Parrot testing boundaries

[GingerBird]

Hi!

My Meyer's, called Maya, is 10 months old. We are getting along, but I am trying to become closer and closer with her. So, how do I set my boundaries? I figure that birds in nature will show each other when some action is not acceptable, so how should I do that?

For example: I like to interact with her, and when I rub her beak she likes to feel my finger too which does not bother me at all. But sometimes she is a little rough with feeling and will eventually hurt me.

Another example is when she is trying to fly. A few weeks ago she was a very bad flyer and I encouraged her to keep trying. Since she always would try to come to me as soon as possible, I just put her on a perch and stepped back, hold my arm out and called her. She kept improving and is having fun with flying. Now, she will just take-off when we do not entertain her enough while she sits on my shoulder. First, I called her and she would land on my arm. But now she seems to be a little naughty and flies anytime she wants, and lands anywhere she wants.
Problem is: I don't want her to land on specific areas, for example the cage of my lovebird. Now, she kinda knows that I will stand up, and catch her immediately when she is on top of his cage, so in order to get attention she will just fly away, land on the cage of my other bird and her mission is accomplished.

The last example is, that if I walk away, take the other bird out of his cage first, cuddle with my other bird, or even talking to the phone in the same room, she will start squeaking VERY loud.

I know a lot of people are into positive reinforcement, but in cases like this: just ignoring does not prevent her from doing this. According to nature, the birds will also show each other which action is acceptable or not. I am not capable of squeaking back (haha ) so maybe there is a way to show her what actions are not appreciated. She is still young, but not as cautious when she was younger, and something tells me that she will keep testing my boundaries if I don't react properly.
Can anyone help me?

[Wolf]

Welcome to the world of parrots.
You can set any many boundaries as you care to and any kind of boundary you choose, your bird doesn't mind that you do this as it will quite happily ignore them. The phone thing is jealousy. Maya does not understand why you would waste you time and hers by talking to some not living thing as a phone when she is right there waiting for you to pay attention to her. She is also becoming more jealous of the time spent with Boris. And in the near future could lead to her attacking him when you have them out at the same time, and Boris may not back down as he is already devoted to you and knows that it is his job to protect you. This can happen faster than you are able to process that it is occurring, leaving you to be ineffective at protecting them from each other. Your best bet is to avoiding this situation.
I have to go for now , but I will return to continue with this later.

[GingerBird]

Boris would definitely not back down, sweet thing will give up his life for me I guess.

That is what I am most scared of, having those two fighting with each other... The nibbling finger-thing is not that hard to solve: pulling away my finger will do

Squeaking, well that is something everyone has to prepare for when having a bird.

But this safety issue might indeed become a problem in the future. And her interest in trying to get EVERYTHING I have is somewhat problematic as well. Like, eating stuff which is not healthy for her: as long as I eat, she must have it.
Typing? She must feel the keyboard... Drinking? She must pull that glass of water (or any other beverage) towards her... Writing, carrying, holding, reading, touching... I forgot how Boris and I grew up together I guess.

@Wolf, looking forward to your answer as well as from other forum visitors!

[Wolf]

Sorry, I had other animals needing my attention.
You are thinking like a predator with a social structure that is based on dominance. Parrots are prey, not predator and their flock dynamics are not based upon dominance, instead all parrots in the flock are equals. They fly where and when they choose. This is their nature and you are probably not going to change to any significant degree thousands of years of nature. If you don't want her to land on a thing it is up to you to fix it so that she cannot land there. Sometimes distraction works and sometimes it can create a new problem. Flight recall is probably you best bet along with target training for most of your flying problems, and landing is a flying problem.
The nibbling on you is a normal thing, but you need to move either Maya, your hand or perhaps both for a minute while calmly telling her be gentle of something to that effect. Just don't make a production of it as they love drama.
About Mayas issues with the phone and/ or Boris you may just need to talk on phone in another room and not let her see you cuddling with Boris. That may be the easiest and most productive method available, but it comes with no guarantees.
Maya is going to test your boundaries for many years to come, if not for nearly all of her life which is up to 25 yrs. Parrots are not noted for their obedience to human rules.

[GingerBird]

No problem, all animals need some love every day

Your answer might be based on the wrong arguments. I disagree that all parrots in the flock are equal. An easy example is that there exists dominance between parrot-males during breeding season.
This (very nice) documentary shows a short example, and many more will follow during the rest of the documentary:

(not sure if the time-setting works: start watching at 8m45s if you don't want to watch the whole documentary )

apparently parrots are able to show what behavior is accepted and which is not (they at least show their boundaries)... So it should not be impossible to show as a human as well which action is appropriate and which is not?

