What about Punishment? I never dealt harshly with Fergus or acted domineering with him. I don’t do this with any of my parrots, because training is best done with a friendly attitude and by using positive reinforcement as much as possible. Animals, including people, learn faster when trying to receive rewards rather than avoid punishment. It is also more humane to teach animals using positive reinforcement. Additionally, the way most people punish animals rarely works. To be effective, a punishment must occur immediately after the unwanted behaviour. For example, some people place screaming birds back in their cages to discourage the screaming. However, by the time the bird gets to the cage, he has already been picked up and moved, and he may not associate his “banishment” with the screaming. Using punishment can have other fall outs as well. The animal could become afraid of the owner, which will make subsequent training sessions ineffective. The animal could also start to bite the owner to drive him away if he associates the owner with frightening things. Now that I’ve said that, I must note that, technically, when a trainer withholds treats from an animal who is displaying a behaviour that the trainer wants to extinguish, he is technically “punishing” the animal. In clicker training jargon, there are two forms of punishment: positive and negative. Positive punishment should be avoided as much as possible; this involves applying a stimulus that the animal finds unpleasant. Negative punishment is different in that it involves removing something the animal finds reinforcing. Basically, in this context, “positive” refers to adding something and “negative” refers to removing something. Walking away with your treats from a parrot that screams is a form of negative punishment. Obviously, we can’t reinforce all behaviours, but during training sessions, try to set your parrot up for success: don’t give cues you don’t think he’ll respond to, and don’t hold a session when he’s tired. The best thing about clicker training is that it can help reduce unwanted behaviours, because a trainer can reinforce behaviours that are incompatible with the unwanted behaviour. For example, teaching a bird to talk can help reduce screaming, since he can’t talk and scream at the same time. Talking can be reinforced, while screaming can be ignored. Providing chew toys can help too, since few birds can scream and chew a toy simultaneously. Getting Started A very useful first behaviour to teach a bird is to target. This is the first behaviour I taught Fergus because I could teach it to him while he was in his cage and he couldn’t attack me.  “Targeting” is when an animal touches his nose or other body part to the end of an object such as a stick.  With birds, this tends to involve teaching the bird to lightly touch the end of a stick with his beak.  The target stick should not be similar to one of the bird’s perches, in case he tries to step up on it.  I used the end of a wooden spoon as a target for Fergus to touch.

Full Screen Further Reading Ellen K. Cook, DVM. 2006.  How Positive Reinforcement Saved a Cockatoo’s Life.  Good Bird Magazine. Vol 3, No. 1. (This article gave me hope that clicker training could help Fergus, as the author used this approach with her Moluccan Cockatoo that often bit her). Barbara Heidenreich. 2005.  The Parrot Problem Solver: Finding Solutions to Aggressive Behavior. TFH Publications, Neptune, NJ. Melinda Johnson. 2006.  Clicker Training for Birds (Getting Started). Sunshine Books, Inc. – Karen Pryor Clicker Training.  Weston, MA. Karen Pryor. 1999.  Don’t Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training. (Revised Edition) Bantam Books, New York, NY. (This book is not specifically about dogs or birds, but is about the general principles behind clicker training).

Many birds, like Fergus, will immediately poke their nose to the target stick to investigate it.  If this happens, immediately click and treat the bird.  If your bird hangs on to the stick, try clicking right before the bird touches the target and remove the target right after it’s been touched.  Once the bird is touching the stick reliably, make him stretch a bit to touch the stick.  Once that is done reliably, make him take a step, then two steps, and so on.  Try having him go left or right, and practice the behaviour in many different areas, with different distractions.

I did this with Fergus, who was an unbelievably fast learner.  After one week, he would touch the target even if he had to climb to the other side of the cage or to the cage floor to reach it.  I initially trained him while he was caged, but two weeks after his initial attack on me, I let him out of his cage again and he didn’t try to bite me.

I began target training him while he was on his cage and he continued to focus on learning.  He never bit or attacked me again during the three more months I had him.  I suspect he learned that interacting with me could be rewarding, so he no longer wanted to drive me away with bites.  I was also sure to provide him with lots of chew toys he could focus on while he was out of his cage.

