Please Help... at my wits end

[mack0311]

Thanks guys. I won't give up but at the same time I want to be moving in a productive direction and not sliding back. If I had two with the same issues right now I don't think I'd last-it's hard enough with one! I'll consider it but it will double everything-time, cost,poop,etc.. If I'm honest I just don't see it happening at this point in time. I know Sammy is lonely and When I rescued him I knew I'd be gone a lot but also thought he'd be better off being loney for the majority of the day and get to see me at night rather than be in a cage all day at a shelter. I dunno. It's just discouraging me because his health and happiness are most important to me. I'm just confused on what action to start with. Food managment? Almonds? Any other thoughts?

[friend2parrots]

fair enough - i totally understand where your coming from and its clear you really love your bird. so scrap my suggestion about getting another one. i do agree wth you that you have your plate full now, ad you shouldnt get another one. and its wonderful that you rescued him, and you are absolutely right, he is definitely far happier with you than he would be in the rescue. i'm going to brainstorm a bit more and get back to you.

[mack0311]

Thanks friend2parrots. If anyone wants to email me to they can.
mackenpaul@gmail.com.

[friend2parrots]

mack0311, i'm just going to post what ive brainstormed here rather than email, that way you have it all in one place.

i faced some similar behaviors with my GCC recently. i'm going to go point by point from your original post and tell you what i think about each:

He flys right to me...and stays on me. ?

would be best if you encouraged him to play independently more, by rewarding him with a treat when he interacts with toys. soon he'll start interacting with them for the fun of it, and this will distract him from bugging you.

On the shoulder he mostly fine. It's just sometimes a switch flips and then he's gauging my ear and his feathers are all puffed up.

mine was like this too. the best way to avoid this problem is to keep him off your shoulder.
if youre having trouble doing that, read this thread, and follow charlieandkiwi's advice on the bottom of the thread:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9476

I know there are triggers, but sometimes it could just be anything. This is just part of the problem.

this is how all Pyrhurras are, I think. they are very moody. the way to avoid getting in trouble with their moods is to observe them closely, and avoid provoking them. be conscious in all your actions.

Since he can fly, when he's out of his cage, he's on or very near me. If I'm sitting on the couch watching TV his nipping at my finger/toe nails.

he should not be on you this much. training independent behavior will help with this.

I'll say no and move him away but he's always running right back there..

saying "no" never works with clever parrots - they think its a musical game with you getting all excited. that's why he's running back for more!

also, some further general tips:

set aside a certain time each day when you will be interacting with him in a very conscious way. during this time, keep treats in your pocket and reward all good behaviors, and ignore all bad behaviors. do this every day, for at least an hour or so, preferably more if you can, where your mind is TOTALLY concentrating on interacting with him in ways that does not reinforce bad behaviors, and where youre watching him closely enough to notice the well-behaved correct things he's doing on his own. reward him with treats for these correct things. soon he'll start doing them more on his own.

i hope this helps - let us know how it goes!

[Andromeda]

He flys right to me...and stays on me.

My green cheek follows me everywhere I go. If I walk downstairs and into the living room, he flies downstairs behind me and into the living room. If I turn around and walk back upstairs and into the den, he turns around and flies back upstairs into the den. He does this all day long (when he is out of his cage).

He used to catch up to me and land on my shoulder and just hitch a ride. To solve this I worked on flight recall (using positive reinforcement) to teach him to land in certain "landing spots" instead of on me.

For example, I taught him to land on the banister on the stop of the stairs. I also taught him to land on the banister on the bottom of the stairs. Now when I'm going downstairs when I leave the room he beats me to the punch and passes me by and lands on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. When I go upstairs it's the opposite, he beats me upstairs and lands on the banister up there.

I put a t-stand in the living room and taught him to land there, so when he sees that I'm going into the living room he'll fly past me and land on the t-stand. He has a manzanita tree in the den and when he sees that I'm headed for the den he flies past me and lands on that.

Basically instead of clinging to me he catches up with me and predicts where I'm going and is always ahead of me now, waiting for me when I get there on my slow legs.

If your bird is flighted and you don't want him to just land on you and stay there provide different perches and landing spots and work on recalling him to those places instead of to you. It'll take time but if I was able to change it in my GCC, I'm sure you could change it in yours. Honestly my GCC thought it was a super fun game and he caught on really fast.

