Prior threads:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Preview of what is to come from this week's thread:
Bea preening happily on top of her newly designed cage.
Sunday - second half
Cage/Training
Soooo...interesting development.
I knew I needed to spend 2-3 hours in my office. After 45 minutes of working with Cord nearby and hearing Bea across the house, I decided to roll her into the office too. I brought her in, opened her door, and continued working.
She has this default sound she makes whenever she is not screaming. I'm not convinced it is a peaceful sound. It reminds me of the noise Cord does when she is winding herself up. Anyway, she was making that sound continuously while I worked and was positioned at my back. I thought all was normal.
When I went to stand up to take a phone call, I found this giant Amazon out of her cage! She was on the side nearest Cord, making her default noise, and swinging her head around. What's more, she was making her way toward the Sweet Feet and Beak perch that I had attached on the outside of her cage. Lo and behold, she SAT ON THE NEW PERCH without having had more than 2 hours of exposure to it.
Sometime later, after lots of wing flapping and quivering on the outside of the cage (again, nearest Cord/the door), she made her way into the cage. I immediately detached the new perch and attached it inside. She acted like I was going to murder her with this new, never-before-seen, life-threatening perch. What a ridiculous bird! She was subsequently fine with it.
Her default noise never eased up, so I kicked her back out of the room after an hour and finished up working with just Cord.
Monday/Tuesday
Calling/Screaming
Unchanged. We've decided for our peace and hers, her cage will be located in the main room and immediately relocated to the porch once we get back from the gym around 7am. That way, even if she has a day where she does extended morning screaming, it is outside and not impacting our hearing.
Training
She is regularly very interested in training, but I keep it mostly to the evening when she is in a calm state of mind. I did do some positive reinforcement with quiet on Sunday and Monday - delivering snacks when she was calm/quiet - and I will continue to do that as opportunities arise.
She definitely knows 'go to your perch', will raise a foot for a pseudo step-up, and will pursue the touch stick all over the cage (only if in the right frame of mind). I'm going to attempt to raise the bar on the step-up training - I'll reduce the size of the reward snack for one foot and more heavily praise two feet. I usually only ask for 2-3 repetitions with two feet. This time, I might just ask for one, but I'll remain perfectly still and go for a slight increase in duration (perhaps 2 Mississippi seconds).
Cage
She has investigated all of her toys and has begun destroying one. Score!
Wednesday
Wednesday was tough. She screamed from 7:15-10:45, even while on the porch, her preferred location.
Thursday
Following @melissasparrots 's advice, I fed her first thing in the morning, at 4:45 and left for the gym. She had eaten some of it by the time I returned and she screamed much less. I ate my breakfast near her cage (which was in the main room) with earbuds in and completely ignored her. She was not inspired to eat more, unfortunately, and never stopped her mad scrambling around the top of the cage. The door was open the whole time.
She screamed intermittently, but nothing like Wednesday. This was, like, occasional outbursts from a spoiled child in a grocery store. Like, "Why not?!!!" I moved her out to the porch at 8:45 because I had to teach. The other bird joined her, and they haven't said anything. It is a huge contrast to the day before.
She came out during the last student of the night, climbed to the top of her cage and sat proudly in the center. Unlike the handful of previous times that she came out, she did not stop on the side of the door (with obvious trepidation about climbing to the top of the door or top of the cage). She passed 1-1.5 hours up there and put herself away once we started dinner preparations.
Bea enjoying the top of her cage.
Friday
Wowzer!
Same routine as yesterday - She received an assortment of foods at 5:00am and proceeded to eat and chill out while I did my thing. I left 30 minutes later. When I returned, she was no longer relaxed (mad scrambling around), but she didn't call much. Let's say one obscenity every 2-3 minutes; that lasted for 20 minutes or so.
She didn't give a hoot (still scrambled around) that I sat next to her to eat breakfast or that I was puttering around the kitchen. I went away (into my office) around 8:30. She called several times over 10-15 minutes and then gave up. I don't know what she has been doing because I'm behind a closed door, but considering the fact that my husband just arrived and went into the kitchen without a loud exclamation of surprise or outrage, I'd guess she has been napping peacefully inside her cage.
As mentioned previously, we gave her the first several days in a room with the door closed so that she could acclimate. The stress climbing and screaming then led us to trying her cage in different places. Ultimately, she had to go outside mid-morning so I could prepare to have students.
Friday was the first day where we decided to just let her stay in the main room. I warned my students that I was doing an experiment and I might have to pause in the middle of teaching to move her outside. As it turned out, she did her 'peaceful' version of noise making during the first three lessons. It was kind of loud for one student, but it was intermittent and certainly not screaming. Most of it was nice.
