Macaws:
Red Shouldered (Hahn's) Macaw
Severe Macaw
Blue And Gold Macaw
Blue Throated Macaw
Military Macaw
Red Fronted Macaw
Scarlet Macaw
Green Winged Macaw
Hyacinth Macaw
Today I put the aviator harness on Truman for the first time to take him outside. Supposedly the breeder had donned the harness on the Cape Parrot in her care but when I put it on him, he hardly seemed used to it. Luckily though he is very tame and didn't fight or bite me to put it on. It took a good 5-10 minutes to get it on him in full. He started trying to get the harness off so I took him outside to distract him from the harness.
I took Truman outside to the park for a little while. He was paying too much attention to his harness and it was hot outside so I put him under a sprinkler and wet him down. For the next 20 minutes he happily sat on my hand and dried in the diminishing evening sun. Truman let me pet him for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed as a ruffled the feathers on his neck and cheeks.
After coming home, I proceeded to take Truman's aviator harness off but he was fidgeting too much which made it much more difficult to get it off. It was getting tangled on him because he would flap as I tried to remove it. After a few minutes of working on it I managed to get it off. I scratched Truman's head some more and added that to the video. Here is a video of putting Truman's leash harness on and then some fluffy petting at the end.
Naturally I did not want to leave Truman by himself so soon after his arrival but I didn't have a choice. I had this trip planned months before I even got him and I was really counting on the breeder shipping him to me by the start of June which would have left enough time for him to adjust. However, due to delays from the breeder, I got him with just over a week before I would have to leave.
I was quite worried because he was barely eating on his own while I was still home. He would eagerly climb to the top of his cage but then not know how to get back down in order to eat. He would just sit in a high perch and scream his lungs off to be fed. Eventually I would take him out and when I put him back in on the food perch, then he would eat. I had arranged for someone to come over while I go on my trip but this person would only change the food/water and would not be reaching inside the cage at any time. Bringing Truman along for the trip was definitely possible but I feared that the stress and neglect of travel would have been more stressful on him than my absence. I could have brought Kili along or left her home just the same, she is well adjusted to both situations. Since I was leaving Truman, Kili may as well have stayed as well.
For the July 4th three day weekend, I flew out to Dayton, Ohio. Dayton is the birthplace of manned flight because the Wright Brothers built and flew their first planes from there. The flight was just over 3 hours non-stop to Dayton and the same back. As a pilot this has been my furthest cross country flight to date.
The evening of my arrival in Dayton, I was quite worried about Truman. I had called the parrots' caretaker and he reported that Truman had not eaten any of the food I had left out for him in the morning. Furthermore he was screaming and begging for food the entire time. The next day (July 4th), I received much better news. Truman had been eating well on his own. I guess getting hungry enough and realizing that no one was going to feed him the pellets made him figure out his way down to eat. I returned late the following evening. I weighed Truman when I got home and was relieved that his weight was the same as when I had left which meant that he was eating well for 3 days. Today Truman has been eating on his own again and his weight has actually reached a record high of 319g which is higher than what the breeder reported his weight to be when he was shipped out to me. So overall everything worked out fine and in fact my absence forced Truman to stop begging for food and just eat on his own.
A week since I got Truman, my new baby Cape Parrot, I have already had my first successful flight recall. Since he came to me not clipped - and never will be clipped - safely managing his flight is essential. He is not yet a good flier and does not know well how to get from point A to point B. I can use his ignorance to my advantage by catalyzing his learning of flight and shaping it in direction and purpose that suits me. The number one most important thing is that I want him to learn to fly to me. Then I'd like to teach him to fly to appropriate places in my apartment and not others.
I began the basis for Truman's recall training just a few days after he had arrived. I built a pair of training stands similar to the ones I used to teach Kili to fly. I immediately began familiarizing Truman with the stands by putting him on them frequently. I also got him used to eating food on those stands and did some clicker conditioning while I was at it.
I kept the two stands with the perches parallel to each other and within walking distance. I lured Truman to walk between the stands when offering treats. Originally I was putting food straight into his beak because he wasn't eating well on his own so I decided why not at least make him walk for it. As I spread the distance he would reach harder and harder to get across. But as soon as the gap got too large to step across, he would give up trying to cross. It amazed me because he could fly across the room but not across an 8" gap. I continued the walk across exercises with him.
On occasion he would slip as he crossed and reflexively would flap his wings to stabilize. This is the part of the exercise that actually teaches the parrot to use his wings to make it across the gap. I taught Kili to get across the gap in exactly the same way except that I targeted her across with a stick. Since Truman doesn't know the target behavior yet, I simply offered him goodies on the other end. I would rather teach him flight recall before target training (although target training is an excellent method for teaching recall) because I want him to have the longest practice of flight recall in his life. I want it to be his first and most practiced trick. If he forgets everything, I want flight recall to me to be the most remembered and reliable thing in his repertoire. This is why I'm skipping the other stuff for now and going straight to flight recall which is generally a more advanced behavior to teach. Also I want to use his quick baby age learning and willingness to make the most of teaching recall.
A cue is already starting to emerge although it is just temporary. I no longer have to show him the treat or toy that he will get for coming across. I can just tap and point to the perch I want him to go to and he flaps across to it. I am going to practice this just a little more but as soon as he is recalling to my hand I will only practice the recall cue specifically and stop all luring and temporary cues.
