 One of the biggest mistakes that we make with our birds. I'm guilty of this and I've had to rectify this many times, especially with Jersey and we're going to go into that. Hello, my fellow sniffers, flighters and newbies. My name is Marlene McCohen and this is Brando, my mustache parakeet and I want to welcome you guys all to my channel. If you guys are new here, please let me know in the comments so I can welcome you appropriately. All right, guys, today the title of this video is how to create an independent bird. Before we go on, I want to urge you guys to maybe listen to this like a podcast, go grab a cup of tea. This would be an appropriate video for you guys to listen to this morning while you're putting your makeup on or doing other things. There's a lot of great information in here and I felt like this video was particularly important because just analyzing myself as a parrot owner and living with certain hypersensitive birds. I realized that some of these are mistakes that I have previously made and I wanted to share them with you to help you create more of an independent bird. Now, I'm going to be going over four ways in which you can accidentally create a very dependent bird and what that can do to your bird. And after that, I'll go back to those and offer some solutions and ways that you can prevent or fix this from happening. Now, I urge you to listen to this entire video and share it with people because you can never really have enough parrot information, especially if you choose to live with our feathered friends. About 80% of parrots get rehomed because people can't deal with them. And if you think about it, that really translate as 80% of the people that think they're ready for a parrot and can understand and handle a parrot are in fact not. So let's talk about preventing that and making you a better parrot owner and a better parrot companion. So let me first give you an overview of what this video is really about. It's really about one of the biggest mistakes that we make with our birds. I'm guilty of this and I've had to rectify this many times, especially with Jersey, and we're going to go into that. So what is that? And I know it's going to sound so contradictory, but here it is. Loving your birds too much. Now, I don't mean in an obsessive way. I also don't mean in a stimulating sort of way. I really just mean giving your birds so much attention that they become completely dependent on you. Sometimes this happens because you got a bird that was a baby and you just want to love on it. And sometimes it happens because it's a rescue and it has dependent tendencies and you tend to cater to them or vice versa. It can happen with any bird anytime and really it's a very easy thing to do, especially if you love birds and animals in general and just have that kind of heart. So right now we're going to get into ways that you might be doing that, how to prevent it and how to rectify it. So number one, giving your bird too much attention. We're going to go into more detail on that right now. If you guys have been listening to my channel a lot, you realize that I do in fact give my birds a lot of attention. And this isn't the attention that I'm talking about. I'm talking about a specific kind of attention that I feel can be detrimental to your bird's development. And this is really easy to do with baby birds. So when you feel like your bird needs you or you feel like your bird wants you for us as human beings, it's a great feeling. We feel loved, we feel wanted, we love that from all of our animals. But with birds you have to be very, very careful. What can happen when your bird comes to rely on you like that for affection, love and attention is they begin to replace foraging, playing, certain kind of behaviors that are natural to them such as nesting, which we'll get into with your love. And essentially what happens is that you've now established yourself as a mate rather than a flock leader or part of the flock, which we'll also get into because that's really important as well. And I feel like I need to touch on this because you might have heard me talk about how my birds are so chill, calm and quiet because I always know what they need and I give it to them. That is very different from all the cuddling and babying, extreme cuddling that you may do with your bird. I'm not saying any of that is wrong. You guys know that I love on my birds. I squeeze them, I kiss them, I love them. Come on, I'm a real person. We all are. But I think the key here is that let's say you're doing that three hours a day with your bird because it's a baby or it's a new bird or it's a rescue, then the bird comes to expect that kind of attention that long every day. So you want to avoid creating patterns that the bird relies on that you logistically cannot give to them. So that's just the first thing to think about and then we're going to go into all of these in a little bit more detail of what you can do instead. Number two, of course we have to talk about this and that is accidentally stimulating your parrot. I have made a video on this before and some of you may have been shocked to learn that some petting that would seem so normal to us as parrot companions actually stimulates our birds. And the reason that's dangerous is because that turns you into a mate. And if you think about it, birds can't actually mate with their human partner. So it can be extremely frustrating and extremely confusing. And some birds with extremely high intelligence understand that this doesn't make sense and it makes them very uncomfortable, especially if you've had a bird since it was young and it kind of grew into that adolescence