I'VE ALWAYS wondered what hiring a bird "therapist" might be like. Are Louie, my blue-and-gold macaw, and Nelson, my lory, really happy? Am I happy with them?
They're birds with all the flaws of birds being made to live inside a house and I accept that, so I don't have too many complaints about my guys. But something clearly is awry with how Louie is feeling. I'd like someone - anyone - to help me figure out why he pulls his feathers out.
To get an idea of different working styles, I tried two consultants. I received a full consultation from one, Pam Clark, and only sampled the other, Charlie Harding. Here are their stories:
EXPECTING EASY answers from a parrot behavior consultation is a little like joining the Marines hoping for a desk job. Unless your bird's housing, diet and handling come close to the consultant's idea of perfection, expect to undergo some basic training.
Contrary to my own advice, I didn't spend a lot of time choosing my behavior consultant, but I didn't think I needed to. Pamela Clark, a consultant who lives in Atascadero, Calif., specializes in feather picking problems, and although she’s only been in business for six years (compared with 10, 20 or 30 years like some of her colleagues), she seemed like the perfect fit for me.
Our free introductory phone consultation and an e-mail she sent seemed to confirm I'd made the right choice. Pam was forthright but friendly and said a lot of sensible things I agree with. I liked that she believes we should let pet birds behave naturally as much as possible, appreciate them for coping as well as they do in our homes, and enjoy the magic they bring into our lives.
100 cases a year
Pam got her start in behavior consulting as an African grey breeder who quickly found herself spending a lot of personal time answering questions about behavior. After a few years she heeded colleagues' advice and began charging for her services. She now consults with an average of 100 owners annually from all over the world on feather picking and the rest of the usual laundry list of parrot problems: phobias, aggression, screaming.
Pam likes to review veterinary records in feather-picking cases, so before we had our first paid session I sent her Louie's.
I also sent back a 14-page questionnaire that asked detailed questions about previous owners, cage size, perches, toys, home temperature, picking habits, sleep patterns, screaming, feather condition, breath, droppings and roommates, and much, much more. I worked on it off and on for several days.
I had hoped Pam could drive up the coast to do a home visit, but Atascadero is four hours south of where I live in the San Francisco Bay area, out of her preferred range.
Before our phone call, scheduled for 2 p.m. on a Thursday, I had trouble imagining the conversation lasting more than an hour. I was that sure Louie received near-perfect care. Boy, was I wrong.
Probably not a physical cause
Pam has a vet technician look over medical records with her. She said they saw "strange results" in some of Louie's year-old blood tests, which might indicate a bacterial infection at the time. My veterinarian had said the results were fine.
Despite her concerns, Pam didn't seem to think I needed to rush Louie to the vet right away. She did suggest I get another test for giardia done, in case Louie had picked this parasite up since his last checkup. Although Louie's picking patterns don't suggest it, a giardia infection can cause feather plucking.
I was surprised to learn I could test Louie for giardia myself by ordering a $5 kit from www.birdsafestore.com.
Pam said she doubted Louie picked because of disease. "He’s bored out of his skull," she told me, despite several hours of liberty a day, lots of attention from me and Paul, and lots of toys.
Other possible causes, she said, were malnutrition, hormones and residual anxiety from being passed around previous homes.
Hormones and anxiety I could understand, maybe. (Another consultant told me hormones never cause picking, and five years seemed like plenty of time for Louie to recover from emotional trauma.)
But malnutrition? I was feeding Louie Mike's Manna Mash every day, the healthiest selection of vegetables and fruits he had ever received. Pam said the culprit was all the nuts we gave Louie - as many as 10 a day - and suggested I use pistachios only for clicker training, one of the activities she thinks might make his life more interesting.
Changing Louie's life
Pam had several suggestions for lowering Louie's hormone level. For one, the mash I was feeding him probably contained too much protein, she said. Second, he was getting too charged up from riding around on Paul's shoulder.
She also suggested we remove all the "nests" Louie has around the house. So he won't chew on the wooden kitchen cabinets and furniture downstairs, we've provided him with small towels he can play with and chew on. Sometimes he falls asleep in these towel-lined cubbyholes.
