^_^ I've found and bought a wonderful hahns macaw. I suppose it was technically adopted. The previous owner originally had a pionus for two years and complained it wasn't talking and so swapped it for the hahns macaw that they had for about one month then wanted to swap him again as he wasn't talking enough :/ this was for an african grey, to which the shop keeper refused to sell another and bought the hahns off him, and sold it to me. I sat playing with him for about 3 hours then returned 2 days later to buy him ^.^
He's in great condition though at only 6 months old with beautifully shinny feathers and on the first day here I could get him to step up and he was happily beak grinding and preening

he already also knows beak pressure which is good too, as i get to keep my fingers ^.~ he also appears to be pretty well socialized and will willingly step up onto strangers.
oh, and his wings were clipped but i shall use that as an opportunity to train him then let them grow out in the next moult and work from there.
Thankyou very much for all the helpful comments. I have been researching for a while now, so i've a fairly good idea of what I'm doing. No harm in learning more though! he does seem fairly well settled already but i'll be sure to keep that research going.
just a thought though. would you recommend clicker training? is this better than training without? - cheers.