who I've named Atrus. The original owner actually had four but I could only take one. I picked Atrus because he seemed the calmest. When we walked by, the others jumped to the side of the cage while he stayed on the perch. He also has one enlarged nostril so I hope he doesn't have any health issues... I think it is some kind of scarring from another bird or something. He also wasn't as interactive with the other birds in the cage, but they had kind of split off into pairs and his match had gotten loose and wasn't in the cage. Anyway, he is ours now. So, we took him home Friday. I planned that so that while I was away Friday evening he could adjust to his new world without my face glued to his cage. Saturday we gave him some space in the morning but when he started chirping in the afternoon I talked back to him. That evening I started clicker training by just introducing him to the click-treat pattern.
I know I'm supposed to wait until he starts salivating at the click but he didn't seem to be getting it so I moved right to target training on Sunday morning. He is pretty slow to touch the target, but I am probably just used to my wild girl I had, and when I started training her she was already pretty used to her environment. I'm hoping he perks up in his energy level... He also is pretty clumsy on the cage, and doesn't climb the walls much and sometimes slips his foot through the bars. I've never had problems with this cage before but his cage didn't have any surfaces to stand on except 2 straight perches.
Anyway he couldn't figure out my target that required climbing the wall on the outside of the cage so after a few easy targets on Monday night I switched to teaching him "shake" and "kiss." I wanted to teach him shake before step up because when I tried to teach Tika shake she kept stepping up so eagerly that I couldn't ever get just one foot. He is just starting to get the idea with lifting his foot and placing it on my finger. I also started teaching him kiss by putting the target stick right next to my kissy lips and clicking at the slightest touch of his beak, careful not to get any saliva-bird contact. If I go quickly between touch and kiss he will kiss, but he doesn't like it and he certainly doesn't do it out of any sense of affection.
We'll get there though.I'm going to have a blog for his progress pretty soon, and some YouTube videos. I'll update this post accordingly but for now any comments or advice? It has been 10 years since I've had a bird in a solo environment, so I think that may be why he's more sluggish than Patrick, and its been a long time since I started with Tika.
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