Pam thought Louie's cage was too small. It's a fairly standard macaw cage, or so I thought, of not quite five feet tall by three feet wide by two feet deep. I'm not sure how we'll fit a bigger one in our cramped Victorian house.
At the end of two hours, we still had not covered everything Pam wanted to talk about, and I was a little shell shocked, although when Pam commented, "You sound a little beleaguered," I told her I was fine.
Paul was dismayed, too, when I told him about the recommended changes. "Don’t we do anything right?" he asked.
There was some good news. I was relieved Pam did not think Louie would ever self-mutilate, something I have worried about. I was also glad to hear that she did not think Louie's roommate, a lory who screams at him incessantly, was driving him to pick. There's no other place in the house we could put Nelson.
Step by step
After our consultation, Pam e-mailed me several of her articles and further information on some of the things we had talked about.
So far, the only suggested change I've had time to implement is cutting Louie's pistachio intake down to a couple of nuts a day. He wasn't very happy about it at first, but I've been amazed at how much it's freed up his appetite for other kinds of foods, which I have to admit are healthier for him.
I've gotten over my initial shock, and I plan to try Pam's other suggestions one by one. After all, I asked her, and she told me. Now it's up to me to see if her ideas will help my bird.
IT WAS AN OFFER I couldn’t refuse: call a toll-free number and get a free consultation with a parrot "behaviorist." The free consultation part wasn't what lured me - most behavior consultants offer free introductory sessions. It was the 800 line, open 24 hours a day - now that was a really great perk. How could I say no?
Screaming, biting and plucking were this guy's specialties. I'll take plucking, please.
The kit
The enterprising bird expert who offers this unusual service is Charlie Harding, owner of the Seattle Parrot Market, a 19-year-old retail shop that's located in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market.
According to his Web site, Charlie's store sells parrots and a wide range of bird supplies and books. Some of the latter are also available online, which I suspected might somehow all-too-conveniently tie into the free consultation. But what really fired my imagination was something called the Behavior Modification Kit. What on earth could this be? ("A hammer?" my cynical husband suggested.)
Before I bagged my free phone consultation, I decided it might be a good idea to call the toll-free "Parrot Audio Text Line" listed on the site. This lets you choose from among a series of introductory recordings by Charlie, including an 11-minute message that describes what to expect from the consultation and a 15-minute message about the Behavior Modification Kit.
With his authoritative but pleasant speaking voice, Charlie is a compelling salesman who knows all the right buttons to push when addressing distraught parrot owners. He empathizes with our search for elusive answers to behavior problems. He generously credits vets, pet stores and others in the bird business as being helpful sources of some information.
But Charlie touts himself, someone with 15 years of experience with parrots of all types, as the one who knows what all the causes for bad behaviors are and what all the remedies for each of these causes are.
The free consultation, Charlie promises, will identify a few of your bird's problems. However, to find out how to solve these problems, you have to buy his Behavior Modification Kit.
Call now for pricing
Enter prerecorded message number two. This message reveals the Behavior Modification Kit's contents (the first Seattle Parrot Market Web site I reached didn't describe the kit; when I visited the next day, there was a different page that did).
The kit, which Charlie also cleverly calls a "seminar in a box," contains puzzle toys, food treats, a one-inch-thick "technical" manual, and a paperback on behavior, all custom-hand- packed for the species of bird.
The only glaringly missing piece of information in the message is cost. Charlie coyly declines to reveal price, except to tease sympathetically, "I hope your little parrot is worth at least 70 or 80 dollars to get him fixed."
I found the combination sales ploy/guilt trip a little annoying, but it worked. I was ready for my free consultation and to pin Charlie down on a price for the kit, so I hung up and called the second toll-free number on the site.
Keep it short
As he warns in his prerecorded spiel, Charlie likes to get right down to business. This means you are to keep your answers to his questions short and sweet - a simple "yes" or "no" here; a time, percentage or date there.