She stayed inside all day with the door open. She was in and out as she pleased.
Bird-to-bird interaction
We had our first conflict. I suppose Cord now sees Bea as a bird, now that she is chilling on top of her cage. After 45 minutes of peaceful coexistence and eating dinner, Cord flew to Bea's cage and tried to 'attack her'. This is what she does to the dog. She drops down on her from above with her talons out and beak open. Then, when her prey flees in terror, she pursues them and, presumably, tries to bite them.
She has never managed to actually engage in a physical conflict. The whole ordeal is always so quick, that you can't really see what's going on, but it would appear the dog has never been bitten.
Similarly, while Bea was 'knocked off' her cage top and briefly chased around the floor, it doesn't appear that any biting happened. I easily intercepted Cord (and she didn't bite me either), and she was sent to her cage for a little while. Bea marched quickly back to her cage, scaled the side and reasserted her position on the top. She came happily over to me, so we did some touch training with the stick and my hand. Honestly, she kind of seemed excited by it all. It really makes one wonder about Amazons loving drama.
In other news
I'm taking harness training very slowly with Cord. She's a grown bird, and I don't want any part of it to be coercive. I've waited until she eagerly accomplishes each stage before moving forward. Well, Friday was the first time we put the second wing through the loop. She had zero issues with it and was incredibly patient. Big win for Cord Bird!
Another neat development with her - I don't know if it's a coincidence, but having Bea in the house has unlocked new bird skills in Cord. They aren't even spending time together, so it isn't as if Cord learned from Bea. But she has started really destroying stuff - she bites her thin wooden pieces into confetti and rips apart her paper tubes. She has not shown any prior interest in these things over the course of her 6 years on the planet.
She's also doing a better job foraging in her toys, and she's now a masterful athlete. The latter was to be expected because I've been increasing the obstacles/level of challenge in her flight training (e.g. flying steeply up, steeply down, through a door that is almost closed, etc). She maneuvers in her cage like a hummingbird. It's very cool to see.
She also hasn't retaliated against us at all (about Bea). In the first couple of weeks, she was seeking out the dog - like, leaving my shoulder, flying through the house, and finding the dog - to attack her, but it seemed to be because she assumed my sweet words she heard from a distance were being directed to her biggest rival (they weren't; I was talking to Bea). Now that she has identified the interloper as the rival, she has attacked her.
None of that is great, but it is nice that she isn't biting us or breaking her training. She still understands where to poop, when it's bed time, etc.
Saturday
Okay, so our first weekend with the new routine. She was making her "I'm ready to be awake" noises around 6:00am, which was fine. We wake up around that time, anyway. I fed her right away. While she did eat right away and refrained from screaming, she proceeded to scramble around with such anxiety that it was very distracting. She started up with the loud calling around 7:45am, but it only lasted 20-30 minutes. The scrambling stopped when she realized there was still food in her bowl, and she went down to eat again.
Bea has begun to get her hormonal needs met by a particular toy and by her cage. She likes to stand suspended under the toy with the clumps of cardboard tubes and let them rest on her back. That puts her right into squatting/quivering mode. She has also started masturbating (I think?) against the top of the cage. She squats down and backs up until her body is squished between the top of the cage and the bar that runs around the outside. She's probably rubbing her vent on the cage and getting some pressure against her back from the top bar.
Bea backed up to stick her tail through the cage space.
Bea pressed up against the top bar, crouching and quivering.
Training/biting
She is still very eager to target train, whether or not she sees me work with the dog first. She really enjoys doing it on the top of the cage. Unfortunately, she is now confident enough that she is biting in a way she never has before. It seems a little like a bait-and-switch. She raises her foot, I offer my hand for a step-up, she either immediately goes in for the bite or she takes the snack first and then bites.
I pointed my finger at her after the first bite and told her, "no" in a firm (not yelling or emotional) voice. I showed her a snack and we tried again. After the third bite, I decided that something was up and we were not moving in the right direction. (I probably should have stopped after the second bite confirmed the dynamic was off, but she wasn't acting pissed off or scared. The vibe I got was that she was 'holding her ground'; perhaps because she was on top of the cage.)
To make sure we ended positively, I turned my back on her, fiddled with stuff in the kitchen for 30 seconds, and then worked with the dog where she could see us. Then I offered her the opportunity to target train a few times. That went well.
Other than the bites, the day went really smoothly. She got to come out to the top for long bursts of time, she ate well, took naps, and played with her toys.
