Caiques

My two caique parrots have been wearing their Aviator harnesses for about three years. They don't love the process of having the harnesses put on them, but they don't actively fight it either. For a while now I've been wanting to change that, to make it a happier experience for them. Lately I actually set about making a training plan and putting it into action.

In the past I'd started this process by encouraging them to approach and beak-target the harness voluntarily. This was to combat their behavior of flying away upon seeing the harnesses.

The next step of training was to get them very comfortable with the head loop. To do this, I started out by making a large loop out of the harness material and shaping the behavior of putting their heads through the loop.

Once they were comfortable with that, I gradually made the loop smaller and smaller until I could transition to using the actual head loop of the harness, which is very small (especially for a big, bulky caique head!).

Within five days, I had both birds (who had previously flown away from the harness, and occasionally bitten my partner when he tried to harness them) voluntarily seeking out the harness, finding the head loop, and putting their own heads through it! I was shocked at the rate of progress we made.

To illustrate the process, I made a video of some of my training steps:



(x-posted to parrots101, caiques, and clickertraining)

I hear a lot of people say, "I could never have a caique; they have too much energy!" I only have caiques, not any other types of parrots, so I don't have a good basis for comparison. So I'm turning to you all:

1. If you have multiple types of parrots, do you think caiques have more energy? If so, how much more energy?

2. (Whether you have other types of birds or not:) Are your caiques high-energy all the time? How much of the day would you say they have really high energy?

3. What factors do you think contribute to your caiques' energy level? (e.g. Foraging, cage size, being flighted or not, having multiple caiques who live together, etc.)

I find that my caiques' energy goes in waves. They usually have a big burst of energy first thing in the morning, then they pig out on breakfast and settle down for a while. They get rambunctious again at some point during the day, then settle down in the afternoon and preen each other and take a nap. Then they are energetic again in the evening, then they put themselves to bed when they're tired.

When they're energetic, they're VERY energetic - sometimes to the point where I have to put them in their room to chill out for a while or do some flight training to burn off some energy. However, they don't sustain that energy level all day; they spend a lot of time preening and napping. Are my caiques unusual? I'd love to hear about everyone else's experiences with this.

It's been far too long since my last photo post, my friends. Today, I will remedy that. :)

(x-posted to parrots101 and caiques)

My two (3.5-year-old) caiques are really good about knowing the places they're supposed to hang out in the house and the places they aren't. (With occasional slip-ups, or possibly boundary-testing, but hey, nobody's perfect all the time.)

Those "acceptable places" have included, for the past few months, the top of the fridge and the top of the kitchen cabinets. However, since they know that the places they are allowed to hang out are also the places it's okay for them to poop, I've decided this needs to change. They usually don't poop there, but even occasional fridge-pooping is too much fridge-pooping for me.

Last night Operation Don't Go There commenced. They already know the "Go!" cue, which means "fly to an appropriate perch," sometimes combined with pointing to said perch to indicate where I want them to go. Their remaining appropriate perch in the kitchen is a hanging toy in the deep window well over the kitchen sink. I spent a large chunk of last night cueing them to fly to me, then fly to the toy to get a reinforcer. If they flew to the cabinet instead, I immediately pointed and used the "Go" cue to redirect them to the right place.

I started just across the kitchen from the perch, so it was within view. As the training session progressed, I slowly moved around the corner into the living room (the living room and kitchen are one big room, and where they and we usually spend our time) out of sight of the perch. I want them to learn that when they fly from the living room to the kitchen, they need to land on their toy (which requires a sharper turn than flying to the fridge or cabinets).

By the end of the training session, they were choosing the toy over the cabinet about 19 times out of 20. Not bad for an evening's work!

(x-posted to clickertraining)

Oh, and pictures of the little devils in question!


This is what happens when I work from home.






I think this one is my favorite of the bunch.


Icarus helping me work.


What could be under the desk?


Icarus, trying to pull the keys off of my keyboard does not count as helping me work.


Nor does pulling the buttons off of my mouse.


Daedalus helping make dinner by eating very tiny carrots.


What's up, Doc?




Carrots are so delicious, they give you the crazy eyes!


Nom nom nom!

I took Caesar outside for the first time on his harness over the weekend. He was a little fussy when we first put the harness on, but once we stepped outside he completely forgot about it and was in total bliss. He was making some of the coolest noises I have ever heard come from him.













He's making his cool raptor noise here.





Caesar's also been doing really well in regards to clicker training. I slacked off for a while due to how busy I was with school, but just the other day I asked him to come to me and he flew right to my arm. He remembered everything I had taught him back in the fall! But he's a smart one... he would only fly to me if he saw I was holding a treat for him.

Before getting the harness on him, I was teaching him to pick it up with his beak and using the clicker. I just realized how easy it would be for me to teach him to drop objects into a cup or to "play basketball". I swear, this bird is far too smart for his own good.

A while ago, I asked shadowrabbit for advice on how to prepare for my caiques' impending puberty. One of the things she recommended was teaching them to step up onto a stick.

I finally started working on this recently, using an old dowel perch that came with one of my cages. (Hey, finally a good use for those things!)

At first, both birds thought I was crazy for asking them to step onto this funky, unstable perch. I braced it against another perch and lured them onto it with treats. I got one foot onto it, and finally, after some practice, the second foot onto it.

I left the dowel on top of their cage, where they play all the time, to help them get used to it. (They weren't afraid of the perch itself, just of stepping onto it.)