and started going through a hormonal period. And then you'll start noticing that those birds that you've had for a long time might even start acting weird towards you, ignoring you or just kind of advancing the relationship because they honestly, the feelings just don't make sense to them. And I'd like to make a video going into more depth on somewhat of this subject for you in a different manner. But right here I just want you guys to understand that this is one thing that can definitely create some confusion in your bird, create a lot of aggression, screaming and just overall stress. So it becomes very hard to create an independent bird when you have now established yourself as a mate. There's something else I kind of wanted to touch on that I feel like a lot of people don't know. Male parrots and female parrots, they get stimulated differently. So a lot of the times that's how I know whether one of my rescues is a male or a female. With Leo, we did a DNA test because I'd never seen him exhibit any kind of mating behavior towards me or anything like that. Besides for a little regurgitation here and there, which doesn't give it away, but in general, a female is going to get stimulated on her back and a male is going to stimulate himself by kind of like picking up your hands and fingers and stuff like that. So we obviously do our best to not stimulate our parrots accidentally. You want to love on them. You may see in videos, let's say George petting Rocky and then his hand goes a little down his back. Well, Rocky is a male, so he doesn't get stimulated that way. That's why it's important to know and it can be very useful for you to do a DNA test on your bird to find this out. You guys remember one video when we went into the parrot store and my sister loves monkey, you know the Jardine parrot that she always loves to play with. Yeah. I love you. Are you going to mate with me right now? What happened with you? Well, if you remember, as soon as the bird kind of fell for my sister, my sister knew it was a female and that's how we know because of the way the bird got stimulated. Of course, Felipe is like, yeah, how'd you know? And it's like, this is how we know and this kind of seems to be something people don't talk about. And then I see people go, oh my God, George Pet Rock is back. Yeah, you don't want to stimulate them in any which way. But of course, sometimes in a video, a hand going down a back looks like something when it's just really like, you know, like this. So I just wanted to touch on that real quick. Okay, the third way that you could create an extremely dependent bird, a lack of toys or activities for them to get themselves into. If you think about birds in the wild, they're continuously foraging, they're continuously nesting. They've got a lot to do. So birds need to keep busy. We honestly take away everything from our birds, which is why I'm doing my best to make these videos for you. Now on the subject of toys, I hear a lot of people say, my bird won't play with toys. And my response to that is, I totally get it. I have birds that haven't played with toys. But what I found is that there's such a variety of types of toys. And usually, you can get your bird to like one. So maybe you're giving your bird too many toys with wood and they would prefer little beads or maybe they would prefer paper toys or maybe they would prefer bells and just things that ring. Foraging toys are extremely important too. I love planet pleasures because if you look at toys from planet pleasures, there's a lot for them to do, just pulling out all the materials and such. But some birds need to play with wood. That's why I love jungle toys because I know where it comes from here in the United States. I've seen them being made. I know it's all natural how they get the colors on the toys. So knowing all that is really important because you may be missing out on an opportunity for your bird to play with a toy that you never previously introduced to your bird. And on that subject, when I come back to how to apply methods to each of these, I'm going to tell you what you can do to help your birds play with toys and some of my personal beliefs on toys, cardboard boxes, nesting and things like that. The fourth way to end up with a very dependent bird is through lack of socialization. Now, I know a lot of you live alone and you can't exactly socialize your bird, but definitely when you have visitors come over, if your bird isn't particularly aggressive, you definitely want to take every opportunity you can. And especially if you got a baby bird of some sorts, now's your chance to socialize that bird. This right here can prevent attacks, jealousy, aggression and a lot of negative behaviors because you're introducing others into the flock. So if you have a flock of two, you and your bird, then anyone outside of the flock is a complete interference to your parrot. So if you want to have a harmonious house, you want to make sure that you introduce these people as flock members. Obviously you'll have visitors and such and we'll go into how to handle that in a little bit when we come back to socialization. What do we do instead of all these things that we probably thought we were doing to make our bird happy, cuddling them, hugging them, paying more attention to them than giving them other things to do. If you really look at it, even not socializing them because you want to give them all the attention or you give them all the attention that they require, if you really look at it, it all comes out of the goodness of our heart. So I totally understand. But now we're going to go into what to do to prevent that dependency and how to