Human Meal Time: How to manage your parrot's behaviour?

[Tango]

What is the best way to reinforce good (ie: quiet) behaviour in your birds when everyone is sitting down to eat?

I give my black capped conure Tango a treat to distract him just before the food goes on the table, and I enforce a rule of no birds off the cage while we are eating.

We have not had a yelling problem (during dinner, anyway!) to date in the 4 years I have had him, but Tango does use body language and anxious vocalizations to make it perfectly clear what he wants. I am concerned about this escalating as he continues to not get the desired results, especially since in the new apartment his cage is now located much nearer to the dinner table.

I know that other bird owners have problems with yelling at meal times. I remember that my aunt had an umbrella cockatoo who could not stand not being included at dinner and would be very vocal about it!

Has anyone else had challenges with meal times? How did you overcome it?

-Tania

[Michael]

Ignore.

I can even keep Kili out even during my meals. She sits on her perch and watches or flies over and sits on my shoulder. I shake her off if she comes herself but I try to recall her and use it as a social reinforcement before she can do it herself. She just sits on my shoulder and watches me eat. But she can keep dreaming cause I'm greedy and don't share any table food with her ever.

[Yorkochanie]

We have a bird room, so when we leave the room for meal times, they play on their playstands. I'm a little nervous about bringing birds to kitchen. You never know when something bad's gonna happen. My birds are curious about everyting, so what if they wonder what is in that teacup? Or they can fall into a pot of boiling water. So I never bring birds while we're eating and they're OK with staying at the bird room when we're gone.

[MandyG]

I agree with Michael. Ignore the behavior. If he never gets rewarded for it the behaviour should eventually disappear on its own.

My Amazon is usually out when we eat. I've never fed him while we're eating or from the table so he doesn't usually bother us. On the rare occassion if we're eating raw veggies on the couch he'll climb over to us and climb up the coffee table to try to get some. I just pick him up and put him back on his perch and then he goes about his business. He doesn't do it often, and I'm not sure why he still tries, he's never gotten anything for it!

[Kim S]

The problem is, even punishing means giving attention to the behavior. And since parrots crave attention theres a chance this will only make it worse.
So, like every one else already said. Ignore.
Put him in his cage before dinner. Give him his treat for going in to the cage (not for 'being good during dinner') and ignore him.