Managing Truman's motivation for this basic informal training was fairly simple. He is not on any sort of food or weight management. In fact, he seems to be more motivated by toys many times than food. He's a curious baby and likes to explore so anything that is of interest to him can be positively reinforcing for preempted behavior. However, since Truman has been eating rather poorly on his own in the cage (mostly from a fear of climbing down to where the bowls are), he's been pretty hungry and would gladly take pellets from my hand. I have not yet even developed any treats for him and just feed him any of bland or colored pellets and almonds.
Thus I put all of these skills together and produced the first preempted flight recall with Truman. It is true that he has flown to me prior, however, that was either because he himself wanted to or because I happened to be a convenient place to land. However, this time, by doing the pointing cue like I had used on the perch, I was able to call him to my hand specifically. I just turned the second training perch away and put my arm where it used to be and in the same manner as cuing him to the training perch, I cued him to my hand.
Now increasing distance is quite simple and merely a matter of practice. Now the important thing to work on is developing a solid recall cue and practicing to no ends.
I highly recommend these training stands to anyone that has a flighted parrot or wants to teach a fledgling (or if they let the feathers grow back) to fly and eventually flight recall. You can use the stands to build practice jumping across a gap and then eventually flying to your hand. The height is adjustable so that you can keep the parrot at a comfortable height for your training. Very soon I will be offering these stands at 2x for $99 + shipping so stay tuned.
I went out to buy some more perches for Truman because he was having trouble reaching perches in his cage. I bought a comfy rope perch to hang diagonally across the cage to make it a bit easier for him to get up and get around. I added some more intermediate perches to help him get from the bars to the perches. Eventually I should be able to remove this safety perches but for now he is clumsy and these save his butt from falling down an extra time. I also needed to buy perches to use to make special training stands for Truman similar to Kili's.
Since I drove nearly an hour to get to this wholesale place for parrot supplies, I figured I'd make the most of it. I bought a year's worth of toys and some additional swings/perches. I didn't buy any toys for Kili - not only because she has a ton of old toys I can reuse - but also cause when Truman breaks his toys down to smaller pieces, I'll be able to recycle them and make smaller toys for Kili out of those. This way, effectively I can spend one bird's worth on toys and keep a second equally well supplied.
I bought a boing to put in Truman's cage eventually. I got him a large bird kebab, a rope swing, new basketball prop, swinging ladder, comfy perch, and a bunch of other toys. I also got a handful of mounting clasps. Not that I lose them, but somehow certain toys end up coming without them and I always find myself borrowing clasps from other toys. Now I should be set for a long time and will be able to rotate toys for Kili and Truman without having to do any more shopping.
Here is a video showing off Truman's wondrous shopping list worth of toys and then gives you a look inside his cage. You can see the way I changed the set up around to make it a bit easier for him to climb around. He's been having trouble climbing the dome top and the vertical bars. The cage is great for a smarter/older bird but kind of tough for a baby parrot to get used to because there are many aluminum dividers that make getting from one set of bars to the next difficult.
Several outbursts of territorial aggression have already been broke out from Kili against Truman. So I know that this problem exists and will need to be dealt with. Until Truman arrived, I had Kili trained pretty well not to ever land on that cage but since his arrival she has landed on there at least several times and tried to attack through the bars. Whenever I walk by Kili's cage with Truman on my arm, she jumps onto the cage bars and gets really big. She fluffs up her feathers and starts showing her beak, eyes pinning. I have never seen such demonstrations of aggression against any other person from her before but the new bird seems to provoke her more than anything. Finally, there was one instant where I had both birds out at once. It was Kili's time to be out but I just wanted to gauge Truman's weight. Kili was at the far end of the room minding her own business but as soon as I got Truman out of the cage she flew over. She then flew at Truman and I had to deflect her attack by putting my arm in the way and knocking her off her flight path.
Needless to say, quarantine has been violated multiple times already. Truman has landed on Kili's stuff and Kili has landed on Truman's stuff. Living in a single room with flighted parrots makes a successful quarantine nearly impossible. I have been weighing the birds regularly and both seem to be doing just fine. Kili has been healthy for two years and Truman got a full array of blood tests by the breeder's vet. I am not having a strict quarantine anymore but I am keeping the cages apart and only taking one parrot out at a time until this aggression issue is dealt with better.
Luckily Kili really likes training and food. These two things can keep her focused enough often times to ignore other things that are distracting her. So by having her do tricks near Truman's cage and eating treats, it teaches her to "look but don't touch." She is thus developing a habit of not landing on Truman's cage and not attacking Truman. This in effect is an application of differential reinforcement and teaches her what not to do by making an alternative even more rewarding.
I brought over one of Kili's training stands and put up high (about 5ft) to put her at the same height as Truman and just one foot away from him outside his cage. I had her do some tricks and then munch away at her carrot dinner while looking at him. This should also serve as a learning experience for Truman because he refuses to eat carrots. Hopefully watching Kili eat them will make him more likely to eat carrots now as well.
Trained Parrot is a blog about how to train tricks to all parrots and parakeets. Read about how I teach tricks to Truman the Brown Necked Cape Parrot including flight recall, shake, wave, nod, turn around, fetch, wings, and play dead. Learn how you can train tricks to your Parrot, Parrotlet, Parakeet, Lovebird, Cockatiel, Conure, African Grey, Amazon, Cockatoo or Macaw. This blog is better than books or DVDs because the information is real, live, and completely free of charge. If you want to know how to teach your parrot tricks then you will enjoy this free parrot training tutorial.
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