Parrot Books

[DustyTheGrey]

Hi Michael,

The Parrot Problem Solver by Barbara Heidenreich

I immensely enjoyed Michael's book, but before his my favourite was The Parrot Problem Solver.
The name is misleading, from the amazon reviews I could see that people bought it thinking that there would be an individual solution for specific problems.
But I loved it because it was the first basic parrot book I read that dealt, in large part, with aggression and the use of positive and negative reinforcement to solve it.
It made me think of aggression in a whole new way.

It's not a perfect book, but the content was refreshing and after reading the kindle version I bought the hardcover version and made all my family read it.

[marie83]

Since this threads been resurrected I thought I would comment.

I tend to read parrot journals, websites and papers more than books these days. I cant remember which ones off hand but I have several books on budgies and 'tiels and a couple of books on quakers and conures. To be honest I didn't find any of the books particularly useful at all, they helped give me a starting point but the information in them was basic, really outdated and tbh I started questioning the morals and expertise of the authors more and more the longer I kept parrots. Apart from that I have a few random species book, one called the second hand parrot? etc.

That said I have just bought "of parrots and people" though I haven't had chance to read it yet.

When I get chance I want to get:
Michaels book (are there any UK stockists yet or am I still looking at getting it shipped over specially?)
Barbara Heidenreich books
Liz Wilsons avian articles 1 & 2
There are a few others I don't remember the titles of but have them jotted down somewhere.

[JaydeParrot]

An odd book I've got called Taming and Training Parrots by Dr. Edward J. Mulawka.

I think it was written sometime in the 1970s, it talks a bit about taming and training but most of it is more a referance for what different species look like and what their charcters are like.

You can tell it's an old book as it refers to smaller birds as being less capable of learning tricks and words. The book also talks about how that parrot trade works (guess it was still legal at that point), it talks about being careful buying birds from pet shop as they may die shortly after being brought (apparently all birds were brought from the wild and quarrantined before being sold to a pet shop).

I could go on, needless to say it doesn't really apply as much to the way parrots are thought about and cared for today, but it does provide a good history of how people acted around and viewed parrots at that time.

Personally I'd say if you wanted a history on how people got, sold and viewed birds back then (it is quite interesting) then this would be a good book, but I haven't felt moved to use hardly any of the taming or training tips shown in this book.