- Meet Ava, a nine year old female Blue Throated Macaw
hatched with a little bit of a scissor beak.
I was asked to take her
from a woman who could no longer care for her.
It just so happened that it fit right in alignment
with an experiment that I wanted to try.
In the past, I've only had three male Macaws,
two Camelot's and one Blue Throat.
Over the last 13 years
the dynamic between my Macaws has morphed.
As babies they used to all get along.
I could cuddle all of them.
They were all sweet and could even share an aviary together.
They often played and never fought.
As they matured my Blue Throated Macaw, Jinx,
and my Camelot Macaw, Tusa,
began having quite the issue between them.
(birds cawing)
It was mostly stemming from my Blue Throated Macaw, Jinx,
who was the instigator.
He just wanted to get Tusa all the time.
I tried a ton of different training tactics
and kept coming up short.
There's nothing that I could do
to get the three of my Macaws to get along.
In any groups of two I could seem to be successful,
but only for a certain period of time.
Hence the idea to add a fourth Macaw.
I've been thinking this in my head.
Maybe it's unrealistic to expect two Camelot Macaws
and one Blue Throat Macaw,
especially all being male, to get along.
And maybe each Macaw needs its own buddy.
I really wanted to test this theory
and I haven't been able to until Ava.
What I learned consulting with professional zoo trainers
is that Blue Throated Macaws tend to stick to their own.
And so I thought that I might be more successful
trying to get my Blue Throated Macaw, Jinx,
to have a buddy of another Blue Throated Macaw.
I never necessarily planned on another female,
or it happening ever.
But because Ava needed a home
and I was asked from a personal friend of mine
I decided it was the perfect time
to give this concept a try.
Whose is it?
Goes, goes, goes, goes.
(bird cawing)
Can you say hello?
Whose is is?
Goes, goes, goes, goes.
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For now, enjoy this free video on the Ava series.
What's going on with him, Ava?
Isn't she cute?
So cute.
Do you think he's cute?
(bird humming)
(upbeat music)
All right guys.
So today is the day we want to take Jinx and Ava out
and have them outside of their aviary together.
- Yeah, so one of the things
that we need to really be paying attention to
and kind of a spot where my brain has been going a lot
especially this morning, is setting yourself up for success.
You hear us talk about that all the time.
And so on this tree over here is a bowl of food
and make sure that food's not there
because if one of the birds has access to food
and the other one doesn't that could create instant problems
that we would then have to try to undo.
The things that we can control is having two trainers.
So we're both out here.
We'll both have treats.
- Dave and I haven't talked this through yet.
I've only been...
I've been really wanting to do this.
The last few days I felt super compelled
and I've chickened out every time.
And I'm nervous that the very first time is gonna go wrong
and I don't want it to go wrong.
And I can't control the bird's reactions.
But what we can control, like Dave said,
is the environment and trying to set it up
to be as successful as possible.
So some of the things that I'm nervous about.
One, I'm worried that Ava is going to think
that we're bringing her in for a training session
and she's immediately gonna offer flights to me.
- And also that makes me feel like
I'll be the one that's getting Ava
so that she doesn't..
'Cause I've actually just done a lot of training
with her recently.
But I don't typically train her as much as you are
and I'm not doing flights with her currently.
So that might help.
- And I do think that if you initiated
a training session with her in front of Jinx,
that he would then dial in on you
and want to earn treats from you as well
which could create a problematic.
- Yeah.
- Situation as well.
So I think that there's a lot of things
that could happen here.
One of the things where
I initiate a training session with Ava
is I stay in the kitchen.
So I think I'm going to remove myself from the kitchen
and put myself in a different scenario.
I also think that I'll bring in Jinx first.
- I was thinking I get Ava
and then you immediately get Jinx.
- That's what I was thinking as well.
And then where do we want to put them?
Because I think that we should put them in separate places
so that we have a lot of time to see an escalation.
- Yeah, we have both these trees.
I think we could just put, maybe put Jinx on that one
since Ava's more likely to fly to the kitchen.
- Okay.
- And we'll put Ava here, which is already in the kitchen
so she has less reason to fly.
- Which I'm gonna move this food bowl so we don't forget.
- So one of the reasons
why we're talking about this out loud
is that there's just so much importance to not blowing it.
And and we talk about these kind of things
on and off camera.