What's great is that if he does land on me now (rare unless I am specifically cuing him to land on my hand) I just get him to step up onto my hand and gently move my hand out and away from me toward the nearest perch and off he goes!

On the shoulder he mostly fine. It's just sometimes a switch flips and then he's gauging my ear and his feathers are all puffed up.

Mine loves to cuddle my neck and will happily do so for a half hour at a time but I only permit him to do that because he never bites me. It sounds like yours might have to lose shoulder privileges. Or maybe he does it after a certain amount of time and you can beat him to it by removing him before he has the chance to bite?

I know there are triggers, but sometimes it could just be anything.

Green cheeks have this extremely subtle body language and they can be hard to read. Puffy and muttering is easy to read but usually once you get there the bird is already biting and you missed the initial "warning" body language. There is a pre-puffy pre-bite indicator that is extremely small but when I see it I know to leave my GCC alone: he'll flip his wings.

It's ever so slight, and unless you're really looking for it, it's so fast and small you won't see it, but it's there. If I really press him he'll do it more than once and if I keep bothering him that's when the puffy nipping will start. I'm not saying that I provoke him on purpose but this is just looking back on the past before I noticed the wing flip and one day I saw it, didn't know what it was, kept going, and he got into puffy nippy mode and I put it together.

Basically he'll lift his wings up and away from his body (maybe half a centimeter, it's such a small distance) and flip them back down really quickly. It's a pre-bite indicator and it's the only one mine gives. He stands very still like a statue and none of the feathers move and the head doesn't move but the wings give a little flip. Watch your green cheek and see if you can catch him doing this. If you see this, back off! LOL

Since he can fly, when he's out of his cage, he's on or very near me.

Green cheeks are very clingly. Do you have a playstand for him? If so you can put that in the same room with you, hang some toys on it, and then use positive reinforcement to get him to stay there. Place him on it, click, reward. Walk away. If he follows you place him back on the stand, click, reward. Gradually extend the time he has to sit on the perch before he gets a reward.

[friend2parrots]

wow Andromeda, thank you so much for sharing how you manage your GCC's clinginess, esp. the part about teaching him to land somewhere *in advance* of you. this is an AWESOME idea - i have been struggling with the "following me all over the house while clinging to my shirt" issue for sometime now and I think your idea is going to be the solution!

For example, I taught him to land on the banister on the stop of the stairs. I also taught him to land on the banister on the bottom of the stairs. Now when I'm going downstairs when I leave the room he beats me to the punch and passes me by and lands on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. When I go upstairs it's the opposite, he beats me upstairs and lands on the banister up there.I put a t-stand in the living room and taught him to land there, so when he sees that I'm going into the living room he'll fly past me and land on the t-stand. He has a manzanita tree in the den and when he sees that I'm headed for the den he flies past me and lands on that.Basically instead of clinging to me he catches up with me and predicts where I'm going and is always ahead of me now, waiting for me when I get there on my slow legs.

I pictured this in my mind as I read this, and it is just too cute for words!!!

mack0311, i think you are going to find Andromeda's post a lifesaver. +1 !!!

[Andromeda]

wow Andromeda, thank you so much for sharing how you manage your GCC's clinginess, esp. the part about teaching him to land somewhere *in advance* of you. this is an AWESOME idea - i have been struggling with the "following me all over the house while clinging to my shirt" issue for sometime now and I think your idea is going to be the solution!

I'm glad my post was helpful. I hope it can help both you and Mack. I do a lot of training with my conure and he doesn't bite anymore (he was becoming a biter) and I feel like a big step was getting him to use up some of that crazy energy that GCCs seem to have in flight instead of being nippy.

I got tired of him flying after me and clinging to my hair (he liked to land on my head) so I used Michael's training perches and targeting to teach him to recall to my hand. Once he was doing that reliably---he learned in one day---I'd just turn around and face him when I heard wings behind me, hold my arm straight out (like Michael does in his flight recall videos), and my GCC would alter course and land on my hand. Then I would carry him around on my hand. That's step 1!

I really wanted to encourage the free flight, though, for exercise, confidence, and mental stimulation which is why I set up perches and landing zones and used recall to teach him to land in those places. That way he could do what a bird is supposed to do and fly to get where he wanted to go instead of clinging to my hair or just sitting on my hand.

