Screaming behaviors often come from boredom, jealousy, or plain old unhappiness. Like biting behaviors your first step is to make sure you’re providing an optimal environment. African Greys need a large cage to move around in during the day and when you can’t be with them they’ll want an abundance of toys to keep their sharp minds busy. You can use toys like food-finding toys where the bird has to figure out how to get to its meal. This will keep your bird busy and entertained without needing you to be right there to entertain it.
In addition to toys for their mind don’t forget toys for them to chew on, climb on, and just play with. Perches and climbing branches will also help give them exercise when they’re inside the cage. There are edible toys you can buy that have natural coconut, oyster shells, and calcium in them that your bird can eat or just break apart. There are now many perches out there as well that are edible for your parrot. You can also hang birdie kabobs for your bird to play with and hang from made of his favorite foods.
A happy and healthy African Grey parrot needs to be out of its cage every day for several hours, we’re talking about at least three or four hours a day. They’re smart and capable of just hanging out with you like other domestic pets. If you can’t provide time with your bird, it needs more stimulus and an outdoor aviary can do just the trick! The outdoors is always changing and the extra space is great for your bird if you can’t be around that day.
Don’t leave them unattended indoors however or you may find your electrical cords chewed in half or your furniture damaged. Your second step is to again spend time training them every day. Training stimulates their problem-solving skills and abilities and keeps them stimulated. Not to mention it builds your relationship! In order to keep your parrot inside you can teach it things like flight training and recall training where it flies to you when called, or “drop it” where it drops anything you ask it to on cue (a great cue to teach as an emergency if your bird were to pick up something toxic like a piece of chocolate or a rusty nail laying around).