by Pajarita » Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:53 am
Welcome to the forum, Lisom and macs. You don't say how long you've had the bird, how old he is, what his diet, light and training schedule is and all those details are VERY important but, generally speaking if the bird does not want to step up on its own (meaning without having to bribe him) and flies off your hand as soon as he gets the nut, the problem is that the bird is not only not bonded to you but actively distrust you. Don't put your hand inside his cage to get him to come out of his cage (you are 'invading' his personal space and causing him to continue his distrust of you), open the door to the cage and allow him to come out on his own (and, if he stays in, let him stay). Do not ask for ANYTHING, just spend at least 4 hours with him in the same room (in the middle of the day, night doesn't work), talk, sing, whistle, dance for him and, every now and then, offer him a treat. This treat is a gift from you to him, a token of your desire to be his friend - not a reward and not a bribe.
Parrots are not naturally obedient because, in the wild, nobody tells them what to do, when to do it and how to do it so the 'obedience' gene is simply not in them (like it is in dogs, for example). But they do things out of love because, when they love you, they want to please you. My birds are never trained in the formal sense -meaning you give them a command and, when the bird does it, you reward it- but they know A LOT of commands, words and phrases and, when I ask them to do something, they do it. I took in a macaw a few months ago and, as it always happens, once he saw that this was now his home (meaning, the honeymoon period was over), he started acting up lunging at me every single morning when I am cleaning the cages and putting out fresh water and food. it is still going on but he has now decreased the number of lunges significantly (I only say "NO! Be nice!" and move away). He sometimes opens his wings upward and completely when he does this so I raise both my arms (as if they were my wings) and tell him "Big boy!" and, when he holds them open for a couple of seconds, I give him a treat. This re-directs his attention while training him to open his wings on command. Aggression takes a long time to eradicate but other commands are much easier to teach. The previous owners said they never could get him into a cage but he goes into his every single night all on his own and without a single problem and it only took one time to teach him. I simply waited until it was quite dark in the evening (the other birds had already all gone in), put his dinner (nuts) in the bowl, showed to it him, put it back in his cage and told him: "Go home! Peanuts!" (all nuts are 'peanuts'). He did not do it the first night but he did it the second (I had to wait and wait, repeating the 'go home, peanuts' over and over again) and now I don't have to wait at all because he realized that he only gets his nuts in the cage and that he only eats dinner and sleeps in it (the doors to the cages are open as soon as there is the merest sliver of light showing on the horizon) so he has no reason not to want to go into it and a very good reason to do it.
He still hasn't bonded with me but he now trusts me more because a) I never trick them, b) I never punish them, c) I am SUPER consistent and persistent. He now eats a good diet (all he got was pellets and an AWFUL parrot mix with mostly sunflower seeds and peanuts), knows several phrases (peanuts -for all nuts, que rica papa -for gloop and raw produce, papa rica -for formula in a syringe, I am watching you -when he is eyeing a little bird's cage, and a couple of commands (step up, step down, go -for him to fly back to the top of his cage, go home -for him to go into his cage, No or Stop it, when he starts flying from one cage to another and Loro Loco -my name for him (his name is Yogui and he knows it, too).
Teaching a bird to cohabit in a human environment is not the same as training for tricks. You can have a perfectly well mannered bird without training but you can't train without getting the bird to trust you implicitly and love you. So work on bonding with your bird because it's the only way to be successful in your training. If you read Michael's book, you will see that his birds loved him before he started training.