make it better if you've already created that dependency. And overall, the main way you do that is by establishing yourself as a flock leader, somebody within their flock, particularly a leader, instead of a mate, which is so easy to do accidentally. How I like to do this is by practicing inclusion. I like to include my birds with me and other people and me and other birds. If you guys remember the video I did on how to get two parrots to get along, that video will correlate really well with what I'm talking about here. Even if you only have one bird, I think it's really important information. So go back and listen to that. I'll put the link above. Let's talk about the first subject we were talking about with giving your bird way too much attention. Now, whether you have a baby or a rescue, this is absolutely so easy to do. So let me start with the big mistake that I think that I made with Jersey because I think an example will lay it out easier for you guys to understand. So you guys know, I told you guys this before when I got Jersey, I sensed that she plucked, she had some broken feathers. I thought that, you know, I was going to be great for Jersey and I believe that I am, but I think we made mistakes with Jersey and the big mistake was loving on her too much. When we first got her, George would literally take her to work. He would take her everywhere. Eventually she started getting car sick and we realized, okay, we can't do that. So there was a change for her it was a certain amount of attention that she was getting that went away. I also had a roommate at the time. We all lived in this two bedroom apartment and she slept in the room with my roommate and he played with her all the time which is an amazing thing. And he played with her in a very engaging way. All those games like hide and seek and all those things that you see Jersey do in other videos, if you haven't seen them, go check them out. It's very entertaining. He played all those games with her and she just loved it. So those are great games to play as far as giving your bird attention because it's really giving your bird an activity and something to do and something to work on and use their intelligence and also exercise, especially if your bird's not flighted. Playing games that create exercise is really healthy for your bird. But when he moved out, that also caused a lot of stress for Jersey. There was just general too many changes. On top of that, we're just loving on her so much because even though Jersey wasn't my first cockatoo, our family cockatoo tie was also a plucker when we got him and he completely recovered under our house. So I thought it would be easy and this is why sometimes when I see people attacking people with birds without feathers going, you must have abused them. You must have done something wrong. The bird is under complete stress. Part of that is true, but it's not always because of a bad situation. Sometimes it's because the bird got so much love and so much attention that they never really learned how to become independent and entertain themselves. The human being became the entertainer and that can be dangerous. So my advice to you if you've already made this mistake and by the way, Brando himself, he's a baby. I want to love on him. He tugs at my heart because he reminds me of Picasso and it's very therapeutic for me. But already I can see that sometimes he gets very attached or a little bit dependent. He goes to other people. He's socialized really well. He's one of my best socialized birds. However, he doesn't really like to be alone. He does like to spend time in his cage alone playing with his toys and that's something that I really, really stressed on from the beginning. But if he's out on a tree, it's only going to be a matter of time before he jumps off and tries to get to me. So in this case, it's important that whenever he is standing on a tree or on a play stand that it's one comfortable for him. Sometimes it can be that in Brando's case, sometimes he likes one tree more than the other because he's got small feet. So sometimes the smaller tree is more comfortable for him. And I can see that. So sometimes you have to analyze those things and see why. But what I'm doing with Brando is I'm making sure that he has time with toys and new toys. He's young, so he's still kind of interested in one toy, can keep his interest every time I take it away and bring it back. But you also want to introduce them to new things and different things. Now is the chance to show them lots of different things. If you guys remember when I got Brando, Felipe explained why as a baby it's important that they spend time with you but then every half an hour they have to go back and spend a few hours in the cage. This was very interesting information for me because my birds were rescues but it makes complete sense because the baby will start relying on you so much that they might not eat, they might not sleep, they might just crave all of your attention because that's what they think they're supposed to get. And that would create a very dependent bird which later when they go through hormones can be very stressful for us because the bird is going to scream when you're not there, get stressed when you're not there that can cause plucking that can cause other behavioral issues so it's just something to consider. Jersey literally just walked into the room. Hi baby! Another thing you might want to practice is not having your bird on your shoulder as I do right now. Personally, I don't really like birds on my shoulder it's just a personal thing that's why I kind of always liked George my African gray and I've always been like