🔊 Screaming: flock call or demand
Two different noises with two opposite answers, which is why general advice about screaming so often fails. One of them is normal parrot behaviour that should not be trained away at all.
Training advice, not veterinary advice. A sudden change in behaviour can have a medical cause, and no protocol here addresses one — when in doubt, an avian vet. Why this matters more than it sounds.
The steps, in order
Work a step until the bird does it reliably — not until it works once.
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Tell the two apart
A contact call is loud, comes in bursts at dawn and dusk, and is aimed at a flock member who has left the room — it is normal, healthy behaviour and it is not going away. Demand screaming is sustained, needs an audience, and stops the moment it gets what it wants. Everything below depends on which one you have.
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Record a week
Time of day, how long, where you were, what you did. As with biting, the pattern is usually obvious on paper and invisible from memory — and the single most common finding is that someone comes back into the room, every time, at about the ninety-second mark.
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Answer the contact call early
Call back from wherever you are — a whistle, a word, anything consistent. You are answering "are you still there?", which is the entire question. Answering it before it escalates is what keeps it from escalating; ignoring a contact call makes it louder, because from the bird's side the flock has genuinely stopped responding.
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Stop paying the demand version
Do not come running, do not shout back, and above all do not re-enter the room while it is happening. Coming back is the reward, and its timing is what is being learnt. If you must be in the room, be in it without looking at, talking to or touching the bird.
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Pay the quiet
The second there is a normal sound — a chirp, a whistle, a chewing noise — go back in, talk, give attention. The behaviour you want has to be the one that works. This half is what most people leave out, and it is the half that does the teaching.
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Fix what is underneath
A bird with nothing to do screams. Foraging that takes real time, enough out-of-cage hours, chewable things that are replaced as they are destroyed, and a proper twelve-hour dark night. A tired, bored bird on a long day is not a training problem.
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Expect it to get worse first
When a behaviour that used to work stops working, it is tried harder before it is abandoned — louder and longer, for several days. This is the most common point at which people give in, which teaches the bird that the louder version is the one that pays. Getting worse is the evidence it is working; decide in advance that you will sit through it.
You will know it worked when
You can tell the two apart as they happen, the dawn and dusk calling is left alone, and the demand screaming has been shorter for two weeks running.
Sources used
Every claim in this module is supportable from these. Where they disagree, the module follows the more cautious one.
The other modules
The same modules, with your place saved
The LunarKiri app carries these protocols with a tick against every step, saved per bird and shared with your family, and works with no network.