Q&A: How veterinarians can recognize and manage common parrot behavior problems

Behavior problems are among the most common—and most misunderstood—reasons pet parrots end up in front of a veterinarian, and many of the behaviors owners find troubling are normal parts of a bird’s behavioral repertoire. Following her AVMA Convention session, “Parrots behaving badly: Making sense of psittacine behavior problems,” earlier this summer, Valli Parthasarathy, DVM, PhD, DACVB, a veterinary behaviorist and co-founder of Synergy Veterinary Behavior in Portland, Oregon, spoke with dvm360 about common behavior concerns in pet parrots, how veterinarians can distinguish medical and behavioral causes, approaches to treatment and behavior modification, and how general practitioners and exotics veterinarians can approach these cases and know when to seek additional support. She also discusses how clients can better understand and meet their birds’ behavioral needs. This Q&A has been adapted from that interview.

Editor's note: This dvm360 Q&A has been edited and consolidated from a verbal interview to better fit a written format while retaining the substance of the original conversation.

dvm360: What are the most common behavior problems you see in pet parrots?

Parthasarathy: The most common behavior problems that I see are aggression—oftentimes toward their people, and sometimes toward other parrots—excessive vocalization (screaming), and destructive behavior.

I also see feather-destructive behavior as well. Oftentimes, primary veterinarians see feather-destructive behavior before I do, so the cases that come to me tend to be ones that have a more specific behavior presentation.

dvm360: When a parrot presents with feather picking or self-mutilation, how do you determine whether the underlying cause is medical, behavioral, or both?

Parthasarathy: It starts with a good evaluation by the primary veterinarian. What I always recommend is having an evaluation looking for physical discomfort, pain, any changes in organ function, running blood work, doing imaging if indicated, and getting a history from the clients to find out if there have been any changes in mobility or activity recently.

Then, I also recommend getting skin and feather biopsies to make sure there are no obvious pathogens or histological changes that could be contributing to why this bird is doing it.

Sometimes it's evident in terms of the patterning of the destructive behavior. For example, if there's a bird who has feather loss on the top of the head, it's less likely to be behavioral because they can't reach up there with their beaks. Everything has an exception, so you can have a bird who rubs themselves against their enclosure or scratches themselves and injures their head that way. But if we have a bird who has lost all the feathers on the head, then I would think about a medical condition as possibly playing a role in that.

If we have a bird who is actually mutilating themselves, then we do need to treat it. So, if we have open wounds or sores, we absolutely need to treat it as a medical condition as well as a behavioral condition. The open sores have to be treated. The pain has to be treated. The inflammation and the infection need to be treated as well.

dvm360: Why might a parrot develop excessive vocalization, and how should veterinarians approach these cases?

Parthasarathy: Excessive vocalization is often a normal behavior in birds. We think of it as excessive just from the human perspective. But in many cases, the vocalizations that are there are contact calls between the birds and other birds.

In the wild, there will be a lot of vocalizations as the birds get up in the morning and get their groups together before flying out. And during the course of the day, they will also vocalize with each other, just to maintain those social relationships.

So, when you have a bird in a captive setting, they're going to show those same behaviors, and the individuals that they're contact calling are going to be the people who take care of them because those people are their primary social interactions in a lot of cases. Dawn and dusk are oftentimes really common times that they will show these contact-call type behaviors.

In most cases, [it is about] trying to figure out when these behaviors are happening and what the history around it is, because you can also have vocalization that occurs as a reaction to threats, where the bird is feeling threatened by something and is vocalizing either to something in the environment or to the people that are caring for them.

You can also have birds who are vocalizing due to separation-related distress.

So, trying to get a history and get an idea of when these vocalizations are happening can then allow the veterinarian to start determining: Are there ways that we can manage these behaviors? Are there ways that we can fulfill the needs that this bird is trying to express that are missing?

dvm360: How can general practitioners distinguish between normal behavior and behavior that warrants further evaluation?