really into African grays because the grays that I've had just kind of love to like chill. Don't get me wrong Cody's completely rambunctious and she will sit on my shoulder but they're okay not being there they're okay being around me and I like to create that in all of my birds but generally especially with big birds you really don't want to create that dependency where they feel like they have to travel on your shoulder instead I prefer to have stands that can roll around or to create spaces for my birds wherever I am and that's also very important and Jersey is literally climbing up the light. Do you want to come into the video? You can come. Come. Okay so now she got I guess I gotta wait until she comes up herself. The moral of that is if you have a baby you want to give them time to play you want to set aside different times for them to do different things just to create that sense of hey we have me and you time but we also have you and you time and make sure to give them activities during those times because it's very important for your bird to not rely on so much attention and I just want to reiterate I mean attention I don't really mean like being attentive to your bird you should always be in tune and attentive to your bird so that's just something a little bit different and real quick about having your bird on your shoulder especially if you have big birds I want you guys to be careful with that don't take chances with birds because you may not know your bird well enough to know that your bird is gonna bite your face like you really have to be prepared so just really don't take chances I just wanted to throw that in so let's go back to the stimulation factor I know it's kind of an uncomfortable subject we all love our birds one of the most amazing and beautiful thing about birds is like whoa I can't believe a cockatoo wants to sit in my lamp and get pet and so on right it's kind of unbelievable but it's kind of unfortunate that as much as you know your bird enjoys it and you enjoy it things will get weird later on so you want to make sure not to do it I'm not gonna lie sometimes it may feel a little unavoidable you know you're petting your bird's head and your finger touches their back you may have seen that sometimes in videos but I think this is a really good reason to DNA test your bird as I mentioned before one thing I think you should keep in mind is that if your bird is seemingly getting stimulated by you even just regurgitating in your presence you might want to replace that with an activity I want to take this time to tell you guys that yeah it really is hard for our birds right we take them into our house sometimes we take away their flight they don't have a mate we take away nesting behaviors because god forbid they should lay an egg which is totally understandable because they might lay an egg and get egg bound or they might become territorial or they might become aggressive and we're just really not equipped to deal with it so my approach to things is really just to be better equipped to adjust to their life as birds so that's why we're gonna get into now toys and what you can do because this is gonna include some of the territorial things that can be kind of a touchy subject but to each zone and I just want to give you guys the information you choose what you do with it because every bird is so different and behaves so different for me with all my birds I do everything on a case by case basis okay so we talked about toys hey you can come in so we talked about the importance of toys because that gives your bird an activity especially foraging toys that doesn't necessarily have to be a store-bought expensive foraging toy that could literally be you hiding food or treats within different things for your bird to discover or play with which is very interesting that gives your bird an activity to do when your bird has other activities to do then it's like oh yeah I can't have cuddle time right now because this is what I'm doing right now I am foraging I am playing I am destroying and by the way when you give your birds toys they're less likely to destroy things in your house be loud or aggressive because they have an activity so a lot of times we think it's okay to just throw a toy into the cage and you know oh the bird doesn't like it they're not interested in toys no it doesn't work that way you have to change the toy change it around if they did destroy it it's a good sign more of that that's very important for your birds on the subject of toys as I already went over there's lots of different toys that you can try with your birds one specific thing that I always found works with almost every bird and I swear to you guys Leo never played with a toy I can't get him to play with toys he's not interested in toys and also because we gave Jersey too much love which I talked about before a little bit she also wasn't as interested in toys as she should have been especially for a cockatoo yes you hear her whining over there but I'm happy to report that today she is very interested in toys and I absolutely love that I'm going to tell you how we did it I'm also going to tell you what I got Leo into so the first thing is quite often if your bird isn't interested in toys they're going to be interested in a box because box is essentially nesting now boxes can be very controversial because boxes can make your bird territorial and boxes can make your bird in that nesting mode which if your bird doesn't have enough calcium or doesn't have enough she just climbs up the light so if your bird doesn't have enough calcium or your bird doesn't have strong enough muscles because it's not flighted to push