I can and do still carry him around on my hand sometimes and he will stay there but if I want him to fly instead I just start walking toward the door and I say, "Come on, Bubba!" He knows that means I'm leaving and not going to carry him around.

He's an extremely accomplished flier for a bird that was not allowed to fly until he was with me and my husband at age 3. He usually skips the banisters now and just flies right to the living room from the den and vice versa---this means coming out of one room, doing a very sharp 180, flying up or down the stairs, doing another sharp 180, and then flying into the final room and landing at his destination all in one flight.

It's amazing to watch and it really makes my heart soar to see him being a happy bird. As I said, he figures out where I'm going and beats me there and when he sees me enter the room he stands up really tall on his perch and lets out a very excited, "HI, B!" ("B" is his nickname).

[friend2parrots]

I really wanted to encourage the free flight, though, for exercise, confidence, and mental stimulation which is why I set up perches and landing zones and used recall to teach him to land in those places. That way he could do what a bird is supposed to do and fly to get where he wanted to go instead of clinging to my hair or just sitting on my hand.

what you've stated here is so important - i totally agree that getting a bird to free fly more, through such techniques as youve suggested, is a fundamental part of solving all kinds of behavioral problems, as well as keeping a bird healthy.

I can and do still carry him around on my hand sometimes and he will stay there but if I want him to fly instead I just start walking toward the door and I say, "Come on, Bubba!" He knows that means I'm leaving and not going to carry him around.

this is great - it shows that so much of keeping a bird well behaved relies on establishing good communication with it, and setting up a "language" of commands/phrases that let the bird know what you need it to do.

He's an extremely accomplished flier for a bird that was not allowed to fly until he was with me and my husband at age 3. He usually skips the banisters now and just flies right to the living room from the den and vice versa---this means coming out of one room, doing a very sharp 180, flying up or down the stairs, doing another sharp 180, and then flying into the final room and landing at his destination all in one flight.It's amazing to watch and it really makes my heart soar to see him being a happy bird.

i love watching Ringo fly too - not only is it beautiful to watch, but its actually very relaxing for me. this is because Ringo is his best behaved, focused, relaxed, and independent-minded self when he's flying and doing flight exercises. and when we're done with the flight exercises, that calm state of mind stays with him for a while, and he's not as pesky and clingy for a good deal of time afterwards. Like so many other people on this forum, i really do feel that flight exercises are KEY to keeping a bird well behaved.

[mack0311]

Everyone: Thanks a million for the techniques and advice. I'll keep you posted

[Andromeda]

As an experiment to see if you're still feeding too much (even though in just 2 meals. Try this to see if it's possible to make him desperate enough for food that this will work. One day, skip the morning meal entirely or make it very small that you are 100% certain he didn't get enough. For example if your normally give unlimited but timed meal, give him just a few bites worth of pellets. Then in the evening, lock the meal in the cage by closing all the doors and see if he's going over to the cage trying to get in himself... if he is, you'll be his hero for giving him access to it. Anyway, try this once or twice and see if it helps. If it does, you may need some stricter food management but not in the way described here. This is just a short term test to see if food motivation could help. Let me know how it goes.

This was a great idea and I was hoping it would work but apparently my GCC would rather go hungry than go in his cage nicely. I skipped the morning meal three days in a row and in the evening he still resisted going into his cage for food.

As a side note I had him at the vet on Friday for his annual check-up and I asked about his weight (76 grams) and the vet examined him and said that he wasn't underweight, but was on the thin side and "could probably even go up to 80 grams" without it being an issue so I'm not feeding too much.

The good news is that I got a new and different hand-held perch and for some unknown reason since I've been using that perch to put him in his cage he hasn't flown away once. Fingers crossed that will continue to be the case.

I still wonder about the specific cage. It's big and roomy for a GCC but I wonder if he hates it specifically because he was locked inside of it almost 24/7 for a year and a half. He doesn't even want to sleep in there and I know this because one night his food door was accidentally left unlatched (but not open) and when I uncovered his cage in the morning there he was, sleeping outside of his cage perched on the seed guard. Apparently after he is covered at some point he makes rounds to see if he can get out! That's how much he hates it!

Would a new cage---one without unpleasant associations---possibly make any difference or is it just that he hates being caged at all?