parrot secrets?

In regards to Nathalie, I think there is only one way to look at her "program".....SCAM!
You say you didn't receive the E-book (clue #1)
and if you read her advertisement you will find a few too many discrepencies. Like on Parrots- Training, Temperament & Care of Pet Parrots her friend found an Amazon that they later name Polygon.
On http://www.parrotsecrets.com/parrotlets/ it suddenly became a parrotlet and on http://www.parrotsecrets.com/parakeets/
it becomes a parakeet. Same story for all 3. This story is how she got into birds. Yeah, ok.

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"Nathalie Roberts runs another one of those 'pay for training' websites "www.parrotsecrets.com" - claiming it's run by a nice bird trainer who has owned birds for the past 12 years; her name is Nathalie Roberts or so you think.

Nathalie Roberts is Sumantra Roy a 23 year old internet entrepreneur who lives in India; he doesn't even own birds nor has he ever.

Sumantra Roy paid for his training material to be written for him by freelance writers on the internet who just copied examples from books that Sumantra Roy sent the writers from Amazon.com.

In the last few years Sumantra Roy has pocketed an upwards of $2 million US from his parrotsecrets website pretending to be Nathalie Roberts someone he is not.

Other sites owned by Sumantra Roy which are also scams.

trainpetdog.com
dogtraininginstitute.org
dogtraininginstitute.com
dogpottytrain.com
bigpawsonly.com
parrotsecrets.com
pet-parrots.com
parrottrainers.com
puginstitute.com
akitainstitute.com
corgiinstitute.com
poodleinstitute.com
shihtzuinstitute.com
papilloninstitute.com
chihuahuainstitute.com
dachshundinstitute.com
bordercollieinstitute.com
pomeranianinstitute.com
siberianhuskyinstitute.com
goldenretrieverinstitute.com
germanshephardinstitute.com"

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I would have to agree. I bought the e-book and got it, but the only chapter that was of any value appears to be one ripped off from Chet Womach. The other chapters are so badly written that at times there seems to have been absolutely nobody who ever even checked sentences for simple sense. (I'm glad I paid through PayPal, now that I've read some of your posts.) There is nothing in the e-book that isn't available for free on the internet, so far as "brilliant" information goes. Now I'm being bombarded with e-mail from "Nathalie Roberts" with "miracle" bird-training offers. The people on this forum know a lot more about birds and they'll tell you things for free.

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Yes, as you say, there is a real problem with many so-called 'behaviourists' being 'self-certified' and even running some very lucrative scams. For a classic, see the scam being run on parrotsecrets.com by something called 'Natalie Roberts'. In fact Natalie Roberts is really an Indian resident whose real name is Sumantra Roy. Roy has never owened any birds in his life; he just re-runs other 'behaviourists' advice and packages it as his own. Roy makes $1000s selling his 'advice' to gullible/worried parrot folks who have birds with 'problems'.

Other behaviourists use negative reinforcement, punishment, flooding (provoking fearful reactions in parrots) flight deprivation and caging as methods to 'cure' problem behaviours. For aggressive 'solutions' see some of Chet Womachs' earlier Bird Tricks stuff; but if you sign up, you'll get junk emails on 'parrot care' for life! The Womach brothers have, rightly been criticised for their cruel methods in the past; methods which will have induced fear in countless pet birds, as the Womachs' profited from this. They freely admit making it up as they went along, and just doing things as they thought 'best'. But like many 'behaviourists', they have no scientific background in a any behavioural discipline, so they do not really know what they are doing. I.e. they are just like any one who may have kept a few birds for a few years, but then start offereing 'advice' without any understanding of avian behaviour. Here is Dave Womach replying to adverse comments about him and his brother's work on Scamclub.com

"When Chet and I first began our experience in parrot training, we were learning on our own [sic] from ebooks, published books on training, DVD's and CD's from other trainers in the market as well as from other trainers in person. The "Flooding" technique was something we learned directly from trainers early on in our careers. As we have grown in our knowledge and experience with birds, we have realized that flooding is not a good technique to use and that forcing the animal through submission isn't a proper training technique. I wrote an article about it here; Flooding - A Bad Parrot Training Technique. I hope you take the time to read it and realize we, too, are learning every day through mistakes and successes.

We're currently working on re-producing our earlier DVD's that contain the flooding methods and replacing them with our own discovered methods such as the "Power Pause" and known techniques like target training. " End quote.

This is a **** in which the birds suffer as methods advocated by the uninformed are 'recommended' to those who are *equally uninformed*. Using these tactics is like taking your car to a 'mechanic' who doesn't know the difference between a brake hose and fuel line.

If you want good advice on any behavioural matters with any animal, please, first do these things:

1. Ask yourself if you actually know anything about animal behaviour based on scientific disciplines. If not, please bear this lack of knowledge in mind! You are extremely vulnerable to being scammed and being sold a ****. And your bird may suffer even more than it is now.

2. Ask the person offering the 'advice' (and this may be anyone from a 'friend' on a Forum to a 'behaviourist') what scientifically based knowledge they actually have about bird behaviour and avian biology. Ask them what papers and books they have had published, if any *avian* vet recommends them etc.

3. Ask the person offering advice about their knowledge of applied behaviour analysis, ethology (re. the species in question) and methods such as flooding, punishment, negative reinforcement, parental deprivation (hand-rearing/mal-imprinting). If as you are reading this, now, you are not familiar with these terms, Google them. Also, ask about 'dominance theory', and how a cultural bias towards this leads people to use cruel aversive methods when interacting with animals.

If you think you can rely on 'common sense' and what seems 'logical' you will make a string of *predicable* mistakes, and your bird may suffer for these mistakes. It is not the function of parrots to be subjected to a 'trial & error' aproach to behaviour modification, when scientific disciplines underpin this work already. Even well-intentioned advice can result in self-plucking progressing to self-mutilation of the flesh.

In the UK it is now thankfully an offence for an unqualified person to shoe any horses; you have to be a qualified farrier to do this. I wish we could say the same about wing-clipping etc. and stop those who have little scientific knowledge of avian behaviour from recommending something whose true effects on the birds they have little knowledge of.

For the birds

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