out an egg that can be very dangerous so it's something that you need to think about however if you don't want to give your bird a box I find that a lot of birds like cardboard so you could give them like half of a box or a piece of cardboard and see how they react to that now I'm going to tell you guys see Vinnie with his boxes and you guys know that he likes his boxes and you guys know that I give him his boxes and I'm going to tell you why first of all he's a male he's not in danger of laying any eggs second of all he does get territorial over the boxes he more so likes to be outside them than inside them you guys know I'm a filmmaker we play up all that drama with the boxes but yeah he is territorial over the boxes but that keeps him busy I honestly don't believe in taking away everything that birds need to feel like birds if you do feel like you have a bird and it becomes very aggressive near a box don't give your bird a box if it's not something that you can handle if your bird is laying eggs and it's detrimental to your bird absolutely do not give your bird boxes but if your bird is interested in boxes in a safe way it will give you so much quiet time while that bird is busy with that box not only will they be busy in a very foraging sort of way but it also creates vigilance so what is vigilance right out in the wild when birds or other animals are protecting their territory they're also being vigilant not territorial vigilant it means that they're looking around noticing everything that's new and they're very busy thinking, analyzing and checking out all potential dangers that keeps their mind very busy versus a bird sitting in a cage with nothing to do because as you already learned that he's caged there's not many threats you may have some issues some of you I've seen you guys say this and if you guys watch my channel you know that there's some of this going on with my African Grace you may find that your bird has taken over a certain territory maybe just a corner of the kitchen like my African Grace for some reason they're both just alike and they both like two spots in my kitchen and they're territorial over those spots but they're also very vigilant which keeps them very busy they stay there they don't really move and it's a really easy way for me to keep them out and keep them busy I put toys there I let them play with the toys they love that because it's in their spot and they haven't been dangerous to anyone I let them do that because it makes them happy and it's one of the techniques I use to be able to have 10 birds in my house and have them be all out because they essentially have a little spot that they feel is theirs and I by no means mean that you should ever let your birds do whatever they want I don't have necessarily like chewed couches and things like that because that's not acceptable to me but I do mean that if we are accepting a bird into our homes we have to learn to adjust a tiny bit to their environment and create ways for us to live harmoniously so when I give my birds activities like these they're keeping busy they're happy and they're healthy that also results in less screaming less plucking and less behavioral problems as far as them feeling stressed because they're jealous or not getting enough attention from you because they have their own thing to do and I think that's a beautiful thing and honestly every rescue that I've ever went to you end up seeing a bird or macaws and they brought the birds cardboard box for them to play with because I feel like people who've been in it so long and they're just not repeating and repeating what other people say they really understand the importance of giving the birds that kind of activity still on the subject of toys let's talk about Leo Leo never plays with any toys so I found this thing which I got for Vinny it is I don't exactly know what it is but it's four cats and it has no catnip in it or anything like that it's a cardboard that they scratch on and around Christmas time I found some really nice ones in home goods which is basically a discount store and they're not like a box but they're kind of like shaped like just different shapes that is more than just a plain straight one and I started putting that in Leo's cage because I was like my god like I don't want this bird to just stand there and not have anything to do so I was like what the heck let me just try putting it in his cage and do you know he started playing with it he kept so busy chewing it up and if you guys remember Leo plucks a little bit and Lou told me that before I got in they didn't even see that he had the yellow because he plucked so much and maybe he was stressed because his owner died but basically that kept him really really busy here is a bird that I thought would play with nothing and then I gave him somewhat of a box slash cardboard it wasn't a box that he could like literally go in but he got to step on top of it and chew and he really enjoyed that so I was pretty happy with that so don't give up you can always find something it just may take time and that that took me a long time to find you have to do your due diligence with birds as well I think that's an important part of having a bird is not giving up you know the bird doesn't want anything the bird doesn't want to come out of the cage the bird doesn't want to play with toys the bird doesn't like me the bird bit me that's where the problem lies people don't have patience so they don't quite frankly they don't have the empathy if you're not willing to become a parrot psychologist and really analyze each and every one's behavior and cater a little bit to it then birds are not for you so