by Pajarita » Mon Sep 19, 2016 10:47 am
Actually, for a budgie (a parent-raised aviary bird), it would take a number of months for him to get used to you enough that he would not try to fly away. You can't clicker train a bird that doesn't trust you and no aviary, parent-raised bird is going to do this without you putting out A LOT of time, work and effort.
Unfortunately, what you have done has made things worse because they techniques you are using (cornering him, holding him against your chest) are flooding techniques which tend to destroy trust in them. You need to start from square one and by this I mean no touching the bird, no asking him to do anything for you (not even taking a treat from your hand) but simply sitting in the same room where his cage is for hours and talking to him until you see him no longer reacting negatively to your presence. Once you have achieved this (he will eagerly look for you as you walk into the room and will hang on to the bars of his cage on the side closest to you), you can start target training him IN THE CAGE because, if you try to do it outside the cage, he will fly off. Now, this doesn't mean he is to be in his cage all day long. You need to let him out to fly for, at least, three hours a day, and, if you feed him right (you can't free-feed seeds because the seeds need to be his high value item), he will go back into his cage for his seed dinner when the sun begins to set (there cannot be any artificial lights on at the time).