Obviously a lot off camera where we're like,
"Hey, how do we make sure that this goes well?"
And so hopefully this kind of behind the scenes conversation
is helpful for you.
- So do you want me to video you coming in with Ava
and then I go?
- Sure.
Psycho, psycho.
- All right, I'm gonna go get Jinx.
(bird cawing)
- [Jamieleigh] Uh oh.
- [Dave] What are you uh oh-ing about?
- This.
Should I still do it?
Can I have a kiss?
Good boy.
So I had to show my treats.
(bird squawking)
Because but he seemed more of a..
Hey.
(bird whistling)
- [Dave] Do we want to abort the mission?
- I'm a little bit freaked out.
- [Dave] I think he looks too heightened
to do this right now.
What do you think?
- He knows, right?
- [Dave] Well let's just do it
at the furthest distance we can.
So why don't you go to that far tree.
- I'm paralyzed in fear.
So let's talk about what happens
when you ignore your gut instinct.
I actually do this a lot more
than you guys probably see or believe.
So I have numerous red flags when I go to get jinx
(bird squawking)
Uh-oh.
- [Dave] What are you uh oh-ing about?
- This?
Should I still do it?
The fact that I'm vocalizing
the uh-oh, I don't know about this.
Oh boy.
I am like cringey about the entire situation.
That's so many red flags.
I'm seeing so many things telling me
this is not an ideal situation.
And the part of me that's fighting
for it to be an ideal situation
is that I've chickened out so many times in the past
wanting to do this and feeling like,
oh my gosh you're not making any progress.
You're not doing anything with these two Macaws.
You've had her for how long?
And you haven't attempted anything.
Just these voices in my head
that become very self judgmental of like,
"Hey, you have nothing to show
for how long you've had this burden in your care.
You haven't done anything.
You're too scared to fail.
Hurry up and just try something and collect that data."
And then there's the other side of my brain that's like,
"No, don't just jump into things.
Really think it through.
It'll be harder to undo a major mistake or bad introduction
than it will to just take your time
and set it up correctly."
And I have these two parts of my head and my heart
just battling it out in this tug of war
every single day that literally has had me
paralyzed up until this moment.
And so I think because I have
the opportunity to have Dave there
I'm like wanting it to be the ideal situation
even though I know it's not.
- [Dave] So I just had to intercept
'cause she wanted to fly to you.
- [Jamieleigh] Should we abort?
- [Dave] I'm just trying to keep her attention.
- [Jamieleigh] Same, he's just playing with his toy.
- [Dave] Want me to just bring her over
so we're not risking flights?
- [Jamieleigh] I'm gonna get really hurt
if I have to get in the middle of this.
- [Dave] Well that's what I'm saying.
I mean, I could avoid...
- [Jamieleigh] Letting her fly to me?
'cause she does.
- [Dave] Yeah, but I need both hands.
Woo, that's as close as I can get.
- [Jamieleigh] Holy crap.
Okay, we need to avoid right now.
I'm not comfortable.
So David immediately takes Ava out
and back to her aviary into our garage
which has been converted for the birds.
(bird whistling)
- My heart is racing Jinxy.
Well, that's kind of exactly what I was worried about.
- Do you think that his aggression
was based off seeing her want to come to me?
Because that was my whole thing.
Is she's gonna want to come to me,
which is gonna create a problem.
- [Dave] I had her pretty distracted with treats.
'Cause she did want to come to you.
- Yeah.
- [Dave] So I kept her on me.
And he was busily eating that
instead of paying attention to her trying to fly.
Not that he didn't see it, but.
- Right, then something changed.
- [Dave] I got closer with her.
- And he aggressively was going at that toy
instead of more of like keeping busy.
- [Dave] Yeah.
- So it was the proximity that changed,
it wasn't her body language, necessarily?
- [Dave] I think so, yeah.
- So I'd be lying if I didn't admit
that I was severely disappointed in how all of that went.
There was so much forethought into how we set it up
and it just wasn't the right day.
And I think acknowledging that
and knowing that I had this self pressure
of really wanting to produce something.
Everybody's tuned into the Ava series
and they're like, "How is it going?"
And it's hard to be like,
"Well, I haven't tried anything yet
because I'm too chicken."
And there's more to it, of course, than that.
Of it just not feeling right up until then.
But it's hard because there is
all this pressure to produce something and say something
and have some sort of data.
