Young Alexandrine Loud Chirp

[eggplantbren]

Hi all,

We just got a young (3.5 months old) male hand-reared Alexandrine. So far he's been pretty good apart from one or two issues. The major one is that his dinosaur-like chirps are rather loud and frequent. Occasionally we can tell why he's doing it, such as one of us leaving the room. Another time he appeared to want to fly but can't because his wings are clipped (we are planning to never clip them again). Apart from these two situations it seems fairly random.

We've done a ton of research on this and have tried a few techniques such as praising/rewarding quietness and/or alternative soft vocalisations, and not paying him attention until he goes quiet. We did some timing and decided to praise him for 20 seconds of silence, but the moment we'd turn to him he'd do the noise again.

We've only had him for a few days and we like him very much but this noise is already getting on our nerves. We know that we should expect him to make loud noise sometimes but it does seem a bit much right now. Any ideas?

[friend2parrots]

sounds to me as though he's just trying to keep in touch with you while he's getting used to his new home. its a contact call, and young birds do it especially frequently, because they are programmed by mother nature to keep in touch vocally with their parents at this stage in their lives.

your bird is just past fledgling hood, so in his mind, he is an active bird who needs to be in touch with his flock. he may not understand why he can't move around the way his brain tells him he's supposed to move around at this age. since he came to you clipped, its likely that he never fledged (learned to fly).

i'm sure youve heard about how birds that dont wean properly have certain exaggerated begging behaviors, etc. in a similar fashion, birds that dont have a chance to fledge exhibit certain exaggerated vocal behaviors, i think. unfledged birds are extra anxious to not lose touch with you, so theyll be more vocal. its a survival thing for your young bird, who is extra anxious not being able to fly.

i think this chirping thing its something that will pass as his wings grow out, and as he forms a bond with you and your family. he'll realize that his flock is really not going anywhere, that you all live together in the same big cage (your house). once that dawns on him, i am sure he will settle down.

so my advice would be just to be patient with him... (if he's from a breeder, you should also confirm if he has been properly weaned. there are people on this forum who know what to feed young birds that are not weaned properly to comfort them, hopefully they can help you on that front if thats an issue, just to rule that out --

in any case, good luck with your new bird!

[eggplantbren]

Hi friend2parrots, thanks very much for your thoughtful and detailed reply! There's some information that I left out that is probably relevant, especially regarding fledging...

When we picked him up we actually found out that he had escaped from the breeders (!) and had been flying free for two days before being caught again. Then, before we got him, they clipped his wings. So he certainly knows what it's like to fly properly, and we think that some of his noises might be because of frustration at not being able to get around.

Another interesting thing that suggests it might not be a contact call (or maybe I'm just mistaken here) is that if we go upstairs and leave him downstairs, he becomes silent. Then he makes the chirp the second we step into the room. It makes rewarding him for silence really hard, because he makes the noise the instant he sees us!

I hope you are right that it will pass as he gets more comfortable with us and our house!

[cml]

It sounds like you are doing pretty well, but personally, we had no luck with rewarding silence or ignoring screaming. Stitch used to do his contact call when he was a baby, but we trained him to only use a wolf whistle as his contact call.

What you do is that you choose a sound he makes that you like, and then you praise him for that, and nothing else. Ignore everything else, but as soon as he makes that sound, RUN (and I mean that you should really RUN) to him, praise him, give him treats and make a big fuss. Its important that he realizes that this was because of the sound you are trying to get him to use, hence the need for speed.

As I said, ignore everything else.

In our case we had to do it this way, as just ignoring the screaming got us nowhere, where as this completely removed the screaming issue in a matter of weeks.

[eggplantbren]

Thanks everyone for the tips.

He seems to have been a little bit less noisy today (although he still made his noise about 4x more than would be ideal) and we've been working on ignoring him even for a couple of seconds when he makes the noise, then saying good boy if he stays silent for a few seconds.

We would love to be able to praise an alternative noise but he doesn't really make any! He has made voice-ish squeaks about three times since we've had him, and we have praised it, it's just few and far between. Interestingly, one time he started making it was when we had a hand poised above his head which he didn't like (we've been working on getting him to accept a bit of handling, that's going OK).

[cml]

Start whistling, they pick up on it fast! Another tip is to show him youtube videos, almost all of Stitch's talk comes from his youtube idols.

[eggplantbren]

Is it a myth that whistling means less chance of talking later?

Also I started a thread about videos...accidentally scared him with one yesterday!!!

[cml]

Is it a myth that whistling means less chance of talking later?

Also I started a thread about videos...accidentally scared him with one yesterday!!!

I have no idea, first I hear of it. Stitch talks alot and the first thing he learned was a wolf whistle. After that came the magic flute opera, and then he didnt learn any new things other than yes and no for about a year. During this last summer and fall though, he's been learning constantly and says a number of things.

[liannez]

I'm eggplanbren's partner. Update: we've been working really hard to ignore the loud noises and encourage ANYTHING else (he actually makes a voice noise sometimes which we go crazy for). It didn't work at all for a few days, in fact everything got worse, but then we took him to the vet, he stayed overnight, and when he came back, he was much better. He still has his moments, but I think we're all figuring each other out!

[eggplantbren]

Yep, noise-wise things have gotten a lot better very rapidly. He's gone from about 500 loud squawks a day to more like 20 (very rough guesses there). Our sanity levels are recovering fairly well, touch wood.

I did try whistling to him a few times in case it might have been easier for him as an alternative to the loud chirp. He hasn't whistled yet, but we were very amused when he did a wolf whistle tune using his speaking voice!