let's talk about socialization and what you can do you guys remember the story of me getting Merlin you saw me getting Merlin if you didn't go back and watch the series not now you can listen to this but later it's very interesting Merlin was an African gray that I met at a rescue and he seemingly wasn't understood by anyone Rose at Parrots first is phenomenal with birds I was just so impressed with how she had all the birds out and playing and full toys and she really has a gift with managing birds Merlin wasn't particularly bonded to anyone there and he really didn't go to anyone there within about 20 minutes I was able to talk to Merlin and pick up Merlin so I thought that I was going to be Merlin's person I thought oh my god Merlin is going to be a problem if I bring him home because I just assumed that he was going to love me and not George like which is very easy to do and happens very frequently here George is very busy he works a lot this guy can work 18 hours in one go it's kind of unbelievable so I just thought naturally he's just not going to have the time to socialize George felt connected to Merlin just from watching the story the first time I met Merlin as a lot of you did when I brought Merlin home I said listen George we really need to team up here on socialization it's extremely important especially with African grays because they can be one person birds you can't win a gray over by scratching his head and hypnotizing him with a beautiful head rub it's just uh not that common this was my chance to really go over socialization with George and would you believe it it worked Merlin is obsessed with George and he's fine with me and basically what I did in a nutshell was I had George take him out of the cage first I had George offer him food first I had George spend a long time with him I didn't hog the bird when you hog the bird as tempting as it may be you're really creating dependency issues and that will not make for an independent bird at all and if you can socialize your bird with other people definitely 100% you have to do it with everyone in the house and if they're not on board then maybe a bird is not for you because the bird can create a ridge between you and whoever else that they've decided is not part of the flock or a threat to the flock this is very important to understand most people this is the main thing that they don't understand before getting a bird and they go out and get a cockatoo cockatoo lunges at the five-year-old's face and they realize cockatoos are not for them that's not fair on the bird that's why this information is very important for you guys all right so along with socialization with the other person or other visitors I want you to know I completely understand that some of you may not have anyone else living in the house so I don't feel like socialization is 100% has to be the person holding the bird or anything like that you may have an aggressive bird but I do think that including the bird in the activity you have someone over for tea you guys go to a different room the bird's cage is let's say somewhere else and you guys are in the kitchen bring the bird stand roll it over no one has to interact with the bird in terms of the guest they should say hi how are you? let them know that the bird is acknowledged that's a very big thing in the parrot world you've got to acknowledge the bird that doesn't mean your guest has to touch the bird your guest doesn't have to make the bird uncomfortable never force anything on your bird or you'll lose trust it just means that you included the bird the bird's like okay I understand this person's not a threat I'm not being taken away this is all good that's something that you can do if you have a particularly aggressive bird just continue to remember include, include, include, include also if you have more than one bird you want to include the bird with other birds in the flock right away so that doesn't mean put them in the same cage and by the way this is after the quarantine period this just literally means having the bird be included you don't want to take the baby bird and give the baby bird so much attention that the adult bird gets jealous you want to show them that you eat together and that you can shower together and such things and I want you guys to go back if you're curious about that watch my video that I made on how to get two birds to get along very important because there's a lot of great information in that video even if you only have one bird you want to go potty? let's go potty go potty show everyone how you go potty yep let's see did you guys see any cues that Brando wanted to go potty? probably not I'm just really in tune with my birds you see just gotta really feel it and be on it what he did right there and probably I'd have to go back and watch the video because it's not something I saw it's something I felt just like he moved in a different way he probably stretched I wasn't looking at him I was really focused on what we're talking about and that also is how you potty train your bird but I have other videos on that alright so as far as integration with the rest of the flock I want you guys to go back and watch that video but I will say you know when birds choose a mate or a partner it's not always of the opposite sex especially if they're in certain surroundings where they don't have the opportunity to find a bird of their own sex and that by the way does not mean that they're mating it just means that they're kind of the chosen bond that they're feeling it may not be of the same bird if you guys look at the history of Picasso my mustache parakeet with Jersey my umbrella cockatoo I wouldn't