Sunday
I think we've turned a corner. She wants to come out and sprints out once the door is open. She usually eats well in the morning, but it has mixed results with noise control. On the whole, however, the morning screaming is down to 15% of what it was. Now, if we can just get the body language / anxiety behavior to follow suit.
My husband made the grievous mistake of stretching or yawning or something while we were still in bed at 5:45am. She heard him through the open door and across the house and started up with, "Hello?...HellLLo?!....hello?...HELLO?.....Hi!" She was definitely not screaming, but she was attempting to make contact. At times, it morphed into practicing other gibberish, but with the echo from that room and the open door, it might as well have been a loud TV that somebody left on.
We're definitely going to buy a large, dark sheet and try to keep her asleep a little longer. Especially with her being in the main room when we're eating dinner at night, we know she isn't falling asleep until 9/9:30pm...and then up at 4:45am with me or, apparently, 5:45am on the weekends. Maybe the sheet will help with hormone control as well.
Training
We had another bait-and-switch in the morning. Instead of rebuking her, I just made a noise of dismissal and left her alone. Rotten behavior = no interaction.
We've resumed stick training, and she has gained a lot of confidence there as well. However, she likes to grab the stick with her hand and then immediately chomp down at its tip. Then along its length. Then back to the tip. Etc. She doesn't even want the snack. The reinforcement is letting her bite the stick. <- Is this a bad idea?
Cage
It has been a long process to make our own perches, mostly because we haven't done it before. We sourced crepe myrtle branches from a neighbor some weeks back and eventually cut a few perch pieces off. Last weekend, we spent awhile at the hardware store collecting the right hardware. And then today, we drilled the holes and assembled the perches.
I'm really pleased with Bea's mega perch. I like the way it turned out and the fact that it has a branching segment. Cord also got new perches in both of her cages.
As part of the perch project, I took apart the three cages, did deep cleans, and then reassembled with new layouts. Bea was sitting on the top of her cage while we inserted the new perch. She startled, flew off, and had to waddle back to her cage. Her flight path seemed stronger than before; although, I'm not sure how that's possible if she isn't flapping to build strength. Could climbing around be building flight muscles?
New cage design.
Bea busy at work with a twig that came off the new perch.
Bea again with her twig.
She is really enjoying the new layout. There are more places for toy attachments, and she can hide behind some of them.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Preview of what is to come from this week's thread:
Bea preening happily on top of her newly designed cage.
Sunday - second half
Cage/Training
Soooo...interesting development.
I knew I needed to spend 2-3 hours in my office. After 45 minutes of working with Cord nearby and hearing Bea across the house, I decided to roll her into the office too. I brought her in, opened her door, and continued working.
She has this default sound she makes whenever she is not screaming. I'm not convinced it is a peaceful sound. It reminds me of the noise Cord does when she is winding herself up. Anyway, she was making that sound continuously while I worked and was positioned at my back. I thought all was normal.
When I went to stand up to take a phone call, I found this giant Amazon out of her cage! She was on the side nearest Cord, making her default noise, and swinging her head around. What's more, she was making her way toward the Sweet Feet and Beak perch that I had attached on the outside of her cage. Lo and behold, she SAT ON THE NEW PERCH without having had more than 2 hours of exposure to it.
Sometime later, after lots of wing flapping and quivering on the outside of the cage (again, nearest Cord/the door), she made her way into the cage. I immediately detached the new perch and attached it inside. She acted like I was going to murder her with this new, never-before-seen, life-threatening perch. What a ridiculous bird! She was subsequently fine with it.
Her default noise never eased up, so I kicked her back out of the room after an hour and finished up working with just Cord.
Monday/Tuesday
Calling/Screaming
Unchanged. We've decided for our peace and hers, her cage will be located in the main room and immediately relocated to the porch once we get back from the gym around 7am. That way, even if she has a day where she does extended morning screaming, it is outside and not impacting our hearing.
Training
She is regularly very interested in training, but I keep it mostly to the evening when she is in a calm state of mind. I did do some positive reinforcement with quiet on Sunday and Monday - delivering snacks when she was calm/quiet - and I will continue to do that as opportunities arise.
She definitely knows 'go to your perch', will raise a foot for a pseudo step-up, and will pursue the touch stick all over the cage (only if in the right frame of mind). I'm going to attempt to raise the bar on the step-up training - I'll reduce the size of the reward snack for one foot and more heavily praise two feet. I usually only ask for 2-3 repetitions with two feet. This time, I might just ask for one, but I'll remain perfectly still and go for a slight increase in duration (perhaps 2 Mississippi seconds).
