Curious but vicious

[Shantell]

Hello all.
I am currently fostering two green winged macaws that spent their life as a breeding pair before being turned over to the exotic bird rescue following their owners death. While at the rescue they learned to play with toys and to step up. The male on an arm and the female on a stick. They have wonderful personalities and are overall amazing animals. Harley is the male and Tina is the female. Harley has not really been an issue but Tina on the other hand has me baffled.
Tina is very intelligent and in the two weeks I have had her in my home she has learned to dance on command and turn around on command. She seems to understand me and she gets excited about training. She is curious about everything I do and she calls out for attention if she hears me from the other room. It almost seems as though she likes me. So, the issue is..... She has very rigid boundaries and when I do not have food or clicker in hand for training I am the enemy! She is quite vicious. I have no doubt that if I gave her half a chance she would seriously injure me. She even lunges and slams herself into the cage bars when she is inside her cage as well as follows me around from inside the cage biting through the bars. When on her stand outside or the play gym downstairs she will position herself where she can attack me as I walk by. The attacks are not warnings I assure you, she means business and it is clear that it is aggression not fear.
Any ideas as to why she would be so love/hate with me? I have hopes that I can tame this bird or at least make her attractive as a companion so she can find a forever home. I feel she has potential due to her curiosity and willingness to learn tricks. Have any of you ever experienced this kind of behavior? If so, what can I do to get more of the love and less of the hate?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Sadieladie1994]

Where is her mate?

 

[Bokkapooh]

Are you sure she is the female and not the male? As this sounds like a male's behavior protecting his mate. Although females do this too. But usually males are far more aggressive.

Where is her mate?

 

[Shantell]

Hello. The mate lives with us as well. Harley is usually outside when Tina is outside as he doesn't like for her to leave his site for too long. I am pretty certain she is the female. Apparently she laid eggs shortly after being rescued. That was almost two years ago.

 

[JLcribber]

Any ideas as to why she would be so love/hate with me?

Because she doesn't know you and you don't know her. 2 weeks is but a speck of time to a parrot and not nearly enough time to feel secure or trust anything. Time and patience is the key. You have to "earn" that relationship.

 

[Shantell]

Lol I guess I wasn't clear on what I am asking. Thank you for your responses so far.
What I was getting at was... why the ferocity of the attempted attacks? I get how long it takes to get to know an intelligent creature. I have been rehabilitating animals my entire life. I have never been in a situation with one that acted so interested in me but also singled me out for attacks. Tina does not display even half of the aggression towards others that she displays towards me so I am a bit caught off guard by this. This evening after 30 minutes of being incredibly interactive for such a wild girl she ran across the parrot gym ( so 10ft ) to get a lunge in at my head! In my experience, animals placed in a new environment have some fear about their demeanor so they tend to be on the defensive rather than offensive. Not the case here! I just want to figure out what I am doing that may be making her react so strongly. I keep rolling details over in my head and I can't seem to pin down the factors of my behavior that would encourage this. Thus my request for input from objective sources. Perhaps you guys/gals can think of something I cannot.

 

[JLcribber]

You've got a breeder pair of rescues that have "baggage". The male is pre-conditioned to defend/protect its mate, its nest, and its perceived territory. I don't hear anything out of the ordinary that a "wild Macaw" would behave like. Now both their worlds have been turned upside down. You're not dealing with anything out of the ordinary.

This evening after 30 minutes of being incredibly interactive for such a wild girl she ran across the parrot gym ( so 10ft ) to get a lunge in at my head!

30 minutes is obviously too long. Most parrots have an attention span of about 10 to 20 minutes. This is where familiarity comes in. If you'd had these birds for a period of time and had a real relationship with them you would have known not to push the interaction to 30 minutes.

 

[MommyBird]

they are smart that's for sure.
In my "parrot psychology" class I took we learned to look at behavior as ABC = Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequences.
You may realize that clicker training is actually based on this!

You will need to be really alert and write things down. Each time the behavior happens look at what happened IMMEDIATELY before it and what are the consequences of the behavior.
Look at yourself, where you are, what you are wearing, doing, and the general environment too. Do you have a hand higher than her head, turn your back, approach within a certain number of feet?
And very important -what does she get out of doing the behavior?
It would be easy to say "I walk in, she lunges, and I leave." But I think there is more to it as it sounds like sometimes you have been there awhile already. Observe and record!
You are not going to get there by analyzing her supposed "feelings", you need to do the ABCs.
Then, since she obviously understands positive reinforcement, it will be possible to work on changes.
It is not love/hate...........there is something more there in the antecedent or consequence.

 

[MommyBird]

I have a few minutes again to add more.
you do say that if you don't have treats you "are the enemy". Please, don't put these labels on the situation. It keeps you from finding the real reason and fixing it.
But you might want to take a close look at this possible flag. Is it possible that maybe the case is that when you are not carrying a clicker and treats that you wave your arms around when you talk? Or you don't reward her with as much attention because you are doing other things? Or something else? It is a challenge for us to observe what is going on, but Tina is paying really close attention and adding up your behaviors to make her response.

And - you say they are there about 2 weeks? You have only minimal deposits in the trust bank in that short a time and it may be that you are at the stage when the only value you have to her is as a treat dispenser.
When training a behavior you eventually want to get to a stage where there is only intermittent reinforcement. In 2 weeks you don't have enough of relationship to reach this. You might just have to always carry it for a good while yet. If you need to, do that.
The more she attacks, the more you are training her to attack. What is your response to the attacks (the consequences)?
Or you can hide the treats well so she never knows you have them and switch to a tongue click or "good girl" as the bridge. She'll catch on fast.

I also suggest not having 30 min training sessions. Keep it short, 5 or 10 minutes. DO a flashmob training. Short and unexpected. I would bet that will help.
With my guys I could often tell (when not in a training session) when something bad was going to happen. So I needed to make other things happen and either distract them or request a behavior that is incompatible with what they want to do. For example, I learned never to turn my back on my flighted male BFA or he'd attack. So OK, don't turn my back, but if I could sense a jump coming anyway I would call for one of his favorite behaviors (turning in a circle) that made it pretty impossible for him to jump me. And the bonus, he did something fun that earned him a treat instead of disapproval and this made our relationship better.

You do have to know your bird's body language really well to catch the behaviors when they are still a thought and not an action. In 2 weeks you may not be picking up the signals early enough. That will come.

 

[Shantell]

Thank you!

 

[macawpower58]

Loved your answers! Very good descriptions and ideas. I may just put some of this to use with my fellow.