Parrot personalities.

We’ve all got relatives and friends we love, but find some of their personality traits beyond annoying to downright insulting. And I’m sure they find things in us questionable. We are all individuals you see. We’ve all come to be us through a soupy mix of DNA and experiences. And results will vary.

Yet, we still love our friends and relatives and spouses despite those points of contention. We learn to accept them for “who they are”. I am considered a unicorn in my family. Annoyingly private, hard to catch and harder to spend time with than they prefer. Some find it downright wrong, others just accept my ways as me, and when we get together, we have a grand time. I am private, to a fault. You could call me selfish even. My daughter would like to see me “fix” this issue. My sisters shrug it off and laugh knowing when the moon and planets are in alignment they will find me in the mist of Jupiter.

We can, as humans, accept the idiosyncrasies of each other as normal and expected. Yet we can not accept that companion parrots, too, will have a set of personality traits. Traits that taken in the whole of their personality makes them who they really are as a singular parrot personality.

We can, as humans, accept changes in tastes, beliefs and preferences as we age and experience new things in our lifespan. I liked certain foods before; I do not now. I enjoyed a certain music in high school that same music now makes me cringe on the inside. Age and time will do that to a person. Age and time will do that to a parrot. It seems though; we see these changes in our companions as a fault. A fault needing repair rather than acknowledged as growth and expansion of personality. That’s not fair to them, or us. We can accept change when it’s a “modified behavior” we deem necessary. We can not accept the change if it’s of a trait we favor. Why? There are more articles and inquiries about changing parrots to our desires than there are articles about how to recognize and change to the desire of companion’s personality for a better parrot. That is such a shame. And I will write every day to change that scoreboard.

There will be times when changing our ways, expectations and desires first will yield a result better than maneuvering to change their ways. I read a question not too long ago about “getting” a parrot to eat. Literally how to force a parrot to eat something or some way the owner (their word, not mine) wanted. That question, and the answers that followed broke my heart. I shudder thinking about what that parrot is going through today.

So many parrot folk site the African Grey Alex as proof that parrots can think, learn, and are cognitive of who they are and what is going on. I agree wholeheartedly! Companion parrots are fully functional free thinking and free willed companions deciding all day long about everything and everyone that crosses their path. Alex asked what color he was after learning the names of colored items. They told him he was Grey. He acknowledged that information and repeated it. Alex KNEW he was a grey parrot at that point. So why then, was Alex treated as a control group individual after proving his intelligence? Why wasn’t his independent thought and curiosity rewarded with a fuller more companion like life? Because we consider companion parrots a creature to control, train, and influence for our convenience, entertainment, profit and interactive preferences. Even when they prove themselves more.

Either we believe it and change the actions, words and approaches we bring to companion parrots, or we do not. In the light of current accepted knowledge and science, they have proven themselves intelligent, cognitive, tool making, opinion gathering, problem solving individuals. So when a parrot is “misbehaving”, “being mean”, “not obeying”, “cage defensive”, “biting”, “not bonding”, “not cooperating”, “acting hormonal”, “screaming”, “throwing food”, “insert standard complaint here”; my first reaction is simple. What is going on with the human in the room?

I will to my last breath hold the human in the room responsible first. If the human in the room is not conducting themselves as participants in a companion based relationship, then the parrot doesn’t need the fixing. The human’s knowledge and understanding requires the tuneup.