Parthasarathy: The challenging thing from a general practitioner standpoint is that, while it's not always the case, a lot of times there's not much time [during the appointment] to discuss these cases in a lot of detail. So, getting a good behavioral history is going to be important to figure out the case.

What could be helpful is asking the following question to the client: "Is your parrot performing any behaviors that you wish they didn't?"

If they say, "Oh, you know, yeah, my parrot is screaming all the time," then talk to them about it: "Hey, this is really important. Let's figure out a time that we can dedicate to discussing this and figuring out what's going on, and in the meantime, can you fill out this history form so that we can get more information about why this is happening?"

From there, it depends a bit on the practitioner's comfort level. Do they feel that they can identify whether something is related to social isolation or contact-calling situations? Do they feel like they can distinguish that from separation-related distress or other reasons why this bird is screaming, and have appropriate treatment plans for them?

If not, then referral to a veterinary behaviorist is a great next step to help them with that.

dvm360: What treatment options are available for managing psittacine behavior problems in clinical practice?

Parthasarathy: The way I think about treatment options is the 3 M's: management, modification of behavior, and medications when indicated.

With behavior management, what we try to do is avoid or prevent the situations that trigger the unwanted behavior.

For example, if we have a bird who is screaming because they are left alone in a room for an extended period of time, can we set up the situation so that maybe the bird is with the people more, or in an enclosure that's in the main part of the house, so that they're not as isolated?

If the patient is a bird who is screaming because they are fearful of a person approaching the enclosure, is there any way that we can have somebody else care for that bird who the bird is not afraid of?

Or can we set up a situation such that, if the person has to approach the enclosure, we can teach the bird to go to the backside of the enclosure or someplace further away?

The next thing we want to do is behavior modification: How can we teach the bird to do something different?

Depending on the situation, there may be a strong emotional component to that behavior. For example, if you have a bird who is fearful and reacting out of fear—screaming, displaying aggressive behavior, or flying away—then what we have to focus on is how we can change that bird's emotional state from frightened to curious and interested, and ideally no longer fearful. The process for that is called gradual desensitization and counterconditioning.

You can also teach the bird particular skills.

Sometimes we have birds who are very destructive around the house. This is a very natural, normal behavior for birds. They spend 70% of their time foraging in the wild, and when we don't have those opportunities for them, they're going to figure out their own opportunities. Through behavior modification, we can teach them alternate behaviors that we want them to learn, such as perching on a specific spot and working on interactive or foraging toys in that one area, so that we can contain them more. We give them something to do that's appropriate.

Lastly, if indicated, behavior medications. Behavior medications are very useful for birds that are exhibiting strong levels of fear, or when the fear-provoking stimulus is something that they can't get away from.

For example, if they are very afraid of the people who care for them, it makes it really hard for that fear to be avoided. When we have a situation where the triggers are unavoidable, medications can be helpful. If there are specific situations that are very high stress for them, such as going to the vet's office, medication could be a possibility.

The thing that we have to be aware of with medicating birds is that there's very little research done on all the different species of birds out there. So a lot of times what we're doing is, if we have medications with species-specific information, we'll use that, but otherwise we might need to extrapolate.

Because of that, typically with birds I will rely more heavily first on the management and the behavior modification, and then look at the medications if we can't avoid those triggers or if I feel there is a chronic stress component to the behaviors, such as one leading to feather picking.

dvm360: When you talk about behavior modification with clients, what are realistic expectations veterinarians should set about treatment and long-term management?

Parthasarathy: Setting client expectations, I think, is one of the hardest things in some cases, and I think it is also the key to helping clients best understand what they can gain out of working with you as a practitioner. One of the big things that I tell clients is that behavior—especially behavior problems—in a lot of cases is not cured; it is managed, it's modified, and it's improved.

If we’re dealing with a behavior which is a normal part of a bird's repertoire, then we're going to have some sort of resurgence. If we're dealing with something like feather picking, for example, since there often is a stress component to behavioral feather-destructive behavior, those stressors may come back at some point in the bird's life.

