Recommended Reading?

[Mallory]

All of us are constantly looking for ways to improve our parrot care and especially our relationship with our birds. I am going to be spending a week in Missouri visiting my family and along with bringing Greenleaf, I am planning to bring some books along with me to pass the time. I just finished Irene Pepperberg's Alex and Me and it got me thinking about whether parrot behavior/training books would be worthwhile. I know some of these books are contradictory or confusing and some of them can be repetitive or even have plain bad advice. But as with dog training books, surely some of them are of merit. Since I will be reading something regardless, does anyone have any recommendations for some worthwhile parrot behavior books?

While you're at it, throw in some parrot training DVD recommendations if you've had luck with any. I've considered some - like Barbara Heidenreich's and the Birdtricks DVDs for awhile but they are expensive and I've been on the fence about it. I hope it's okay to ask for recommendations - I'm not trying to endorse a certain product but just asking for peoples' experiences and which ones might be worthwhile.

 

[Birdman666]

I personally don't think the birdtricks DVD's are worth the money...

The best trick training videos/books I've found was Tani Robar's book/video series.

 

[Mango7218]

The Perfectly Trained Parrot is a great book you can get it on iBooks.

 

[MonicaMc]

There's a lot of things that Birdman and I don't agree on... but Bird Tricks is one thing we agree on wholeheartedly!


Anything by Barbara Heidenreich, Lara Joseph, Susan Friedman, Hillary Hankey, Chris Shank, Kelley Ballance, Sid Price, Steve Martin, Pamela Clark... Some do have DVD's or books but mostly it's blogs and articles written online.


Not bird related... but Karen Pryor has a great book, IMO, called "Don't Shoot The Dog!". I also have Melinda Johnson's clicker training book for birds, and a controversial book, Mira Tweti's Of Parrots and People. Temple Grandin has an amazing insight into animal minds, thanks to being autistic. She doesn't have anything parrot related that I'm aware of, but reading her works puts an entirely new perspective on understanding animals!

 

[Mallory]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I picked up a few books via Amazon, I'll grab the titles in a second. Monica, I loved Karen Pryor's "Reaching the Animal Mind" and Temple Grandin's "Animals Make us Human". I have a small library of dog behavior/training books from when Katara was young but this will be the first time I'm seeking out parrot training books. I do watch a ton of youtube videos and read all the articles and blogs I can find but since I'm going to be away from home and on the internet less I thought this would be a good chance to do some good old fashioned book reading!

EDIT: Here are the books I picked up for now, I'm making a list for when I get through these too. "The Alex Studies" by Irene Pepperberg, "Parrot Tricks" by Tani Robar, "The Parrot Problem Solver" by Barbara Heidenreich and "The Parrot Wizard's Guide to Well Behaved Parrots" by Michael Sazhin. I questioned getting that last one because I know how a lot of people feel about the parrot wizard and I personally feel like he's more famous than he deserves and has made some big mistakes, but I still have always wanted to read what he has to say in his book. I'll pack a few grains of salt to take with me for all of them of course. ;P

 

[MonicaMc]

I haven't read Sazhin's book, and from what little I've heard about it, don't think I want to. He supposedly recommends reducing a bird's weight over a 5 week period to 10% under their ideal weight. He confuses food management with weight management, and uses it incorrectly on top of that. To say the least, I'm not a big fan of him, nor of Bird Tricks. I think Sazhin got the idea to reduce weight from Bird Tricks, which may have in turned incorrectly learned that from falcon trainers *or* some other trainer, and so bad advice has just been passed around.

It's kind of scary reading and hearing what actual experts (and some not so expertly people) say about these two groups. I just can't support either one.

 

[Mallory]

Monica, I'm derailing for a second because you raised an interesting topic and one I just learned a little more about! I too thought the weight management idea came from falconry as falconers do fly their birds light to ensure the birds have motivation and don't decide to hang out in a tree all day or worse. Granted, it's a far more delicate balance and not just a constant management of 10% below normal body weight. I've been walked through the process by a professional falconer (and was given the amazing chance to fly some of this raptors) and in his program it's a very logical and healthy management technique.

I recently learned that the flat 10% under management "strategy" came from old time circuses. They would motivate their animals using aversive methods and the intense food drive that came from that pseudo-starvation technique. Fortunately many of those original animals who have survived are in sanctuaries although not all sanctuaries are good places but we don't need to get into any of that now. Just sharing some information I recently learned. It's a shame any parrot trainers adopted these techniques as they are quite old-fashioned and you can certainly motivate birds without keeping them excessively lean. Excessive hunger in dogs has shown to cloud judgement and make the training process less effective.

That said, I'm not just selecting the books or trainers I know have spotless reputations. I have gotten some great ideas hidden in old dog training books where some of the other suggestions made me cringe. Not everyone is capable of reading these books and discerning what is sound advice and what should be trashed, but I hope I can do so and if not, at least I'll be able to provide an honest review of those books for others in the future.

 

[SailBoat]

Personally, I like Sally Blanchard's COMPANION PARROT HANDBOOK. She also has a number of 'parrot species' specific books and also a book dedicated to biting. Her books do not run to the far corners, therefore provide a solid base to build a trust based relationship upon.

Pet Behavioral Training is really big now and is an outgrowth of human based behavioral training, which with humans also includes a wide cross-section of prescription drugs. And, to that point, I am seeing some 'mood' altering prescription drugs showing-up for pets (including parrots), which is a direction that deeply concerns me.

Like others here, I am not a believer in staving (behavioral training) my parrots into getting chained final responses. Our parrots (all Amazons) have been end-of-life, re-homed. I have always started from a position that 'if there is a problem, its likely that it is something that I am doing' and not the parrot. Amazingly, based on that one position, we continually built strong trust based relationships with Amazons, no one else wanted.

What I like most about this forum group is that at the start of nearly every sub-forum is a number of threads that in and of themselves provide solid information that sadly are not read or re-read often enough.

 

[MonicaMc]

Mallory, it wouldn't be a surprise if a certain group read up on training circus animals and then applied that to training parrots...



Glad you know how to pick good advice from bad! So many people hear advice and decide to believe it because somehow that person is an expert. (i.e. pet store employees - some might know what they're talking about, but a large majority of them may not!).

 

[BirdGuy21]

I am currently reading Irene Pepperberg's The Alex Studies. It is very scientific and technical, but she does a wonderful job of breaking down the science in an understandable and readable level - without watering it down. Very insightful into avian learning and intelligence. I became interested in her work after reading Alex and Me. I am so far a fan of her and am excited to continue reading The Alex Studies.