In other words, don’t natter on about off-topic subjects such as how you think separation anxiety might be causing Petey to pluck. In exchange, Charlie promises to provide a "corner" of the big picture of your bird's problems.
This sounded fair enough. After all, here was someone willing to spend precious time and long-distance charges to give a complete stranger free advice, even if he hoped to sell something at the end. So sure, I could be succinct.
Charlie himself answered the phone. With shop birds squawking in the background, he asked me what kind of parrot I had, his age, how long I’d had him and what the problem was - screaming, biting or plucking?
In response to each question, I dutifully answered as briefly as I could. But the vaguely ominous tone of Charlie's recorded warning - "if you’re unwilling to give concise answers, this won’t work for you" - had made me paranoid. Every time I nervously tacked on an "I think" or "probably" to an answer, I imagined I detected a hint of irritation at the other end of the line.
When I told him that I try to give my macaw, Louie, a bath once a week, Charlie could no longer contain his exasperation.
"You 'try'?" he chastised. "What does that mean? Do you give him a bath once a week or not?"
"Uhhh…"
"Twice a month?"
"Okay," I agreed. Obviously, I had failed to hold up my half of the bargain - avoid giving lame answers. I half expected to hear, "You are the weakest link. Goodbye!"
The last straw
If I felt constrained in our session, I did agree with a lot of what Charlie had to say. He seems to genuinely care about parrots and have a good grasp of their need for a healthy diet and plenty of distractions in order to lead a more fulfilling life.
Charlie thinks many factors are at work in causing undesirable behavior, not an uncommon belief, but he looks at the situation as a "straw that broke the camel’s back" sort of dynamic, which I had never really considered before.
In other words, he thinks birds can live with many different kinds of compromises, perhaps for years, without reacting negatively. But ultimately, as we continue to inadvertently pile on the environmental stresses - confinement, poor diet, boredom -- they break emotionally and respond with screaming, biting or plucking.
A few other of Charlie's assertions weren't as easy for me to accept. For instance, he does not believe in feeding seeds of any sort.
When he asked me about full-spectrum lighting, I proudly told him Louie gets an average of two hours a day outside, far more than the recommended two hours per week I'd read somewhere. Charlie told me this wasn't helping at all - Louie must be under a bulb. He also told me that because I don't drench Louie every day that his skin is as "tough as leather," just a bit of hyperbole.
No references
Hardest to accept was Charlie’s discussion style. He's not the only consultant who likes to keep the conversation moving to save time, but his control was so ironclad I felt a little superfluous. This was clearly his show, one in which he didn't particularly welcome audience participation or worry about tailoring advice appropriately.
He taught me a couple of grammar-school lessons on birds, including the fact their bones are hollow. At times his voice dropped to a theatrical near-whisper as he imparted information I suppose might have taken my 12-year-old nephew's breath away, but didn't do much for me.
When I asked Charlie if I could contact a couple of his satisfied customers for references before buying the kit, he shot back, "If you became a customer and I asked if I could give out your name and phone number, would you say yes?"
Before I could stammer that as a matter of fact, I would be happy to supply my name and e-mail address, Charlie concluded triumphantly, "Of course, you wouldn’t."
Charlie may have had other questions to ask and advice to offer, but I ended the call after about 15 minutes.
Because I'm already engaged in another consultation, I decided not to order Charlie's kit, which turned out to cost $94.10 including taxes and shipping.
However, I wouldn't rule it out in the future.
Even if I don’t agree with everything Charlie says or how he says it, the kit sounds like it contains some good toys, tasty treats, and helpful reading material.
Moreover, I'm intrigued by the support package. It includes a four-month money-back guarantee for the "6 percent" who won't be helped, and around-the-clock toll-free access to a behaviorist who sits by waiting to answer questions as you try out each of the kit's behavior-modification components ("Hello? Yes, I know it's 3 a.m., but I was just wondering whether to put pellets or pistachios in this nut cage.")
Seriously, if these guarantees are for real, they alone might be worth the price of admission. After all, who among us with bird trouble hasn't wished for a shoulder to cry on at any time of day or night?
Charlie, I just might be back.