Cage
She has investigated all of her toys and has begun destroying one. Score!
Wednesday
Wednesday was tough. She screamed from 7:15-10:45, even while on the porch, her preferred location.
Thursday
Following @melissasparrots 's advice, I fed her first thing in the morning, at 4:45 and left for the gym. She had eaten some of it by the time I returned and she screamed much less. I ate my breakfast near her cage (which was in the main room) with earbuds in and completely ignored her. She was not inspired to eat more, unfortunately, and never stopped her mad scrambling around the top of the cage. The door was open the whole time.
She screamed intermittently, but nothing like Wednesday. This was, like, occasional outbursts from a spoiled child in a grocery store. Like, "Why not?!!!" I moved her out to the porch at 8:45 because I had to teach. The other bird joined her, and they haven't said anything. It is a huge contrast to the day before.
She came out during the last student of the night, climbed to the top of her cage and sat proudly in the center. Unlike the handful of previous times that she came out, she did not stop on the side of the door (with obvious trepidation about climbing to the top of the door or top of the cage). She passed 1-1.5 hours up there and put herself away once we started dinner preparations.
Bea enjoying the top of her cage.
Friday
Wowzer!
Same routine as yesterday - She received an assortment of foods at 5:00am and proceeded to eat and chill out while I did my thing. I left 30 minutes later. When I returned, she was no longer relaxed (mad scrambling around), but she didn't call much. Let's say one obscenity every 2-3 minutes; that lasted for 20 minutes or so.
She didn't give a hoot (still scrambled around) that I sat next to her to eat breakfast or that I was puttering around the kitchen. I went away (into my office) around 8:30. She called several times over 10-15 minutes and then gave up. I don't know what she has been doing because I'm behind a closed door, but considering the fact that my husband just arrived and went into the kitchen without a loud exclamation of surprise or outrage, I'd guess she has been napping peacefully inside her cage.
As mentioned previously, we gave her the first several days in a room with the door closed so that she could acclimate. The stress climbing and screaming then led us to trying her cage in different places. Ultimately, she had to go outside mid-morning so I could prepare to have students.
Friday was the first day where we decided to just let her stay in the main room. I warned my students that I was doing an experiment and I might have to pause in the middle of teaching to move her outside. As it turned out, she did her 'peaceful' version of noise making during the first three lessons. It was kind of loud for one student, but it was intermittent and certainly not screaming. Most of it was nice.
She stayed inside all day with the door open. She was in and out as she pleased.
Bird-to-bird interaction
We had our first conflict. I suppose Cord now sees Bea as a bird, now that she is chilling on top of her cage. After 45 minutes of peaceful coexistence and eating dinner, Cord flew to Bea's cage and tried to 'attack her'. This is what she does to the dog. She drops down on her from above with her talons out and beak open. Then, when her prey flees in terror, she pursues them and, presumably, tries to bite them.
She has never managed to actually engage in a physical conflict. The whole ordeal is always so quick, that you can't really see what's going on, but it would appear the dog has never been bitten.
Similarly, while Bea was 'knocked off' her cage top and briefly chased around the floor, it doesn't appear that any biting happened. I easily intercepted Cord (and she didn't bite me either), and she was sent to her cage for a little while. Bea marched quickly back to her cage, scaled the side and reasserted her position on the top. She came happily over to me, so we did some touch training with the stick and my hand. Honestly, she kind of seemed excited by it all. It really makes one wonder about Amazons loving drama.
In other news
I'm taking harness training very slowly with Cord. She's a grown bird, and I don't want any part of it to be coercive. I've waited until she eagerly accomplishes each stage before moving forward. Well, Friday was the first time we put the second wing through the loop. She had zero issues with it and was incredibly patient. Big win for Cord Bird!
Another neat development with her - I don't know if it's a coincidence, but having Bea in the house has unlocked new bird skills in Cord. They aren't even spending time together, so it isn't as if Cord learned from Bea. But she has started really destroying stuff - she bites her thin wooden pieces into confetti and rips apart her paper tubes. She has not shown any prior interest in these things over the course of her 6 years on the planet.
She's also doing a better job foraging in her toys, and she's now a masterful athlete. The latter was to be expected because I've been increasing the obstacles/level of challenge in her flight training (e.g. flying steeply up, steeply down, through a door that is almost closed, etc). She maneuvers in her cage like a hummingbird. It's very cool to see.
She also hasn't retaliated against us at all (about Bea). In the first couple of weeks, she was seeking out the dog - like, leaving my shoulder, flying through the house, and finding the dog - to attack her, but it seemed to be because she assumed my sweet words she heard from a distance were being directed to her biggest rival (they weren't; I was talking to Bea). Now that she has identified the interloper as the rival, she has attacked her.