A few days later I worked with them again, and they were almost flinging themselves onto the perch! It's as if something had clicked in their heads in the intervening days: Hey, standing on that thing means TREATS! They would step onto it instantly, fly to it, hop onto it, step up from the floor, etc. Amazing!

Normally my guys have no problems stepping up, but sometimes when they're running around their cage top they will refuse. Enter the stick! If I offer them a hand to step onto while they're on the cage top, they'll sometimes run away. If I offer them the stick, however, they are all over it!

I'm sure this trick will come in HUGELY handy in another year or so when they become cranky teenagers.

Out of curiosity, how many of you all have taught your birds to step up onto a stick? Have you done any other work to prevent or manage puberty-related behaviors?

I recently uploaded a bunch of pictures off of my camera and there were quite a few of Mr. Caesar on there so I figured you guys would enjoy seeing some of them. He is definitely one crazy bird and I definitely have to work to keep up with him.



Caesar just hanging out






I really love this picture of him because of the way he's hanging




No... he's not a caique, what are you talking about?

This video was taken the same night as LWC Part 1, so I'm calling it 1b.



(x-posted to rumorofrain, caiques, and parrots101)

In case you were wondering what happens when two caiques crawl all over you, it looks something like this:



(x-posted to rumorofrain, parrots101, and caiques)

Hi! My name is Nani and I am an 8 month old Caique who lives in a cold, cold place called Minnesota. It was beautiful here a few months ago...the warm breeze, trees, birds singing.




I don't know what happened!!!! Now my mommy doesn't take me outside anymore and I DON'T LIKE IT! But she did let me look out the window the other day, I think somehow we've been transported to an alien planet where everything is white and there is no wildlife to be found anywhere. Hopefully we'll be transported back real soon! At least I have a nice roost inside:



Anyway, here are a few videos of me...

My latest trick:




Another one:



My first trick ever:


 

It was a dark and stormy night...


No birds were harmed in the making of this photo series.

(x-posted to rumorofrain, caiques, and parrots101)

It took my birds a while, but they've finally figured this toy out! (Ok, Daedalus has, and Icarus waits for her to get the food to fall down and then eats it. As per usual.)

I'd rate this as a very challenging foraging toy, especially for small birds. It requires a lot of athletic ability to grab this and rotate the rings when it's bigger than you are! This would be a great toy for bigger birds, too - it's very durable and well-constructed.



(x-posted to rumorofrain, caiques and captiveforaging)

Hi Caique folks! Since we've all joined the community at different times, we may not all know who everyone is or who their birds are, so I wanted to do an introduction post.

If you like, introduce yourself in the comments here so we can all find out a little about each other and our birds.

I'd love to know:

1. How many caiques do you have, and what are their names?

2. How old are they, and how long have you had them? Do you know their sexes? What subspecies are they? (Black-headed, white-bellied, green-thighed, etc)

3. What is your bird's personality like? What are his/her likes and dislikes? Favorite toys? Favorite activities? Favorite places to hang out?

4. Anything else you'd like us to know about you or your bird!

I'll post my own introduction in a comment.

Here's a typical scene of my two caiques flying around the house. Daedalus spends some time sitting on the couch looking out the window, while Icarus wants to spend most of his time on me. :P This video shows one of the best behaviors I've taught my caiques: Flying home on cue and pooping there.



(x-posted to caiques, parrots101, and my journal)

Here's the second installment of my Life With Caiques series. This one shows a more typical caique energy level. :)

Check out Daedalus' awesome flying maneuver where she flies off to the right side of the screen, turns sharply in midair, and flies over to the coconut toy on the left of the screen! They've become such excellent little fliers.


And then here are some videos of the birds when they're sleepy:




(x-posted from my journal)

I've been trying to take some video of what it's like to live with two flighted caiques. Unfortunately, usually when I think of it, it's evening and the birds are tuckered out and almost ready for bed. Oh well!

Here is installment one, a typical evening scene in our house:




And a quick, funny bonus video of Icarus helping me knit:



(x-posted from my journal)

Here are three (poorly lit) videos of my caiques foraging:

Here are a few videos of my birds playing with the toy. (Sorry for the wretched lighting!)







x-posted to captiveforaging

I just posted a review of a few foraging toys by Creative Foraging Systems over in the captiveforaging community. I know some of you do foraging with your caiques, so I thought you might be interested!

Daedalus, queen of the jungle, swinging from a peach vine.

My 3.5-year-old white-bellied caique boy (DNA sexed), Icarus (see icon), periodically displays some weird behavior that I think is hormonal, but I'm not sure. (Background: he shares a large cage with a black-headed caique girl (DNA sexed), Daedalus.)

The behavior is this: He makes these godawful squawks, puffs up all of his feathers, and flutters his wings. It looks like a baby bird begging for food. This behavior will go on for weeks, then mysteriously disappear only to reappear months or a year later.

He is not regurgitating for me, although he does occasionally do so for Daedalus, and he's never tried to have sex with me, although, again, he occasionally does so with Daedalus.

Daedalus, my girl-bird, is her same sweet, quiet, charming self and is not displaying any of this weird behavior.

Has anyone else experienced this? What is going on?

I'll try to take a video tomorrow so y'all can see what it looks/sounds like.

You know you missed my goofy birds. ;) (In fact, one of my coworkers recently said to me at the end of a work call, "I haven't seen any bird videos in a while!") Wait no longer! Here they are:

Daedalus plays "peekabo":



Birds pooping on cue:


Icarus taking a bath:


Icarus hops from knee to knee. (He learned this trick in about 5 seconds. Also, pardon the camera angle. You can blame transversely for that.)



(x-posted)