Good Bird Training and Screaming

Do

• Keep fresh water and food available so your hungry bird does not teach itself to scream to relieve hunger.

• Teach a young bird to whistle and talk rather than scream to establish contact with you.

• Respond to screaming in a calm manner, if at all.

• Teach your young bird to play independently when you are home.

• Diligently practice problem prevention methods by encouraging
  

• Learn what is normal for your species of parrot

Provide your parrot with foraging bird toys and enriching activities like Bird Sitter Video or Enriching Your Parrot's Life.

Try to make sense of the screaming from your parrots point of view. YOU are your parrots flock.  Domestic parrots may naturally be trying to preserve the flock (your family) or to protect a chosen mate (you). Have you noticed your bird calling for you when you are not within it's sight? Or, how about the parrot that screams during family arguments or while the children are being disciplined? Some birds scream out of fear such as when they are faced with an unfamiliar object or an unfamiliar person enters the home. These situations are natural "behavior" from the wild. 

You can unwittingly reinforce wild flock screaming by either reinforcing screaming by giving your bird any sort of attention for loud squawks.  But, you can teach your parrot how to live with people by teaching it how to talk. Talking parrots are less prone to scream for attention.  Teach or train your parrot to talk rather than scream with this easy talking parrot CD from the Good Bird training series.

Don't

• Never isolate your parrot for long periods of time, (i.e. hours). Long periods of isolation will worsen problem behaviors and cause emotional damage since parrots are flock or social animals

• Avoid calling loudly to other's throughout your home. Your bird will interpret this as normal communication and then try to imitate you.

• Don't yell back at your parrot. Yelling only reinforces a parrots desire to communicate loudly.

• Never allow anyone to taunt your bird by yelling at it or banging it's cage to get it to stop screaming.

Prevention

All birds "scream" or make loud vocalizations in the morning and evening hours. Some species are louder than others, though. Learn what is normal for your particular bird.

As with most problem behaviors that parrots develop, prevention is key to dealing with screaming. It is especially easy to unwittingly teach and reinforce screaming in parrots since screaming is a natural behavior for them. Plus, being smart, social creatures, parrots will "fine tune" their screaming skills if they receive any attention, good or bad, for the behavior. Pay attention to your reactions to screaming! We unwittingly teach our pet to scream when we respond in any way to loud vocalizations. Common responses include picking up a screaming bird, yelling at an overly loud bird or even turning up the tv in response to screaming.

Prevention, then, means refusal to model loud vocalizations. Your bird will simply imitate your behavior. Prevent screaming by teaching our bird to entertain itself with bird toys when it is young. Develop a special "whistle" that is a call between you and your bird so you can maintain contact with each other in a pleasant way if you leave the room or it can't see you. Learning to tolerate normal vocalizations and refusing to provide reinforcement when your bird is loud are important keys to preventing screaming. And, remember, bird's become more vocal during seasonal periods. Learn more about bird training and preventing screaming in Clicker Training for Birds.