Does falconry still have a place in the modern world? It’s an old heritage sport, and there are a lot of misconceptions about what it entails. In this episode, Hillary uses her experience and insights as a licensed American falconer to discuss what the commitments...
What kind of jobs are there if you love birds and want to spend your life sharing your enthusiasm? It turns out, there are many types of jobs, and in this day and age, you can also make your own way. In this episode, we talk...
Being intentional about your choices, the shortcuts you take or don't take in your relationships with people and animals all make up a mosaic that is our behavioral repertoire and learning evolution. How much that we recognize how our actions impact future decisions for the...
In the podcast, we are going all in on the behavior analysis term of extinction (not the existential crisis) and why ignoring problem behavior is problem behavior in and of itself. See what we did there? We use loads of examples, from parrots to cranes, hornbills...
What is a husbandry behavior and why train it? I think of it as the difference between fighting with your cohabitants over little behaviors and coming to an agreement over mutually beneficial behaviors. These behaviors are important whether we are talking to companion parrot lovers...
The concept of leaving your parrot flighted or clipping its wings is a huge topic with much debate. There are many opinions going both ways based on health, safety, welfare, and psychological benefits...
In this broad conversation, Paige Davis, a curator at the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis, Missouri, and I sit down and talk about bird of prey training, falconry, species differences, weight management, and social media. We covered a lot of ground when it comes...
You know I love a good myth-buster series. At the risk of going down the road of talking about what people do wrong instead of how to do it right, we look at a few practices that circulate raptor training circles in both falconry and...
There are lots of myths and easily perpetuated narratives about how we should care for and manage our parrots and their behavior. Many of these narratives are not rooted in science or academic information but something that is worse (eep! sorry scientists): that which looks...
Anthropomorphism is assigning human like qualities to non human things. This can be animals, planets, plants, even computers. Anthropomorphism isn’t all bad, but it’s important to understand how it influences things like our conservation choices (choosing the cute animal over the less cuddly one, regardless...