I received an email over night from a desperate parrot owner asking me for help. Her neighbor is taking her to mediation court in less than a week because her macaws are screaming too much in the outside aviary.
This is obviously a problem that has taken some time to escalate to this point:
- The macaws had to develop the habit of screaming non-stop. You might say they were inadvertently trained by the owner to do so. How? Her attempts to get the birds to be quiet obviously were reinforcing the behavior instead.
- The deterioration of her relationship with her neighbour probably also did not happen overnight. Plus there is the time lag of many weeks, if not months between the neighbor's first complaint and going to court.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. But I don't have one of those. Of course I can help her with anti-scream training, but with only a week before the court appointment and a very irate neighbour I just don't think there is enough time to ward off disaster.
It is very likely that the court will rule for her to have to keep the macaws indoors at all times or even get rid of them. What a nightmare! I really do not understand why she waited this long to ask me for help. 😢
How to Solve Screaming Problems ...
You can find detailed information on anti-screaming training in my book:
Screaming & Screeching: How to Solve Problem Behavior with Clicker Training.
How different would the situation be if she had done something about the issue when it first started:
- The screaming would have never developed in this extreme way
- The screaming habits the birds had already developed could have been vastly improved
- The neighbor would have seen her efforts to do something about the problem and would perhaps have been more tolerant
- Apart from the training we could have implemented other measures, such as sight and sound barriers, to reduce the sound hassle to others
Of course I will do all I can to help her in the little time she has left.
But, oh, how I really wish that you all will be smarter when you start running into issues with your birds and get help early on, before things escalate to the point of disaster.
