Budgie Trust

[pandarem]

Hey everyone!

I'm not very experienced with birds and I've owned this bird for about three months. I'm not quite sure what is the relationship with my bird is at the moment. I'm not quite sure how old he is either but he seemed fully grown when I purchased him. At the moment I managed to get him to step up on my finger. I do let him out of the cage quite often, although he tends to stay on top of a bookshelf as opposed to around his cage. I was quite suprised when he flew to me when I placed my finger out and started calling his name. He seems to learn what I want him to do quite unintentionally. The only problem is getting him back in his cage, the only way i know how at the moment is to place his food in his cage and angle it to his direction and let him fly back inside by himself. Is there any way which I could get him him inside when I want him to, rather then waiting around. Should I just continue to trust my bird and spend time with him, and eventually he'll stay around me as opposed to flying away when I approach him outside his cage. I feel as though I trusted him a bit to early and let him out before truly having a bond with him.

Sorry for the long paragraph, I just have all these questions building up over the few months and I really want to develop a good bond with this bird.

[Wolf]

Over all it sounds to me that you are doing very well for him and if you made any mistake, I don't feel that it was in trusting him.
The issue is that he will fly away when you approach the cage with him on your finger. Just so that you know, this is a common difficulty and has nothing to do with you having allowed him a perhaps earlier access to his room instead of keeping him confined to the cage. There are several possible remedies to this situation, but I feel that the one that might work best for you is to walk around the room with him perched on your finger, stopping when you are as near to the cage as he will remain on your finger and offering him a treat. Pick two other spots that are close to the cage to do this same thing with the third being the cage itself. After you are able to approach all three spots without him flying away, start asking him to step off at these spots then offering the treat. When at the cage don't try to put him in the cage, ask him to step off onto the top of the cage and then treat him. When he is comfortable with this and doesn't fly off then start asking him to step off in the cage about one in three times and then offer him a treat and take a step back and wait for him to come out and ask him to step up. Once he is comfortable with this you should be able to only treat him when you put him in the cage and close the door when you need to. Just try to remember to make it a habit to step him up and move him to different places of interest for him instead of always going to the cage.
Most birds prefer to come out of their cages on their own and would prefer to remain out of their cages most of the time. So a high value treat whenever you must place him in the cage is always a good thing to do.

[pandarem]

Thank you so much for the advice. I will definitely give it a try and see how that goes. I'm not too sure if he'll stay perched on my finger as I walk around though. I'll give it a shot anyway and hopefully he'll stay.

[Wolf]

If that doesn't work ,you could try calling him to you using three different places for you to stand with one of them being in front of his cage. Show him the treat and call him to you and when he comes to you give him a treat. Set him down move closer to cage and repeat. Vary where you stand and don't make the cage the last spot as you want to be able to call him fro the cage as well as to it. This is just a basic recall technique which you can get rather creative with and have a lot of fun with as he gets better at it such as setting up hoops to teach him to fly through to get to you.
Let me know how it goes, please.

[Pajarita]

Yes, I also seriously doubt he will stay on your finger while you walk around the room. You can do this with a larger bird but budgies are VERY flighty and would take off as soon as they feel movement under their feet. Personally, I think that you should time his going back to his cage making it coincide with meal time which is, pretty much, what you are doing now. This doesn't mean it should only work when you put out his breakfast and his dinner because if you feed gloop and produce in the morning, you can always coax him back into his cage with a seed treat.

[Wolf]

Thank you Pajarita, that is true and is just as good of a way as any other and where I was going to go if these other ways didn't work for them. You just beat me to it.

[pandarem]

Thanks for the advice! I'll definitely give that a try too. I'm also thinking of beginning to clicker train him and see how that goes. I think that over time he'll warm up to me more

[Wolf]

If you are planning on starting clicker/ target training perhaps it would be helpful to read this first.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=227

[Pajarita]

But wait until the bird trusts you completely before you start the cliquer training. Budgies are never hand-fed so, although they are naturally mild-mannered, it takes quite a while for them to learn to trust us implicitly due to the fact that they are not imprinted to humans.