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Parrots in Temporary Shelters
The Groundwork for Empowerment and Trust

Trust is the result of a behavioral history made up of past positive experiences with humans. Building a positive history is a matter arranging the parrot’s environment so that positive behaviors are made easy and always result in desirable outcomes for the bird. When you make a request of parrots make sure there is something in it for them. Facilitate rather than force.

Astute readers will notice empowerment and trust are the antithesis of old-fashioned dominance strategies in which caregivers are encouraged to establish themselves as the “alpha-parrot”; “show them who’s boss”; and “keep the upper hand”. Instead, empower parrots to make choices and provide trust-building experiences by reinforcing the right choices. Transform “have to” confrontations into “want to” opportunities by providing a clear reason why complying with a human request benefits the bird.

Understanding Behavior

Although most parrots are surrendered from pet situations it’s reasonable to assume they will have a hard time adjusting to the unfamiliar shelter environment and staff. In spite of their history living among humans, success or failure, the best image to hold in your mind while working with a parrot is one of a wild animal. This will hopefully facilitate a slow and forgiving interaction style. Always allow the pace of every interaction to be set by the parrot.

Parrots in captivity actually have a very short list of possible “misbehaviors” (from a human point of view) but those they do exhibit are very difficult for humans to live with. In addition to the natural need to chew with their beaks and habit of doing so indiscriminately, these behaviors can be loosely grouped into two classes: 1) Behaviors to get you to go away, such as biting and refusing to come out of a cage, and 2) behaviors to get you to come back such as continuous screaming or sticking to you like Velcro. It’s important to realize that no behavior is performed willy-nilly or randomly. Parrots learn to bite, scream and refuse requests because doing so serves the function to either escape or remove something aversive to them, or get something of value.

Also, behavior is not performed in a vacuum. Antecedent cues and conditions set the occasion for (trigger) behavior to occur; and, outcomes (consequences) provide feedback about whether to repeat, modify or suppress a behavior in the future. These are the building blocks of learning and behavior – the ABCs: antecedents – behavior – consequences. By identifying antecedents and consequences three important objectives are accomplished. We can better 1) understand the function of particular behaviors for individual parrots, 2) predict future behavior, and 3) determine ways to change the environment to change behavior.

Here is an example of relationship between antecedents, behavior and consequences for a particular parrot–human interaction, changing food bowls.
A: Caregiver opens cage door to remove interior food bowl.
B: Parrot bites hand.
C: Caregiver leaves bowl and retreats from cage.
Prediction: Parrot will bite more in the future to remove caregiver from cage.

A dominance solution to this problem is to try to ignore the biting. However this roughshod approach teaches many parrots that they have no control over their environment (their communications are unheard), that you are not to be trusted, and that you require harder, more vicious bites to get you to back off. Where parrots are concerned, force and coercion typically result in lose-lose situations.