Why Name a Bird Training Company “Works for Birds”?!??

No I wasn't drunk name brainstorming when I came up with "Works For Birds".  I really did try to find a name that said: bird behaviourist, bird trainer, even trains chickens, a lot of parrot training, fixes problem behaviours, stops screaming, stops biting, stops plucking.  Anything avian, based in Melbourne, works online (so all over the world). Hey I fly interstate too.  I weaponise people's pets!  Poop training!  Want to play parrot soccer with me?  Yeah, no name is going to say all of that.  Sorry.

At the end of the day, I realised that while I do all of that stuff - there's one core point that makes any behaviouralist successful if they actually understand it.  The core point is who I'm actually training.  I could struggle to find a name that fits all of the different types of birds that I see, or I could realise what I'm really doing.  The crux of my job, isn't actually training birds.  I'm actually training humans to be better FOR their birds.

So once I realised who I was really working for, I realised I had my name.  My job is to give people the tools they need to work with their birds.  I have to unravel what exactly the bird needs the humans to do, to make for a harmonious relationship.

It's amazing how many people miss this part of training a bird.  In fact, I recently took a phone call from someone who wanted me to board their macaw over Christmas/New Year's.  Their expectation was that considering that I am a bird trainer, their bird would come home fully trained without them having to do anything themselves to achieve that.  (For minimal $, I might add.)

I've certainly had birds stay with me and they have gone home with new skills.  Unfortunately, that often means they picked up some language from one of my other birds.  I have an eclectus parrot that does the best imitation of a machine gun and apparently the sound is highly contagious.

In general though, while I can get most birds to do whatever I want, that doesn't necessarily translate to their behaviour at home.  I have always found that if I haven't taught the owner how to read their bird's body language effectively and how to reinforce behaviour appropriately, they won't be able to cue behaviours that I have taught when they weren't present.

There is a lesson that can be taken from this though.  If you ever feel your pet bird is out of control, or want your bird to do something that it isn't doing, remember that the one thing you can control is yourself.  What you do, is what matters most and the bird will respond to that. You just need to adjust what you're doing to change that response from your bird.  Once you get that, you're well on the way to being an effective bird trainer.