So we have to make clients aware that our goal is to reduce the intensity of the behavior, reduce the frequency of the behavior, and have the bird be able to recover more quickly if they do have an event that leads to triggering the unwanted behavior.

I think that's the first thing for clients to understand—that we are reducing intensity, but we can't say it's going to be cured.

The other thing that we need to tell clients is that birds are really, really smart, and that training takes time. This is going to be something that is for the life of the bird. You can absolutely teach the birds to do something, and as the course of life goes on, behaviors transition over time. So maybe they're going to explore different parts of the house, or maybe they haven't been sitting and picking on this particular area for a couple of years but then they go back to it.

Their behavioral repertoire is always evolving, and so we, as their guardians or caretakers, need to evolve with them.

The other thing that I would also really emphasize to clients is that we want to focus on avoiding any sort of punishment or any sort of pressure or scare tactics on the birds, and work on fully working with them positively, so that they are learning that good things come when these potentially scary things happen.

For example, one of the common things that you see online is, if a bird bites your finger, you kind of drop your hand because it'll seem like a branch dropping, and then they'll start learning, Oh, if I bite, that'll drop, so I'll stop biting.

I think of it as: Why is the bird biting in the first place? If we can tackle why that bird is biting, we can work on behavior modification and you won’t need to drop the hand in the first place.

Really, dropping the hand is just scaring the bird, and it's not going to make that bird any more comfortable about getting on your hand, and it might lead to the bird becoming more likely to bite you when you reach toward them the next time. So we want to avoid doing things like scaring them, squirting them, or pushing into them to get them to step up on you. We really want it to be voluntary engagement from the bird, and going at whatever the bird's speed is.

dvm360: What are the biggest takeaways from your session that you hope veterinarians apply the next time they see a patient with behavior problems?

Parthasarathy: I think the biggest takeaway is just having general practitioners and exotics doctors know that veterinary behaviorists are out there as a resource for them. From a couple of the exotics veterinarians that I've talked to, I think they feel a little overwhelmed because they have so many animals and so many species that they're trying to treat, [so it helps to know] that there is help for them in the behavioral realm. That's the first thing.

The second thing is that we can find treatment for the vast majority of behavioral conditions. It may take time and it may not be a cure, but generally speaking, 70% to 80% of behavioral conditions can be improved with intervention. So there is hope out there for those clients.

And [it helps] just having those 3 M's of behavioral treatment—management, behavior modification, and medication—as tools that are there for them to use, either on their own or through consultation with a specialist.

dvm360: Is there anything else you would like to share with veterinarians?

Parthasarathy: I think the biggest thing is that, when I talk to clients, I try to shift their mindset a little, because these psittacines are not domesticated animals. They are essentially wild animals that are in our home.

It's really upon us, as the caretakers of these animals, to provide them with as many opportunities as we can to perform the day-to-day behaviors they would in the wild.

Foraging is a really big one. Foraging enrichment is huge and can really help with managing behavior problems. Teaching [these parrots] different behaviors and tricks is another one—all things that really help them work their brains, help them use that color vision that they have. There's a lot of really great things that they can do. They're such smart animals. They're not challenged enough, I think.

The other thing that I tell clients is don't think of them like you might a dog or a cat who have had thousands of years of domestication to live in your home. Think of them as a wild animal that's in your house. Think of yourself more like a zookeeper rather than as a pet owner when you're working with a bird.

The other big thing I see is that clients will cuddle their birds. They’ll stroke them, the birds will sit on them, and they’ll give them a lot of love. Unfortunately, because of the interactions birds have often had in the past, that can lead to confusion, which can then lead to reproductive- or sexually based behavior problems. Those problems could be more avoidable if we treated birds a little more like birds rather than cuddly toys.

Valli Parthasarathy, DVM, PhD, DACVB, is a veterinary behaviorist and co-founder of Synergy Veterinary Behavior in Portland, Oregon, where she treats dogs, cats, birds, and horses for behavioral concerns. Her goal is to help clients understand why their pets are doing the behaviors they're doing, and to support them in allowing their pets to be the best that they can be.