None of that is great, but it is nice that she isn't biting us or breaking her training. She still understands where to poop, when it's bed time, etc.
Saturday
Okay, so our first weekend with the new routine. She was making her "I'm ready to be awake" noises around 6:00am, which was fine. We wake up around that time, anyway. I fed her right away. While she did eat right away and refrained from screaming, she proceeded to scramble around with such anxiety that it was very distracting. She started up with the loud calling around 7:45am, but it only lasted 20-30 minutes. The scrambling stopped when she realized there was still food in her bowl, and she went down to eat again.
Bea has begun to get her hormonal needs met by a particular toy and by her cage. She likes to stand suspended under the toy with the clumps of cardboard tubes and let them rest on her back. That puts her right into squatting/quivering mode. She has also started masturbating (I think?) against the top of the cage. She squats down and backs up until her body is squished between the top of the cage and the bar that runs around the outside. She's probably rubbing her vent on the cage and getting some pressure against her back from the top bar.
Bea backed up to stick her tail through the cage space.
Bea pressed up against the top bar, crouching and quivering.
Training/biting
She is still very eager to target train, whether or not she sees me work with the dog first. She really enjoys doing it on the top of the cage. Unfortunately, she is now confident enough that she is biting in a way she never has before. It seems a little like a bait-and-switch. She raises her foot, I offer my hand for a step-up, she either immediately goes in for the bite or she takes the snack first and then bites.
I pointed my finger at her after the first bite and told her, "no" in a firm (not yelling or emotional) voice. I showed her a snack and we tried again. After the third bite, I decided that something was up and we were not moving in the right direction. (I probably should have stopped after the second bite confirmed the dynamic was off, but she wasn't acting pissed off or scared. The vibe I got was that she was 'holding her ground'; perhaps because she was on top of the cage.)
To make sure we ended positively, I turned my back on her, fiddled with stuff in the kitchen for 30 seconds, and then worked with the dog where she could see us. Then I offered her the opportunity to target train a few times. That went well.
Other than the bites, the day went really smoothly. She got to come out to the top for long bursts of time, she ate well, took naps, and played with her toys.
Sunday
I think we've turned a corner. She wants to come out and sprints out once the door is open. She usually eats well in the morning, but it has mixed results with noise control. On the whole, however, the morning screaming is down to 15% of what it was. Now, if we can just get the body language / anxiety behavior to follow suit.
My husband made the grievous mistake of stretching or yawning or something while we were still in bed at 5:45am. She heard him through the open door and across the house and started up with, "Hello?...HellLLo?!....hello?...HELLO?.....Hi!" She was definitely not screaming, but she was attempting to make contact. At times, it morphed into practicing other gibberish, but with the echo from that room and the open door, it might as well have been a loud TV that somebody left on.
We're definitely going to buy a large, dark sheet and try to keep her asleep a little longer. Especially with her being in the main room when we're eating dinner at night, we know she isn't falling asleep until 9/9:30pm...and then up at 4:45am with me or, apparently, 5:45am on the weekends. Maybe the sheet will help with hormone control as well.
Training
We had another bait-and-switch in the morning. Instead of rebuking her, I just made a noise of dismissal and left her alone. Rotten behavior = no interaction.
We've resumed stick training, and she has gained a lot of confidence there as well. However, she likes to grab the stick with her hand and then immediately chomp down at its tip. Then along its length. Then back to the tip. Etc. She doesn't even want the snack. The reinforcement is letting her bite the stick. <- Is this a bad idea?
Cage
It has been a long process to make our own perches, mostly because we haven't done it before. We sourced crepe myrtle branches from a neighbor some weeks back and eventually cut a few perch pieces off. Last weekend, we spent awhile at the hardware store collecting the right hardware. And then today, we drilled the holes and assembled the perches.
I'm really pleased with Bea's mega perch. I like the way it turned out and the fact that it has a branching segment. Cord also got new perches in both of her cages.
As part of the perch project, I took apart the three cages, did deep cleans, and then reassembled with new layouts. Bea was sitting on the top of her cage while we inserted the new perch. She startled, flew off, and had to waddle back to her cage. Her flight path seemed stronger than before; although, I'm not sure how that's possible if she isn't flapping to build strength. Could climbing around be building flight muscles?
New cage design.
Bea busy at work with a twig that came off the new perch.
Bea again with her twig.
She is really enjoying the new layout. There are more places for toy attachments, and she can hide behind some of them.
