7 month old Congo Grey - Frightened

[nightjars]

Hello all - I have a question regarding a baby Congo Grey that I brought home just 1 week ago. She is very friendly and has been well socialized to not be fearful of people, but I was hoping to get some help regarding a couple of behavioral patterns she is showing that could become a problem if I don't work with her on them.

The first problem isn't a huge deal, but I am not sure exactly how to respond when it happens. She is very strong-willed about when she wants to step up. I have begun working with her on basic birdie training with a clicker to help her understand how clicker training works, and she will always step up and step off my hand when I ask her to in those situations. However, when she is in her cage, or when she is very comfortably perched in her play area, she is very inconsistent about when she will be compliant. If she wants to step up - she does quite happily. If she doesn't, she will just stand there and ignore me. If I ask too many times, she will pinch my finger (not a bite, she is always very gentle, but enough to tell me that she isn't interested). If she's in her cage, I just let her be and see if she's feeling more sociable in a few minutes, which she normally is. But, if she's in a location that I can't just leave her in, it can be a problem. Last time when I was trying to take her back to her cage for the night, she wouldn't step up for me. I tried offering a small reward if she were to comply, but she would simply try reaching as far as she could to try taking the treat out of my hand, but wouldn't step up onto my hand to get it. I eventually had to insist and put her foot on my hand, and then she begrudgingly came along with me. Everything I have read has indicated that you do not want to force the bird, so I am trying to figure out a more positive way to encourage her to not resist. Any help would be appreciated! On a side note, I always offer positive attention and take the "scenic route" before taking her from somewhere she wants to be back to her cage, to try to prevent her from associating me asking her to come with me to me putting her in her cage. It just seems that when she is comfortable, she doesn't want to go anywhere.

The second problem that I am hoping somebody can help me with is a bit more serious - she is extremely fearful. It seems to me that she must not have been exposed to much chaos and change when she lived at the breeder's shop, and as a result, she nearly panics when I re-arrange things in her cage, add something to her environment that she's suspicious of - I have even had to start closing the blinds on the windows, or she will be paralyzed with fear. I'm hoping with the blinds, I will simply be able to over the next few days open them up little by little (they are side-hanging blinds which the angle that they open into can be adjusted, so it is easy to progressively make more and more of the window visible). I tried to cover her cage to help block out some light (we're having very long days up in the northern latitudes, and I had read that parrots do best with more than just 7.5 hours of darkness per night), and she panicked about that, as well. When she's panicking, she'll stand in her cage, beak half-open, looking like she's waiting for something to come for her, and making sure that she's ready to defend herself. I wouldn't dare try to touch her when she's doing this, I am certain that she would bite me out of fear. My goal with her is to get her comfortable with her travel cage so I can take her outside and try to expose her to as many new experiences as possible, but at the moment, I am having a very hard time trying to decide how far I should nudge her towards things she is uncomfortable with without causing her to be even more fearful of new experiences. No other bird I have had has been like this - I even had another Grey a long time ago, and he was pretty laid back with doing just about anything. He'd panic from time to time (in fact, the only times he bit hard enough to draw blood was when he was panicking), but my new baby Grey seems to be quite a bit more fearful of the world. Any suggestions for how to try to desensitize her? How can I recognize when I am crossing a threshold of something that she'll bounce back from and hopefully become less fearful, and when I am damaging her and likely to cause her to become more fearful?

Thanks for any advice or insight!

[Pajarita]

I am sure that Michael will have lots of useful tips to give you but, in my personal experience (and I have to mention here that I've never had a young bird as all of mine are rehomes, rescues or adoptions and came to me already adults), grays are VERY difficult to 'desensitize' as they are naturally high-strung birds that do not react well to change. Having said that, I change things in the birdoom all the time and have had up to six grays at one time and they never had a single reaction to anything from them but my birds have freedom 24/7/365 and a flock so it's not the same as a pet bird.

