by Andromeda » Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:46 am
And here I thought it was only my GCC that preferred to land on my head. How funny to find out that it seems to be a GCC thing.
When my GCC lands on my head he will step-up onto my hand immediately with no problem but it started driving me nuts that he was landing on my head all the time because sometimes his claws would get caught in my hair so I decided to teach him to land on my hand, instead.
My experience is the same as Marie's: GCCs learn very quickly what gets them attention and what doesn't. I used clicker training to teach him to land on my hand, and it only took one day for him to learn (I think I did three separate ten-minute sessions). He already knew how to target a stick so I just started by putting him on a perch and targeting him to step-up onto my hand. Then I increased the distance slightly so he had to hop to my hand. I increased it slightly more so he had to fly to my hand to reach the target.
By the end of the day he was flying 20 feet across the room and landing on my hand every time. I practice with him every day and while he still lands on my head occasionally, he'll fly to my hand instead 95% of the time.