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Biting and screaming In her first six months here, Lily bit six times.  Each bite could have been avoided with better and more sensitive handling from us.  With Lily on my shoulder, my husband, Wal, waved an arm in front of her to emphasize what he was saying.  Startled, she bit.  Wal tolerates the birds – poor man has little option.  Perdy worships him and no matter how many times he shrugs her off him, she flies back.  Lily has flown to him a few times and bitten twice, when he’s made an abrupt gesture, but no sudden movements, no sudden bite. Another warning nip was made by Lily when a child stuck a finger through the cage bars, although warned not to. Screaming has been another hurdle. Being partially deaf has few advantages – except for owning cockatoos. Fortunately, Lily’s screaming follows a pattern and we don’t have near neighbours.  If she’s alone and doesn’t know where I am, she screams.  If I whistle out to her she’ll stop.  Being with the other birds, although she has made no special buddy, also appears to lessen screaming. I did not teach her to say “Hello, Lily”.  Presumably her ex-owners did as an alternative behaviour – and what a pleasant one it is, too.  She had arrived with a repetitive pattern of behaviour, raising her crest and lunging. This was easy to direct into an alternative behaviour.  When she lunges and raises her crest, I say “Dancey- dancey parrot” and applaud her.  She now accepts this as a way of getting praise and attention.  And Perdy, to our great relief, has not copied her ear-splitting shriek, but has copied the crest wave on cue.

Training Lily
According to the principles of positive reinforcement, the bird may choose whether or not to accept your request.  If a bird chooses not to step up, the trainer goes away and tries later.  In day-to-day living at home, that’s not always practical.

I’d been away for a couple of days. The bird sitter said, “Lily wouldn’t leave the tub.  I had to feed her there.” Would the benefit to Lily of not spending 20 hours a day stuck in a tub outweigh the coercion of persuading her out?  It was 8.00 am, the two Greys and Perdy munching their breakfast on the play stands.  I bent down to the philodendron tub, parted the leaves and asked Lily, “Step up”.  A left claw came up and rested shakily on my palm.  And that was as far as she would go.  I gently picked up the right claw, lifted her through the branches and carried her into the house.  The Greys or Perdy wouldn’t have accepted this manoeuvre; they’d have nipped.

Once in the sitting room, I left her in the cage with a tasty breakfast and the cage door open.  The other three birds would later in the evening be invited into the house for family time.

I decided to bring Lily into the sitting room every morning and let her eat breakfast in the King cage with the door open.  That gave her choice to stay in the cage or fly to a perch in the sitting room.  I was anxious to improve her flying skills so that she could cope with the other birds and also be taken to the aviary, but unless the birds chased her off a perch, Lily didn’t fly.  So when I carried her from the conservatory to the sitting room along a short corridor, I made a conscious decision and wobbled my hand. (This is NOT recommended positive reinforcement technique as I understand it.)  Lily fluttered a few feet to the ground and waited to be picked up.  Each day she flew a couple of feet further before landing on the ground.  This calculated risk paid off.

Within a few weeks, Lily flew with a minute wobble of my hand either into my study or into the cage.  What was encouraging in this training was that Lily herself took a decision where she wanted to land.  She had the choice of flying to the cage or turning right into my study.  Most times she turned right.  She ended up with the best of both worlds, because I brought her breakfast into the study and put in the bowl on the play stand there.  And she did not develop any negative feelings towards me.

The more the other three birds saw Lily flying, the less they chased her.  They accepted her more readily. They no longer flew at her when she perched on my shoulder, and Lily herself reacted towards them more forcefully, raising her crest and rearing back with her beak open.  It was a happy moment when all four of them perched on the King cage together.

Lily’s first Christmas
By Christmas the other three birds had more or less stopped chasing Lily off the other perches.  However, she seemed to need some secure place away from them, which she found herself.  Once her flying skills increased, she flew to the highest bookshelf beside the fireplace and claimed that.  The other three accepted her choice.  I’d love to know the dynamics of that.  She showed a passionate desire to chew paper, so that upper bookshelf was furnished with a row of unread paperbacks; each morning I swept up piles of confetti.

Her step up became confirmed behaviour.  Another positive behaviour was that she made some intentional flights from cage to perch, or from perch to me.  Her weight remained steady at 375 grams.

In the spring, Lily was taken to the aviary.  At first nervous and unsure, she eventually settled there.  Although she never displays the curious, lively, fun-loving behaviour of Perdy, I believe she is happy enough. She is refeathered as far as she can be.  She has lived here for two years now, and taking her in has added an extra dimension to our lives.

And so
That is my experience with unwanted birds indoors and outside.  Give them a home, space, affection and kindness and they will become your friends.  And my fervent hope is that we all work together, breed fewer birds and educate them to be suitable pets.  Let no more wild birds come onto the market.  Then the problem of unwanted birds will gradually fade away.  In the meantime, parrot lovers with enough time and space can offer homes to those birds unfortunate enough to have lost them.

Dorothy Schwarz is a short story writer, and has been published in various  literary magazines.  With her husband, Walter, she has co-written two books on sustainable living – Breaking Through (Green Books) and Living Lightly (John Carpenter).  She began to write about her African Greys, Artha and Casper, in 2002, and was a contributor to Parrots magazine for six years.  Dorothy now writes for the Parrot Society UK and has a monthly column about companion birds in the weekly UK avian newspaper, Cage and Aviary Birds.  Her articles also appear in Australian Bird Keeper and the German publication, Papagien.