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Opinion needed: is my bird calm, or just plain lazy?

Discuss the methods and techniques of clicker training, target training and bonding. These are usually the first steps in training a young parrot.

Opinion needed: is my bird calm, or just plain lazy?

Postby kittyhazelton » Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:30 am

OK, so I got my B&G macaw Chica a little over two months ago. She recently had her vet check & passed with flying colors, had gone through a molt and all new feathers are coming in beautifully.
What seems "unusual" to me is her lack of activity/destruction. She's a very very quiet bird, never screams. She only does a little "rerp" noise once in a while when she wants attention. She has the option for free-roaming in the house all day, but generally spends her time either in the play area on top of her cage, or on her big tree perch thing. Her destruction tendencies are usually only limited to papery-items and soft/easily breakable pieces of wood.
My attempts at getting her to show interest in new toys, foraging activities, and colorful objects to try to start a trick-training routine have been rather... well, unproductive.
She doesn't seem to be interested in foraging items if they take much effort to get the reward, as far as talking & mimicking she only says "hello" when the phone rings or when she's sitting by herself in the evening.
She came to me knowing how to wave hi and show off her wings on command. She has picked up targeting GREAT though, goes after the stick 100% and is now working on leaping further distances between her training perches. However, this is conditional: she gives up after only a few minutes of training sessions and will just kinda hunker down to a preening session and completely ignore me. She will fly to her cage with a boost (she's still got a lot of feathers to re-grow before she's got full-flight capacity back, previous owners clipped her before giving her to me)
Riding in the car, and to public places such as the pet store she acts relaxed and un-bothered by the noises, activities, and people/other pets.

So what do you think? Did I get lucky and just end up with an unusually chill bird, or is my macaw a lazy bum who just wants to hang out and enjoy the scenery?
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kittyhazelton
Cockatiel
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 93
Number of Birds Owned: 4
Types of Birds Owned: Indian Ringneck parrot, Blue and gold macaw, white doves
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