by Wolf » Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:26 pm
I have no idea as to what is an inappropriate time, this may be due to the fact that I also have other animals in the house and because of this, if I don't have time to watch over my birds they are tucked away safely in their cages. On the same note, I am presently working on installing new flooring throughout the majority of my house and Kiki, my Senegal, has decided that her place while I am doing this, is on my shoulder or at the base of my neck on my back, where she isn't shaken up to much while I drive the pieces of flooring into place and secure them. Is this an inappropriate time or merely inconvenient and to whom?
I also know that you can't train a parrot all day and if you persist in trying to do so that you end up with a bird that resents training and will end up biting when you attempt to train them any further.
I know that when a bird is young it is very forgiving and you can get away with things that you can't with an adult bird and I know that when a bird is deprived of its primary means of escape from danger or undesired behavior that it realizes that it must comply to a greater degree than it normally would to the undesired behaviors that are forced upon it. I know that even the clipped bird will only be forced so far before it refuses further undesired behaviors and resorts to biting.
What you are not seeing here is the difference in the way that you think and respond to things and the way that these birds think and respond to things. This further complicates things because things that to you are normal, and appropriate are to a bird not only abnormal and inappropriate, but also abusive to them. You and I are predators and we think like predators, we live in a social framework created by predators for predators. Parrots are not predators, they do not think or act like predators and do not live in a social framework by and for predators. You should think about this a little bit.
Consider, if you will, that you have three birds, one who may or may not have some serious medical problems to contend with and you are having problems with the other two and you have no idea as to why you are having these problems or how to address them properly. Honestly, the problems that you are having and the problems that most of the people that ask for help in solving with their birds are mostly caused by this difference in how we think. In some ways it is quite amusing and in others it is very frustrating for everyone involved, human and bird alike.
Humans and dogs, and even cats all live and think in familiar patterns and for similar reasons, for all practical purposes we basically understand each other. This makes it pretty easy for us to live together. We all have our places, from the alphas on down, we all fall into line and accept this. We mostly do the things that our alphas/ leaders tell us to do.
Birds are different than this, the way that they think is as alien to us as if they came from another planet. Well they don't come from another planet, but they do come from a different world, or more precisely from a different worldview than we do. They do not have alphas/ leaders, and they do things not because they are told to, they do things because they choose to.
When we train a bird, we think that we are teaching the bird what to do, that is our perspective, but from their perspective, it is a different ball park. From their perspective we teach them how to do what we want them to do for us, they then choose to do that or not to do that for us. They choose to do things for us because we give them something they want or because they want to, probably because they love us and like to see us happy. Take a little time and think about this.