GREY FISHER
Vibrating device might stop screaming
 My two-year-old sun conure screams constantly if I'm not in the room with him. I'm thinking of attaching a remote-controlled vibrating device to his cage. Every time he screams loudly I can press the remote and activate the vibrating device. Would I be reinforcing his screaming behavior? Would there be any negative effects If I do this?
-- Ed and Dinah, Escondido, Calif.
 SCREAMING IS NATURAL parrot behavior. We can reduce it but we can never eliminate it. It would be like asking a person not to talk. Some species of birds - cockatoos, macaws and Aratinga conures among them - can be very vocal, while others have a bit less to say.
Excessive screaming, as you've found out, is very often done for the benefit of the very person who dislikes it the most. I knew someone whose blue-front Amazon was quiet as a pionus whenever she wasn't at home, but the second she walked through the door we needed ear plugs. Screaming frequently becomes the best way to get attention for parrots. Muttering quietly to themselves seldom gets the fun reaction of having their favorite human come running into the room, waving their arms wildly, and making lots of fun noise with them!
Your remote vibrating device sounds like a high-tech version of another method I once heard about for quieting a loud macaw. This person ran a string from the leg of the bird's cage all the way down the hall into the bedroom. When the macaw screamed at the break of dawn, the owner would tug the string to jerk the cage, and the bird would stop screaming. Since the bird had no concept of why the cage was moving, an unpleasant sensation for him, he must have assumed it had something to do with his screaming. So your idea could work.
However, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't suggest that a better option is to find out a few things. First, is the screaming truly excessive, or is it normal for a conure? Second, are you unwittingly reinforcing the screaming? If so, what can you do to stop the reinforcement and reduce the screaming? More often than not, our own behavior influences our birds the most!
This column has addressed screaming before. When my old boss, Steve Martin of Natural Encounters, Inc., was writing Behavior for ParrotChronicles.com, he offered some really great tips on how to quiet a noisy parrot in the archive article, Parrots can be a real scream.
Good luck with your conure. They might be small but conures have some of the most impressive personalities - with the voice to go along with them!
Grey Fisher is a trainer at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. Previously he was a trainer with Natural Encounters, Inc., a world-renowned organization that helps zoos all over the world train birds and many other types of animals using positive reinforcement.
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