Help with a hand-shy parrotlet?

[Kitei]

I'm not really sure of the best term to use for her, really.

Tuesday is a one year old celestial parrotlet. She's my first bird, and I've had her around 5-6 months. However, I hit a roadblock with her not long after getting her that I've not been able to get past. As background, she was initially hand-raised, but then was put in an aviary for 6 months with very little contact.

She's very nervous about my fingers. She's happy to take millet from between my fingers after 5-10 minutes, and will come over if she wants it enough, but there's no way that I can get her to step onto my hands or fingers. She just wont do it.

Otherwise, we get on great. She's a lovely, cheeky girl who likes me to chat to her, loves Nickelback (starts dancing to it, aha.) and does generally like to be near to me as long as she's in her cage. She'll often accept millet through the bars.

She's never been a biter, either. If I -need- to pick her up for any reason, or if she gets close to my fingers, she might close her beak around my fingers and gently squeeze, but she's never tried to properly bite. More of a, "I'm not comfortable with this" sort of thing, I think.

I figured the slowly-slowly thing would work with her, working at her own pace, but we've not really made any progress. I'd like her to be able to step up at the very least, as I don't want her flying around without being able to get her back into her cage without scaring her to death.

What could I do to help her get over her fear of stepping onto hands? It wouldn't be the end of the world if I couldn't get her to cooperate, but I'd really like her to trust me.

[janetafloat]

Have you followed Michael's http://trainedparrot.com/Taming/ blog instructions yet? If not, I would heartily recommend it.

[Kitei]

I used a very similar training method apart from the targeting, as that wasn't mentioned on the ones I looked at. I'm a bit worried that the clicker will freak her out and she wont accept the treat, therefore negating the reward system? When she freaks out, she just stiffens up and freezes.

[marie83]

You don't have to use a clicker, any unique short sound will do or a word that you only say when giving a treat. That said most animals including birds will learn to accept the sound of a clicker, you can muffle the sound by using it with a towel wrapped around it, you can also buy clickers where you can adjust the volume.