If you live with parrots long enough, sooner or later you are likely to encounter a behavior that leaves you completely stumped.
Perhaps your parrot suddenly begins biting you. Maybe he screams every time you leave the room. Perhaps she attacks your spouse, refuses to step up from her cage, guards a favorite person, or has become terrified of something that never seemed to bother her before.
So, you do what most conscientious parrot caregivers do: you look for advice.
And there is certainly no shortage of that.
“Ignore the screaming. Don’t react when he bites. Don’t let her on your shoulder. Put him back in his cage to show him who’s boss. Provide redirection. Give him more toys.”
Some of this advice may be perfectly reasonable in the right circumstances. And some of it may make the problem worse.
The difficulty is that a behavior cannot be understood simply by examining what it looks like.
“My Parrot Bites”
Consider biting.
If you tell me, “My parrot bites,” I know almost nothing about the problem yet.
When does he bite?
Where is he when it happens?
Who is approaching him?
What is that person doing?
What happened immediately before the bite?
What does the person do immediately afterward?
Does the parrot bite everyone, or only certain people?
Does he bite in every location, or only on his cage, on a shoulder, near a favorite person, or in some other specific circumstance?
Does he move toward the person to bite, or does he first attempt to move away?
What has happened during similar interactions in the past?
Those questions aren’t incidental. They are the beginning of understanding the behavior.
Two parrots can perform what appears to be exactly the same behavior for entirely different reasons.
One parrot may bite because biting has reliably caused hands to retreat. Another may bite because doing so results in being returned to a preferred location.
Another may have learned that subtle attempts to avoid interaction are ignored, while a bite works immediately.
Still another may have a long history of being forced to step up and has learned that an approaching hand predicts an unpleasant interaction.
The behavior looks the same.
The variables maintaining it may be very different.
And if we don’t understand those variables, we are guessing about the solution.
Behavior Makes Sense
One of the most useful assumptions we can make when approaching a difficult behavior problem is this:
Behavior makes sense.
That doesn’t mean the behavior is desirable. It doesn’t mean we should allow a parrot to continue biting people, to scream for hours, or to attack another bird.
It means that behavior occurs within a particular context.
There are antecedents—things that happen right before the behavior – things that set the stage for the behavior to happen.
There are consequences—things that happen after it. These consequences predict whether that behavior will occur in the future or not.
There is a learning history.
There is an environment in which the behavior occurs.
And there is a living, learning animal whose behavior changes according to what works.
When we describe a parrot as “aggressive,” “jealous,” “stubborn,” “dominant,” “hormonal,” or “mean,” we may feel that we have explained something.
Usually, we haven’t. We have only applied a label.
The label can actually interfere with solving the problem because it encourages us to stop asking questions.
The Question Isn’t, “How Do I Stop It?”
When people contact me about a difficult behavior, understandably they usually want to know how to make it stop.
“How do I stop my parrot from screaming?” “How do I stop him from attacking my husband?” “How do I stop him from chewing up my baseboards?”
But that isn’t usually where I begin.
Before deciding what to change, I want to understand what is happening. What exactly is the behavior?
When does it occur—and when does it not occur?
What reliably happens immediately before it?
What happens afterward?
What does the parrot gain, maintain, postpone, or escape as a result?
What has the parrot learned from previous interactions?
What environmental or husbandry variables might be relevant?
And perhaps most importantly:
Why is this behavior working for the parrot?
Once we begin answering that question, a behavior that previously seemed inexplicable often becomes much less mysterious.
And only then can we begin asking the other important question:
What would we like the parrot to do instead?
Why Quick Fixes So Often Fail
This is why I am wary of recipes for behavior change.
“Do these five things to stop biting.”
“Three ways to stop screaming.”
“The one trick that will make your parrot step up.”
They are appealing because they promise certainty.
But parrots aren’t recipes.
The same strategy applied to two superficially similar problems may produce completely different results because the behaviors have different functions.
Good behavior consulting therefore involves more than knowing training techniques.
It involves learning to ask better questions.
Sometimes the most important thing I can tell someone during a consultation is not what to do.
It is:
“I’m not sure yet. I need more information.”
That isn’t a failure to provide an answer.
It is often the beginning of finding the right one.
Bring Me Your Toughest Case
On September 4, I’m going to try something a little different.
I’m opening the Parrot Behavior Emergency Room: Bring Me Your Toughest Cases, a live, 90-minute problem-solving workshop.
Rather than spending the entire session lecturing about behavior, I’ll demonstrate how I approach complex cases in real time.
Registrants will have an opportunity to submit a behavior problem in advance. I’ll select several cases and work through them during the live workshop—asking questions, examining assumptions, identifying variables that may be maintaining the behavior, and exploring practical strategies for change.
Your own case doesn’t have to be selected for you to benefit.
My larger goal is to teach you how to think about behavior differently—so that the next time your parrot does something baffling, your first question isn’t simply:
“How do I make this stop?”
Instead, you begin asking:
“What is happening here—and why?”
The Parrot Behavior Emergency Room: Bring Me Your Toughest Cases
A Live Problem-Solving Workshop with Pamela Clark, CPBC
Friday, September 4, 2026
12:00 PM Central Time
90 minutes
Registration: $29
A recording will be available to registrants after the live workshop.
Bring your questions. Bring your assumptions. And, most importantly, bring me your toughest cases. After completing your registration, you will receive instructions about submitting a case.
I look forward to seeing you all there!
Pamela Clark
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