And I don't know if this was quite a failure
as much as a data collection.
It really depends on what your perspective of it is.
But I think because I had all these other days
where I was like, "Should I do it?
It feels right, I should do it."
And then I'd talk myself out of it.
When I had this experience, it made me think,
what if I would've tried on those other days
where it felt right
versus on the day that I could line Dave up
and have this accessibility.
That wasn't necessarily the right day for Jinx,
but that was the right day for me and Dave
and us to set everything up correctly.
But maybe those other days could have been successful.
I won't know.
I will never know.
I can only speculate and think about it.
But I think it's really important,
the lesson that I want everyone to learn from this video
and that I really need to learn,
is to trust my gut instinct.
When I am literally saying out loud,
"Oh gosh, oh no, I don't know if this is a good idea."
"This seems like a bad idea."
"This isn't gonna go well."
I don't know how many of you guys
watched the pellet video I did.
But in my head I had this adorable picture in my mind
where I was gonna pour out all these pellets.
My African gray and cockatoo were gonna be there
and they were gonna be adorably like crunching on pellets.
There was gonna be enough to feed the whole universe
of pellets on this counter.
It was just gonna be cute and adorable.
And everyone was gonna be like, "Oh, that's adorable."
That's what I was going for, was cute.
And no, when I poured those pellets
it scared Bondi just enough that made Cressi mad.
Cressi went at Bondi and it was just kind of a mess.
And right before that happened
I had a feeling and a glimpse that like,
"Ooh this doesn't really seem like a good idea.
Should I still keep Cressi in the video?
She seems a little off."
There was just something there
that was giving me the wrong vibe.
And I literally said out loud,
"Should we still keep her in the video?"
Then talked myself out of
believing my instinct or my gut feeling
and was like, "It'll be fine."
And then it wasn't fine, shocker.
And that's exactly what I did here again.
I vocalized it so much.
And that's the beauty of being able to film myself
and watching it back and editing it for all of you
to be like, "You idiot."
Is just hearing myself,
seeing the terrified look on my face,
how much I knew this is not a good idea,
but I wanted it to be a good idea.
It just wasn't.
And nobody got hurt.
We collected data, that was great.
We got more information, that's great.
Just wasn't the way I wanted it to go down.
Some valuable feedback I got at the end of last year
when I attended a professional animal training workshop
from another amazing trainer.
She's so fantastic.
So shout out to you Caitlin, if you ever see this.
She told me that I spend too much time and energy
beating myself up about my mistakes
or things that I don't do quite right
or could have done better.
I know she would just word that whole thing
a lot more eloquently.
But that was the gist of it.
And this is one of those times where I'm like
I can definitely feel myself doing that.
And it expends a lot of energy for myself
to be like so judgy about me.
And I think the judgy about me comes from how I think
everybody else is going to be judgy about me too.
So it's just like a compiling layered judgment effect
that I really do need to let go of
and learn to get past and move on faster.
And I think that that's just emotional resilience
of being able to be like, "Oh, okay
that didn't quite go as well as I wanted it to.
Cool, I got more information.
I can do it better next time."
Move on.
And it just takes me a little bit longer.
I spend a little bit more time in the discouragement phase
before I go to like the,
"Okay cool here's how I'm gonna make it better."
And I do get there just takes me a little bit longer
and I would love to shorten that window.
So for those of you guys that also struggle with this
I'm just gonna say the same thing to you
and I'm just gonna remind myself too.
Listen to your gut instinct.
If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.
Don't pressure yourself into it.
We need to make the best decision for the animal.
And the best decision for my animals in that moment
would've been for me to be like,
"This is not the right date for Jinx.
Ava's already in, let's do a cute little
training session with her and then you put her back
and we'll just try this again another day."
That's what I wish I would've done.
What I can look at and be really grateful about
is that I can see those signs.
I see those red flags, they're very obvious to me.
And some people might be watching this
and be like, "What red flags?"
"I didn't see anything wrong."
"I didn't see him bite that toy aggressively."
"I didn't see him do anything other than
cutely say his nickname."
"I didn't see those signs."
And that's really cool for me to have that ability
to see those signs
and recognize when it's not the right day.
It's just that I need to listen to those signs too.
I think listening is really important
and is something that we don't always do well.
So here's to my fail day with Jinx and Ava.
Better luck next time.
(upbeat music)