The Avian Behavior Podcast

In this heartfelt and insight-packed episode, Hillary Hankey sits down with winter intern Levi Soucek, a wildlife rehabilitator, educator, and outreach coordinator at the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center. Levi...

This is an excerpt from our live parrot recall training, focusing on the pitfalls of over-training and the importance of recall in various scenarios. We share examples of a black palm cockatoo named Jupiter, whose wings...

Traveling long distances with your parrot doesn't have to be stressful. We have moved cross country with our bird family many times. What happens if your bird hates the dark, like one of our palm cockatoos did? What...

Our Fall 2024 Bird of Prey Workshop focused on key topics such as managing fear and aggression in raptors using the constructional approach and non-coercive negative reinforcement and using progressive weight management...

Training your bird for transportation isn't just an important part of education programming, it's a good life skill to have. For wildlife rehabilitation organizations, nature centers, and other small bird of prey...

Looking to the wild for answers is a common refrain among bird people when it comes to care advice, particularly nutrition. And while this concept seems well grounded in science, the actual practice is much more complex...

"If you are looking for guarantees with free flight training in birds, you are in the wrong place." In this episode, Avian Behavior International founder Hillary Hankey and ABI Animal Training Lead Katie Pnewski talk...

Owls make remarkable ambassadors to highlight conservation work, but they can also make for challenging training subjects and divisive ideas in the training community. We have remade our entire Owl Ambassador...

Having a parrot with extremely complicated screaming, attacking, pair-bonded behavior that won't let you out of their sight without an intrusive cascade of undesirable behaviors can be a problem for the entire...

This interview with Gail Buhl from the Minnesota Raptor Center and Partners for Wildlife is a thoughtful journey filled with raptor behavior tidbits, the evolution of operant conditioning in bird behavior management...

We are going to talk about an old school term in weight management of free flying and ambassador birds, and that is ad lib weight. Another term might be trap weight or base weight. Reason why this is old school is that...

What did we learn about birds in 2023? What was the big bird news of the year? (or, Simone and Hillary talk about owls) Hillary sits down with fellow falconer, bird lover, and owl enthusiast Simone Lupson-Cook to talk...

Lead poisoning is a really big deal for wildlife, and Southern Ground Hornbills appear to be particularly sensitive to lead levels in the blood. In August, Avian Behavior International visited the Mabula Ground Hornbill...

We sat down with Paige Sutherland, Director of Wildlife Programs at Shavers Creek Environmental Center in Pennsylvania for a powerful discussion on wildlife training programs. This far ranging conversation stretched...

News flash, if your bird is attacking you, it probably doesn't mean that they hate you. What it does mean is that we have a lot in our relationship to unpack, from environmental conditions to expectations. When parrots...