[GingerBird]

In addition, to avoid confusion: I don't want to be overall dominant. But just like Maya shows when she does not like something by giving a certain reaction, I believe that humans should be able to indicate to their bird why something is okay or not.

[Wolf]

I would love to see the documentary but it does not appear to be down loading.
Breeding season is a bit different and it does require the male to defend his mate from rivals, it is not the same thing as a dominance based social structure. I am not saying that there is no way to teach a parrot what is acceptable or not. But a large percentage of their communication is body language. You can and should use body language to help you to communicate with your bird, I do. And I spend hours watching mine to pick up on theirs. but, I can't pin my eyes or ruffle my feathers. I can mimic most of the body postures but so far the results are sporadic at best. So it appears to me that I need to find a way to teach them the meaning of some of mine. The best results I have had to date include facial expression, body posture and sometimes vocalizations. Just like feather position gives me difficulty so do many of their vocalizations. I don't speak parrot very well, but I am working on it.
I started this approach with horses a long time ago and use it with all of my animals, again with varying degrees of success. It stems from my belief that the only true difference between myself and other animals is in our physical form. But that is a whole other thing.
Yes, I believe that there has to be a better way to communicate with them to teach and learn acceptable behaviors. But so far no one has been able to show me one, which I am experimenting with but as I said the results are sporadic at best. Because of that, I cannot use it to any benefit in trying to help others to reach their animals, or at least not much of it. I think about it a lot as animals have been my thing for over fifty years. I can say that parrots seem to respond better to facial expressions better than many other animals, and their facial expressions are easier for me to read than those of other animals that I work with.
Well I am going back now to see if I can get your video to download so that I can watch it.

[GingerBird]

I see, something went wrong with the video. Just press the "youtube" button and it will redirect you to the correct video.

It is true that parrots behave different during breeding season, but that also proves that there is something in their instinct that is capable of showing boundaries. Besides that, you have answered my question perfectly! I will train with Maya to grow closer together, and will spent more time to understand each other better.
It is for human beings very easy to act dominantly. This is not what I am trying to achieve, but I feel like telling your parrot : "no" sometimes is not unfair at all. She will be able to understand different emotions from me, to remember my facial expressions and the frequency I talk for example. I guess we will come one step closer to become perfect parrot partners! (ha ha what a name...).

My planning:
1) Let her know when I am positive about her action: praise her, frequency of my voice will be higher, and treat her at the same time. Basically the positive reinforcement guidelines.

2) Showing when something is not ok: tell her "no", show some expression on my face and frequency of my voice will be lower. (I will NEVER scream! Keeping a calm lower voice should work well enough in my opinion)
Example: When she lands on something which is not allowed, I tell her no and will let her step up to bring her back to the place where she came from.
Example 2: When she nibbles with too much strength, I will tell her no and pull my finger back. Will continue with rubbing her beak in a few minutes again.

I guess this will work. Any comments?

[Wolf]

I finally got to watch the video, in fact ,I went to you tube and actually watched two different parrot documentaries.
As for your plan to help establish boundaries with Maya, that is exactly what I do with all three of my birds. So I think it is a good course of action.

[KimberlyAnn]

What's worked well for us as far as landing spots go, we have made perches with vet wrap which is a sponge type bandage that are often used for horses. Emmi loves to land on these surfaces insead of the lamp, the shelf, or whatever else she decides is a good landing spot. They feel good on her feet and have that extra padding for when she's coming in for a fast landing. We just watch where she likes to land most and put a perch up. I also do flight training between all these perches so she sees these perches as her only landing spots. We have several in the living room and one to two in each of the other rooms. It works out really well and since she's potty trained, she always has a place to go quickly so we don't have accidents.

Emmi also has a jealousy of the phone, but only with me. I have just learned to talk in a different room while someone else keeps her occupied or if I'm alone, I just grab some berries to keep her mouth full and walk away. It has also helped that I hold her in front of me and look at her when I'm talking so she thinks I'm talking to her. She will talk back and I get a lot of different and funny reactions from people on the other end of the line. Lol

For your love bird's cage, is there a way to cover the top with something so that an accident won't happen? For my snake cage, I have double screened it so there is no way Emmi's toes will come in contact with the snake. I also don't make this an area of interest. Or any area I don't want her to be in...I ignore her completely. She gets no attention if she flies to areas I don't want her in. This has worked well because all Emmi wants is attention. This makes these areas useless to her and she just has no interest in landing on them anymore. Bird safe areas get tons of attention. Telling her no and showing her boundaries has not worked for anything, but biting. In fact it's done the opposite of what I wanted.

But try the perches. It just might work for you. I made them about the height of the places she had started to land on and I've had no problems, besides the fridge...but that's another story and human error.