ParrotChronicles.com

WATSON THE PIONUS and Dana Wilson, a writer and film producer, were best buddies. "He thought I orbited around him. I did," says Wilson.

Then Wilson added two blue-front Amazon parrots, Rochester and Bertie, to the household and everything fell apart.

"Watson immediately intimidated both of them," recalls Wilson. "For nine months he tortured Rochester, the larger one, who pined for him and never struck back when Watson lunged at him. Watson realized there was an advantage in having a parrot three times his size totally devoted to him. He could demand around-the-clock preening. He could demand that Rochester turn over all his treats."

Watson picked on Bertie the Amazon, too, and then began behaving badly toward Wilson. He screamed at her, bit her, and even made “distress calls” to get his protector, Rochester, to attack his owner.

An expert steps in
Wilson asked Sue Farlow, a bird behavior expert who lived in nearby Lincoln, Mass., to assess the situation.

When Watson saw her, he "snarled like an angry dog - wing flapping, screaming, eyes flashing, lunging," recalls Wilson of Farlow's visit. "She put him on the floor. I have never seen such a look of anger, probably hate, in a parrot's eyes, as he looked up at Sue. 'How dare you!' he seemed to say. He was in total shock. No one had ever stood up to him."

Farlow said Watson was overstressed by the "job" of having to "manage" both his owner and the two new birds and needed Wilson to "take back control."

"Sue said that every time he was unpleasant I should put him on the floor. And not let him pile out of his cage like a fireman down a ladder. Make him ask before he got to come out. I made him say hello.

"Within a few days, he stopped the tantrums. He dutifully said hello, and still does, before I lift him out of his house. That was six years ago."

Looking for help
More people are discovering that owning a parrot often is not as easy as it seems. Sooner or later, most owners, especially those of larger parrots, encounter a tough behavior problem such as aggression, screaming or feather plucking.

When to take the plunge

YOU CAN READ much of what parrot behavior experts have to say in bird magazines (including ParrotChronicles.com, which offers Steve Martin's Behavior column). When is a private consultation warranted?

Consider one if you have a spare $100 and you are:

So frustrated by a behavior problem that you have considered giving up the bird.
Someone who has never owned or been around a parrot before and wants a quick leg up. Behavior experts are more than happy to school you in the basics, one of the easier parts of their jobs. A home session is best so the expert can demonstrate how to handle your bird correctly.
Someone who would enjoy having a deeper understanding of parrots that can come from another point of view.

The majority of ParrotChronicles.com readers who responded to an informal poll said that yes, they would hire help.

"I would absolutely hire a bird behaviorist if I had a bird with problems," wrote Pamela Sichel, a marketing communications manager in Perry, Iowa, who has a red-lored Amazon. "It is too easy to simply pass a parrot with difficult characteristics on to someone else. If you are going to own one, you have to do everything you can to make the situation work for you and the bird and not give up."

Only a handful of respondents said they would never hire, citing distrust of qualifications and the fact that much of the same knowledge can be found in books and through personal experience.

"I know some bird [behavior consultants] who are very good. I also know several who know very little about birds," said Sabra LaBrea, who takes care of 10 abandoned parrots in her Miami home. "We don't need all these 'bird behaviorists'. We need to cage our birds less and play with them more and not turn around and dump them the minute they are too inconvenient."

A fellow parrot rescuer named Gio agreed. "I just can't see how a person can see a bird for a couple of hours and make a diagnosis. What works for some birds may not work for others. Sometimes it takes a while to find out the cause and then it takes time working with the bird."

Many people respond to trouble by getting rid of the bird. An increasing number of others are asking a bird behavior expert to help.

The bird world's version of a family psychotherapist, parrot behavior experts interview owners at length about their birds, sometimes meet the patient, and offer a set of suggestions designed to help bird and owner live together peacefully.

Sometimes, as in Wilson's case, success appears to be immediate. Other times, it's more difficult to tell whether outside help has made much of a difference.

Regardless, behavior consulting for birds has become so popular, some conscientious owners are using it at purchase, hoping to nip potential problems in the bud - a sort of avian form of pre-marriage counseling, if you will.

Bob Hulsey of Austin did a lot of research on parrots before buying his first one, a four-month-old yellow-collared macaw he named Angel. When his vet recommended he get a behavior expert to assess the new relationship, Hulsey readily agreed.

The expert Hulsey hired, a woman with 20 years of experience working with show macaws in Las Vegas, "worked magic training Angel to 'step up' and 'step down'", he says. "She watched Angel climbing around on me while we talked and pronounced that Angel 'just adores you,' to my relief."