necessarily say they were extremely bonded in terms of how Jersey felt about Picasso but she was fine with him and Picasso loved Jersey and if you look at the budding relationship between my Amazon Leo and blue the ring neck you'll see that now blue is regurgitating for Leo and Leo's accepting it again I don't feel like Leo feels like he's the mate of blue but it's just something to be aware of and on that note if you really analyze the situation ringnecks and mustache parakeets mustache parakeets which are a subspecies of ringnecks they seem to really be open to relationships of other species isn't that interesting so if you are looking for a friend or someone to keep one of your birds busy now I'm thinking that it might be very interesting to consider a ring neck because they seem to be open to those kinds of relationships especially if you don't want them to mate or lose your relationship with them I just think that's something interesting to consider okay so those are the four things and I want you guys to realize that all of this information is going to help with negative behavior in your bird whether it's screaming whether it's hormones because obviously enabling a bird to have this kind of dependency on you is going to be that much more harder when they get hormonal so that's during the hormonal years and also the hormonal periods of the year and with all this being said I just want to make you guys understand something if you're a little bit more literal if you guys heard me before I am in the belief that my birds are really quiet except when I'm leaving the door because they are getting what they need so that doesn't mean that I'm picking them up and cuddling then it means that I'm really investigating what it is that they need and what kind of thing I can give them to entertain them or satisfy them at the time so I'm by no means suggesting that you ever ignore any of that you have to keep your bird satisfied because you have to remember that the voice they have is the voice they have if your bird is screaming there is a reason whether they need something that they really do need or they need something that you created in which case you want to replace that with another activity and I never want you guys to be the kind of bird owner that lets your bird do whatever he wants you want to establish that flock leader mentality but at the same time I don't ever want you guys to be such a trainer that your bird's personality doesn't come out and that your bird doesn't make his own decisions because that's how you get his intelligence going by really just analyzing your bird and seeing what his natural tendencies are as well so you want to be somewhere in the middle there where you do have some kind of control you completely understand your bird you don't allow them to destroy your house it is going to happen because you can't have an eye everywhere but in general you kind of want to look at ways to make their lives more comfortable by a way of you understanding them more but you don't want to have a bird that just goes from A to B does whatever trick you really want them to just have a personality and really find out what it is that they love to do I can get Vinny to dance anytime I want treat or not because I know he loves doing it because it's his personality so I encourage you guys to discover those things about your birds while keeping control over your birds in a flock leader sort of way and one thing I want to leave you guys with today is that parrots are only two generations removed from the wild right you can never trust them completely and they'll never be dogs in a way that they're going to obey everything that you do we have so much to learn about birds and we'll never be perfect so when you take on a bird you got to continue to learn to grow to analyze to observe it's very very important it's a serious thing it's almost like lion taming not as dangerous clearly but there definitely is a skill the only difference is many people think they can do it not many people think they can be lion tamers and they probably can't but many people think they can have a bird and they probably shouldn't so I want to thank you guys for watching today if you liked my new red sniffer shirt I'm obsessed with it it's now available for pre-order at parrotsstation.com I'm just trying out different colors let me know in the comments what colors you guys would like also it's come to my attention that some of you don't know where our merch is and you've been asking for it so that is at www.parrotsation.com and don't forget to check out our Feathered Funboxes at www.featheredfunbox.com I put a lot of work into curating them as I told you guys before when I was a kid there was nothing like this for birds there's of course bin, bark box and lots of exciting things for other animals but I wanted to create something for the birds that I felt passionate about and that's why our Feathered Funbox is different because it includes a gift for you the parent which is merchandise that I'm very proud of and I hope you guys enjoy when I was a kid there was nothing like that there was nothing with a bird on it except for pretty much Tweety I just want to create ways for the kids of today and even us adults who love this kind of stuff to enjoy our bird related characters and products all right I love you guys so much if you want to support my educational work in getting these videos out please consider checking out my Patreon where I can have better access to you guys and also have access to your ideas than what you think should be in my videos I love you guys so much thank you for watching till next time don't forget to subscribe bye