What about a bird that seems reluctant to touch the stick?  I ran into this problem with Ripley, my Red-lored Amazon.  Here’s where shaping (or successive approximation) can be useful.  Before you shape a behaviour, define what you want the end behaviour to look like.  Then, start to teach the behaviour in small parts.

For shaping targeting, start by finding out how close the stick can get to the bird before he starts to show fear.  Keep the stick in that area initially.  Then, start to click him just for looking at the stick, then for moving towards it, and then for bumping it.  Doing this, it took me about six sessions to get Ripley to reliably touch the stick.  The average training sessions with my parrots last ten to fifteen minutes, but they can be longer or shorter.  It all depends on how long the parrot can keep his interest, and I always try to end on a positive note.

Targeting can be very useful for teaching other behaviours, many of which are useful for basic husbandry tasks.  For example, I taught Fergus to go back in his cage using his target stick.  The key to this was that, for the first few times Fergus went into the cage to touch the target stick, I did not close the door.  When I did finally close the door, I gave him a “jack pot,” or a bigger than normal amount of treats.

Teaching Fergus to willingly go in his cage made him much easier to manage.  Birds can also be trained to stand on a scale or go in a carrier through guidance with a target.  I used targeting to get Fergus to stand on a scale at the veterinarian’s office.

Training Step Up

“Step-up” is the cue most parrot owners give to get their parrots to step onto their hands, and this is often the first thing that bird owners teach their birds.  It is indeed a very useful thing to teach, but for very aggressive birds, I recommend doing target training first.  The target then can be used to guide the bird onto a hand-held perch, hand, or arm.

Many birds who do not step up on cue end up being labeled stubborn, dominant, or spoiled.  What is often the case is that the bird really hasn’t been taught what the cue “step up” really means, or he hasn’t been taught to respond to it in a variety of situations.  If your bird is like this, try teaching him to respond to the cue “step up” using only positive reinforcement.

To train a step up using positive reinforcement, start at the beginning using shaping, or luring with a target or treat. To shape a step up (on a perch or hand), first reward the bird for looking at the perch, then for moving towards it, placing a foot on it, and so on.  Once the bird steps up, then he may not be comfortable being moved around on the hand.  Again, use small steps: reward him for allowing you to move your hand a bit with him on it, and gradually move up to you walking to different areas of the house with him on the hand.

Fading the Target

When using a target to coax a behavior out of a bird, such as using one to lure him onto a hand, be sure to start fading the use of the target as soon as possible. Otherwise, the bird will focus on the target rather than the behaviour itself.  Gradually make the target smaller, and/or use the same hand gestures used with the target, but don’t use the target.  Add a verbal cue, and use it consistently with and without using the target.

Capturing

Many owners with talking birds enjoy teaching them to say words on cue.  For example, Fergus could say “Hello!” and I wanted to teach him to say back it when I said “Hello” to him.  What I had to do was capture the behaviour, or wait for it to occur on its own, and reinforce it when it happened.  So, when Fergus said “Hello,” I clicked and treated him.

When I got Fergus offering “Hellos!”, and I felt I could predict when he was going to say it, I added my cue, “Hello.”  To get the behaviour under stimulus control, I clicked and treated when he said, “Hello,” in response to my “Hello.”   Soon, he began to figure out that he got treats when he said, “Hello” when I did.  This was just a cute behaviour to teach him, but in doing so, I could spend time interacting with him in a positive manner, which I felt enriched his life.

Conclusion

Clicker training is a very effective, humane way to train any animal.  It’s also a great way to enrich a parrot’s life, as most learn to enjoy training sessions.  Additionally, it can be used to effectively communicate with your pet and let him know what behaviours you would like him to do.  I taught Fergus how to act around me and that he didn’t need to drive me away by biting.

His story here winds up with a happy ending: He learned to enjoy out of cage time and he was eventually adopted by a kind couple who were also interested in clicker training.  This meant I could continue to foster birds, and the bird that I’m fostering at the time of writing is yet another teenaged male Lesser Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, named Mitri.  He’s also enjoying his clicker training lessons.