusable. Know what I mean?

So!

How does one go about training their bird to “drop it” (it being any object) on cue?

So glad you asked…

First, YOU, as a trainer, need to understand training. Even if it’s just a little bit. Know what the heck a clicker is and how to use it, know about timing and capturing behaviors and know your bird’s favorite treats and when to train. If you don’t know any of that stuff… hop on over to this parrot store and get the basic trick training course (learn the retrieve). Once you’ve got a feel of that course you will be well on your way to training anything you can possibly think of! But you gotta understand that stuff to understand the rest of this post.

Moving on…

If your bird has been trained before, touch trained or whatever, this will go much faster. Birds that have already learned something learn the next things much, much faster. If your bird has never learned anything before, I recommend teaching easy tricks like the “wave”, the “shake” or basic touch training FIRST. Just so that your bird has a basic understanding of training.

In order to train your parrot to drop any object, you need to start the training with an object they don’t necessarily want to hang onto for long. For me, that would NOT be chapstick… but more like a small cap of some sort, something your bird isn’t going to want to play with as a foot toy for long hours. And, make sure your bird actually WANTS the treats you’re giving (remember knowing when to train?) or training is overall… pointless and unsuccessful.

Anyway, take the object and do this on a flat surface like a counter top where the object can fall but you won’t be spending all your time picking it back up to start again. Hand the object to your parrot (OR let your bird pick it up from the counter itself) and wait for your bird to drop the object and click and reward. If your bird isn’t losing interest in the object you may have picked the wrong thing… if needed offer a treat so that the bird drops the object and takes the treat instead and start over with a less powerful object. Right as your bird changes focus to drop the object, try to be quick enough to say “drop it” or whatever you want the verbal cue to be. It could just be “drop” if that’s all you have time to say, or “put it down” if your bird moves a bit slower. You do this verbal cue so that eventually you only reward when your bird does it on cue, but you’re not ready for that quite yet.

The idea is to pair the verbal command with the moment your bird drops it, or just barely before so it appears like it’s doing it on your cue. You’ve gotta do this with the cue until your bird learns the behavior completely.

The keys to training the “drop it” command are:

1. Use an object your bird IS NOT crazy about playing with for long periods of time or as a foot toy.
2. Know your bird’s favorite treat and all the basics about training behaviors and tricks (if you don’t, get a basic training course here)