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Goffin's cockatoo got too much early attention
Help! My three-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo has run everyone from the living room. She screams nonstop. The sound actually hurts our eardrums. She stops when I take her out of her cage to play with her. Everyone is telling me to get rid of her. That thought just breaks my heart. Is there any help for Willow and her family?
-- Jamie
THERE WAS A TIME when I approached cases similar to these three with specific strategies to replace the screaming. I planned a specific distraction to stimulate an alternate behavior before the unwanted behavior usually began, then reinforced that behavior. This works, of course, for the particular behavior, but it's sort of like treating a symptom instead of treating a disease. Or like treating a disturbed child and not treating the family environment that disturbed the child in the first place. As long as their owners take immediate action, the first couple of screamers here — the green-cheek and sun conures — probably have not missed the window of opportunity for developing independent self-rewarding behavior. In other words, with comfort food and encouragement toward independence, they should stop screaming.
Willow's behavior has developed beyond the stage during which a bird sometimes retains the desire for warmth – but it could have its roots in the same fertile soil: our human desire to nurture juvenile parrots as we would a puppy or kitten.
Again, we're missing some information here, but if Willow is like the hundreds of similar Goffin's cockatoo cases I've seen in the last 25 years, she simply has not yet learned how to entertain herself.
Companion parrots generally spend their days engaging in one or more of the following types of behavior with humans:
A well-adjusted bird is capable of engaging in a balance of these three types of behaviors depending on its circumstances. If it's the only bird in a family and enjoys daily handling, then it can spend most of its time in face-to-face or side-by-side behaviors. If it lives in a home where it isn't handled frequently, it knows how to stay busy.
Failure to learn to play independently probably causes most attention-demanding screaming found in "pre-teen" parrots such as Willow. How did this happen? Willow probably got a lot of attention during the time she normally would have developed independent play - between the ages of six and eighteen months in most mid-size parrots. She has learned to demand face-to-face interaction whenever humans (her favorite toy) are around to the exclusion of all other ways of spending her time.
You can easily stop Willow's screaming when you are home by stimulating new behavior and reinforcing it. However, reinforcing behavior is a form of interaction. For true success here, Willow must learn to play alone. That can be difficult in a three-year old Goffin's cockatoo with set expectations.
Begin bringing Willow's behavior back into balance with exercise. Goffin's cockatoos are extremely active birds. In the wild they are seldom still. Like other island cockatoos (including umbrella and Moluccan), Goffin's also spend a lot of time in the rain. In companion settings, Goffin's need tons of exercise, play opportunities and chances to get wet. It they don't they become increasingly high strung (or what some people would call nervous).
Even if you can't take Willow to the barn and let her fly a few dozen laps, you can help her to express some of her natural exuberance. Try encouraging her to flap on your hand or giving her more shower baths. If Willow has not bathed in a long time and has accumulated a lot of powder down, it might take several gallons of water to get her truly wet the first time. Use a quart spray mister. Mist gets birds with powder down wetter than drops because the latter are larger and have more surface tension, which makes them tend to roll off the feathers. Treat Willow to several consecutive days of multiple showers (most cockatoos love this).
After exercise or bathing, Willow will probably rest, during which time she will be less vocal. Take advantage of these times to reinforce quiet behavior and to set an example of the volume you prefer. Speak softly, engage her with interactive toys hung at beak level, and praise her for speaking softly and playing with those toys.
If Willow is fed on a schedule, you can reinforce her good behavior with her favorite food treats. However, if she is free fed, then like most cockatoos she is likely to throw or drop food rather than eat it. In this case you will probably have to use affection almost exclusively as a reinforcer. (When it comes to managing their behavior, companion cockatoos benefit from being schedule fed more than any other parrot!)
Later you can substitute other distractions such as toys, branches with bark, and puzzle toys she has to work to extract food from. Again, be sure to offer the distractions before unwanted behaviors appear so that you can reinforce behavior you want (rather than run the risk of reinforcing unwanted behavior). If unwanted behaviors appear, ignore them and put Willow back in her cage. Don't forget to model appropriate behavior. If people in the room whisper when Willow screams, then she will lower her volume to hear what they are saying and copy their behavior. This replaces loud vocalizations with low-volume ones.
A focused plan to provide replacement behaviors can bring about quieter behavior in a very short time. Simply ignoring the screaming is an iffy proposition with few means of telling whether you're achieving success or not. Humans need reinforcement, too, and seeing that a bird is adopting replacement behavior shows us that we are on the right track, even if there's still some screaming going on.
Let me know how things go for you. Look for more on distractions, schedule feeding, and the development of independent self-rewarding behavior in coming ParrotChronicle.com's columns. More detailed information about the development of independence also is available in my book Parrots: a Complete Pet Owner's Manual.
ParrotChronicles.com
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