Teach Your Bird to Communicate -Brunch with the Birds

This will be the third installment of our "Parrots Who Love Us" Lunch and Lecture Series. Our speaker will be Jennifer Cunha of www.MyReadingPets.com.

Jennifer Cunha is an attorney who formerly taught inner-city children how to read. With that experience, she developed a system and began teaching her cockatoos phonics and reading skills. She uses strong conditioning, and her parrots demonstrate mastery of phonics. Jen focuses on enhanced enrichment and communication training for parrot caregivers around the world. Through internet-based classes and manuals, Jennifer has helped others to enrich their relationships with their birds through communication using yes/no and vocabulary training as well as phonics and simple literacy skills.

She is collaborating with Dr. Susan Clubb, DVM, and Dr. Lynn Perry, PhD at the University of Miami to publish a scientific journal article about parrots learning phonics (currently submitted for peer review). This year, she gave a presentation and workshop at the American Federation of Aviculture conference, and is scheduled to speak at ExoticsCon in October.

We will meet at Beyond Bread on Campbell Ave. and sit on the outside patio. Birds are invited if they can attend politely: No fighting with other birds, no diving into the food, no flying around and bothering other potential guests on the outdoor patio, no removing keys from your keyboard. To that end, leashes or carriers are highly recommended.

If you can bring your own laptop, tablet or smartphone to brunch to attend the online lecture, that would be ideal. I can bring a couple of extra devices if needed, just message me. If you would like to attend from the comfort of your own home, just write that in the comments section and don't RSVP, so that I have a proper head count for the restaurant, but I will know to send you the link to access the Zoom meeting.

We will plan to arrive at Beyond Bread around 9:30 AM so that we can order food and get logged in to the Zoom meeting before the lecture begins at 10 AM.