Now, if you think that you are fooling her by taking the 'scenic route', you are fooling yourself. They are much smarter than that and I am sure she knows what you want and that's why she doesn't want to step up for you. Give her dinner (I hope you don't free-feed her protein food) only inside her cage so she will gladly go into it and let her get sleepy naturally by exposing her to a full twilight (from the time the sun is very low on the horizon to the point where you can hardly see without artificial light -which, of course, should be turned off during the entire time) and she will go to sleep on her own and without any strife. The idea that parrots need 12 hours of sleep all year round has been debunked a long time ago and I don't know why people in birdsites keep on repeating it. 12L/12D (12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark) is an antiquated method which does not stop the birds from producing sexual hormones all year round, something VERY bad for them as it screws up their entire endocrine system and makes them sexually frustrated. Keeping them to a strict natural daylight schedule is much healthier because it keeps their bodies tuned with the seasons as nature intended for them.

PS If she 'pinches' your fingers/hands/etc, you are pestering her. Ask her twice for what you want and, if she doesn't want to do it, don't ask again. Parrots are not dogs, they are not hard-wired to obey or even please anybody but themselves so when you insist (even if it's something that needs to be done), you are pestering them and they resent it. The trick is to find the way for them to want to do what you want them to do without them realizing it.

[nightjars]

Thank you for your insight. Last night we did find a way to get her to willingly come down from her favorite rope perch in the play area, we tried a couple of times, she refused, so we took the other bird back to his cage and left her alone for a few minutes, came back upstairs, and she decided she wanted to come down.

We were trying to do target training with her, and after a couple of tries, she got very scared of the stick. We ended the training session as soon as she started showing distress, but the next day, she freaked out after just seeing the stick. I did read Michael's posting on how to work with a bird that is afraid of a target stick, so we're just going to start over from that perspective and try to get her used to the target stick from afar and see how it goes. She came from the shop clipped; after reading many people's posts here about confidence in clipped birds, I am interested in seeing how she responds if she's able to fly away from the training perch anytime she starts feeling uncomfortable, that way we can't accidentally try pushing her too hard. So, for now, we're back just doing step-up and step-downs for her training sessions, which she is quite willing to do and seems to actually enjoy.

Thanks for your advice about day/night. In the past, this is what I always did with my birds, but after a few years of being bird-less, I decided to begin researching anew when I started considering getting birds again. Sadly I have been finding much contradictory information out there, but I suppose that is to be expected.

[GreenWing]

Hi there, congrats on your new baby. Pajarita gives some great advice, and there are some Grey owners on this site who will likely add a comment. I don't own a Grey but a robust Sennie, and what I can advise is to give your bird more time to settle in. Your bird is still getting to know you and its surroundings, and Greys are sensitive as is. Give your bird more time, don't focus on target and trick trainings right now as much as settling and bonding. Resume training when you and your Grey feel settled and more comfortable. Because really, you're still a stranger to your bird.

[Pajarita]

Yes, Greenwing is absolutely right and I should have said something about that, too. One week is nothing for a parrot. Take your time, don't rush things. Get the bird to trust you and like you (it will turn to love) first. Show her the same respect you would a human being - I know this sounds a bit off the wall but these are highly intelligent animal with a very strong sense of self so training has to be something THEY want to do and this means not imposing it on them. This is a very young and VERY new bird, she needs to find her place in her new home so, please, no training for now, wait a couple of months before you start and don't flood her, go little by little and keep the session short and do them mid-morning or mid-afternoon (those are the times they are the most receptive for interaction). Parrots are not dogs, they don't need to do tricks to be lovable or to have a good relationship with a human (not that dogs need it either).

[nightjars]

Thanks for the encouragement and advice, GreenWing and Pajarita. I've been giving her more space over the last couple of days, and she seems to be appreciating it. Yesterday she willingly came upstairs with us, and was actually quite happy and content with us in the evening. Happy noises, flapping wings, ripping toys apart. Much more like the bird I met when she was in the shop..

I agree completely with the training - I don't want to push it on her at all.. If she wants to do it, great. If not, that's fine too. What's really interesting is Beaker, our Senegal , which we got at the same time as her (they knew each other from the shop and got along pretty well, so we actually brought them both home at the same time) has taken quite a liking to training - he loves target training, and just about anything else we want to teach him (until he gets bored, which usually happens after about 10 minutes). Tika (the Grey) watches with great interest when we're doing training sessions with Beaker. Its quite interesting to watch her reactions when she is watching Beaker train.