Training & Behavior

The parakeet paced. Back and forth, one foot, two foot, the length of the perch, ten hours a day, and I thought it was just what birds did until a friend who keeps finches asked if the cage was in a draft.

It was. Right by the window I liked open for the cat to watch the garden. The breeze that felt nice on my neck was a cold line across the cage, and the bird paced because he could not get warm and could not settle. Parakeets are tough little things but a constant draft wears them thin, and the pacing was the only complaint he had a body for.

I moved the cage to the inner wall, out of the line, and added a second perch lower and warmer by the lamp. The pacing dropped to almost nothing in two days. He started singing again, a messy tuneless song he had dropped over the winter, and he began shredding the paper at the bottom out of boredom instead of stress, which is the good kind of destruction.

Training a bird is mostly environment. People buy clickers and expect tricks, but a parakeet who is cold or scared will not learn a thing. Once he was warm and could see the room without the wind in his face, he came to my finger for the first time. A year of trying, and it took moving the cage three feet to the left.

He learned step up, then target to a chopstick, then a rough turn that I rewarded with a seed. Small stuff. The point was not the trick, it was that he finally trusted the hand because the world had stopped being against him. Birds remember cold. They remember who made it stop.

The window stays open now but the cage stays back. The cat watches from the floor and the bird sings from the warm wall, and the pacing is a memory. If you have a bird who will not settle, check the draft before you check the training book. The book will not tell you the window is the problem. The bird already did, he just used his feet to say it.

The singing changed everything about the house. A parakeet who sings is a parakeet at ease, and the quiet tuneless warble became the background of the kitchen, companionable in a way the pacing never was. I started leaving the radio on low when I went out, not music he liked particularly, just the sound of a room with someone in it, because the empty silence with the draft had been the thing he paced against. The warm wall and the quiet radio together told him the world was still there.

He learned a few words, badly, the way parakeets do, mangling hello into something like ell-o that only I could hear. The trick training moved on to a small basketball hoop a friend printed, and he dunked the ball for a seed, more from showing off than understanding, but the showing off meant he felt safe enough to perform. A bird who performs is a bird who has stopped bracing. The draft had been the whole problem and the whole fix was three feet to the left.

If I move the cage back near the window for a clean, he starts the pacing within a day, a small feathered weathervane pointing at the cold, and I move him back. He has trained me as much as I trained him. The perch is worn where he sits now, warm side, and the paper underneath is shredded from boredom not fear. The parakeet paces no more. The cage stays on the wall. The window stays open, just not for him.

The perch is worn where he sits now, the warm side, and the paper underneath is shredded from boredom not fear, which is the difference between a bird who performs and a bird who panics. He still butchers the word hello and still dunks the ball for a seed, and the radio stays low when I leave because the empty silent draft was the enemy, not the cage. Move the cage three feet, warm the wall, give him a song, and the pacing stops. The parakeet taught me more about training in a week than the book did in a year, mostly by using his feet to say the window was the problem before I thought to ask.

He still butchers the word hello and still dunks the ball for a seed, and the radio stays low when I leave because the empty silent draft was the enemy, not the cage. Move the cage three feet, warm the wall, give him a song, and the pacing stops. The parakeet taught me more about training in a week than the book did in a year, mostly by using his feet to say the window was the problem before I thought to ask. The perch is worn where he sits now, warm side, and the paper is shredded from boredom, not fear.