Figuring out a sudden change in behavior

[Mitchan]

(Sorry in advance about the super long post :21: ...)


After I dyed my hair from black to blonde this week, Donnie the Yellow-crowned Amazon spent a couple of days being very agitated as soon as he saw me.
It took me some time to figure out what the core of the problem was other than the hair, and I'd like to share with you my journey to figuring out his behavior as I believe this could be useful for other scenarios as well!

So, as a lot of us know from first hand experience, many birds do tend to get a bit startled or mad when their people change their appearance, like getting a haircut, a new hair color, glasses, etc.
I've usually only had my birds be confused for fifteen minutes or so before realizing it's just me and getting back to normal.
Donnie is new to the flock though and hasn't seen me change my hair before. The change was quite eye catching too, not something that can be easily ignored or covered up.
So the initial reaction from Donnie when he first saw my hair didn't go too well.
I got two bites and he was agitated and doing his Angry Amazon Stance the entire time.

I’ve never been bitten by Donnie before, so I got a little bit startled and uncertain myself at this point.
I let him do his thing climbing around the bird room and chewing some toys and only interacted with the other birds for the time being, then put him back in his cage.
When I came back to give them some fresh foods, Donnie would just barely let me reach in his cage to put his food dish in, I could tell he was close to biting then too. He got mad every time I moved, and especially when I moved my head near his cage.
So for the next two days my only direct interactions with Donnie were in my bedroom without distractions from the other birds, with him in his carrier.
I talked to him and gave him treats through the bars to just allow him to slowly get used to my new hair.
He still didn't want my interactions when out of the carrier though, so for his exercise and out of cage time I had to handle him with a perch (and even that was pushing it according to him)..

After two days or so I decided it'd be best to suck it up and see what I could do training wise, as the slowly getting used to my hair didn't seem to work.
I took him out to the aviary to be away from the other birds but still have toys and perches around.
The session didn't start out too well either..

But one thing I did right was I decided to film most of the session so that I could go back and watch what was really happening.
I went into the session just giving him treats to warm him up. He was being very good about it so I thought I’d offer my hand for a step up. Nope. He bit me. Totally out of nowhere, it felt like in that moment.
So I went back and checked the video, and noticed I hesitated while offering my hand. Just a tiny hesitation once or twice, that I didn’t even know I was doing while it was happening, but Donnie sure did. So that was my fault.

Next time I offered my hand for a step up, I made sure not to hesitate, and he did step up! But while on my hand, he bit me again, and then once more when I was trying to put him back on the perch.
I went back and checked the video and noticed that, while having been totally quiet before, concentrated on giving treats - when he stepped up, I got excited and praised him for it. He got startled by my voice and that’s why he bit me the first time. The other bite was because he was already agitated and I was trying to quickly put him back on the perch and he understandably didn't like that. Again, all my fault.

The next step up went well to begin with, but after he got his treat I went to put him back on the perch right away, and he bit me again. This one I didn’t actually film so I couldn’t check back but I figured he didn’t want to be rushed back onto the perch so soon, he probably wanted some peace to actually eat his safflower seed first.

So! Fourth time’s the charm right? Yes!
I had figured out what to do by observing my previous mistakes. I offered a steady hand, praised him softly when he stepped up, let him sit on my hand for a while, giving him more treats, and then carefully turned him towards the perch to go back to it, still showing him there were treats involved.
It all went as planned and after the first success he got more comfortable and repeated the good step up a couple of more times. He got a couple of scritches and he let me put him back in the carrier when I took him back inside and the next day he wasn't even mad when I went and changed out his water and got him some food. We're all good now and he's back to his old self.

So in the end, yeah, he thought my hair was scary, but looking back I don’t think that was the core of the problem at all, but rather my reaction to the whole thing.
He got startled and bit me, and that’s cool, it’s expected. But I got startled too, and uncertain about him. That made him uncertain about me as well, as evident by the first aviary session bite: he bit me because I hesitated.
It mostly came down to us working on our trust for eachother. He could’ve probably gotten over the hair as fast as the rest of the flock, but since he’d never bitten me before and I was worried he’d do it again because of the hair, I didn’t trust him enough to give him time or opportunity to properly get over it - I'm guessing he likely started associating my hair change with what he perceived to be a change for the worse in MY behavior.

The moral of the story, I think, is that it's very easy for us to assume something is a certain way just because it makes sense (ie "he's just afraid of my new hair"), but from our birds' point of view it might be something completely different that's happening!
I also really highly recommend filming your sessions when working with a behavior you aren’t sure about, so that you can go back and watch it from another perspective afterwards, you might notice something you wouldn’t have otherwise!
It sure helped me a lot in figuring out what I was doing wrong here.
This could also be helpful with trick training if you're getting stuck somewhere and can't figure out why you're stuck and how to proceed.. Just set up your phone camera and watch the footage for tiny clues that might help you!

Here's Donnie getting some good good scritches going the day after working through our trust issues:

 

[Inger]

Brilliant example of “its always the fault of the human.” Thanks for sharing this wonderful strategy. So far the only change Bumble has completely put the smack down on was fake nails. I guess she’s just trying to save me money!


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[wrench13]

Mitchan an excellent analysis of what happened and how you worked through it. So many folks make wrong assumptions and are not informed enough to take the right steps when a loss of trust occurs. This post might even be stickie worthy, perhaps in one of the sub-forums, or the Amazon sub-forum. Good job and we can see how well it went , in the expression of Donnie's face! He is loving his skritching.

 

[Jottlebot]

That's fantastic!

So, as far as Donnie was concerned you'd changed your hair, which he didn't like, and changing your hair had changed your behaviour, which he definitely didn't like! It also explains how a bird could start to fear changes in their human.

Really really useful, thank you!

 

[Mitchan]

Brilliant example of “its always the fault of the human.” Thanks for sharing this wonderful strategy. So far the only change Bumble has completely put the smack down on was fake nails. I guess she’s just trying to save me money!

My late Ringneck would actually really like it when I'd painted my nails, but yeah, most of my birds also really don't like it. Thankfully I never get fake nails and I very very rarely paint them, so I don't have to deal with that a lot ahah

Mitchan an excellent analysis of what happened and how you worked through it. So many folks make wrong assumptions and are not informed enough to take the right steps when a loss of trust occurs. This post might even be stickie worthy, perhaps in one of the sub-forums, or the Amazon sub-forum. Good job and we can see how well it went , in the expression of Donnie's face! He is loving his skritching.

Thank you! Yeah, it's very easy to misinterpret a behavior and then try to go about "fixing" it from that assumption, and ending up making things a lot harder for both yourself and the bird instead, so video recording your sessions not only allow you to analyze what's happening in greater detail and from a new point of view, but it also sets you up with an analytic mindset from the start - you know you're going to have to look for details to figure out what's going on right now, instead of acting on assumptions and/or generalizations. So it really is a great tool!
And if someone would actually want to stickify this thread I'd be happy having it moved to whichever category or sub-forum would seem most fit.. Thank you for the suggestion, I'm glad you liked my analysis :57:

That's fantastic!

So, as far as Donnie was concerned you'd changed your hair, which he didn't like, and changing your hair had changed your behaviour, which he definitely didn't like! It also explains how a bird could start to fear changes in their human.

Really really useful, thank you!

Yeah, exactly! And here I was just assuming that my new hair had changed HIS behavior, when really he was just confused as to why the bright fuzzy mess on my head had not only changed my appearance but also all of his routines and my way of interacting with him. Totally legit confusion, Donnie!