by Dave & Karen » Sat Dec 29, 2012 3:24 am
Our P-let is still a "closet talker" too where he will chatter and go thru all the words he knows or even chirp out part of a song he heard, but as soon as he notices someone's paying attention to him or walks in the room he goes hush hush but recently he's decided to just perch in his tree or on one of his play stands and just go for it with us in the room with him, still the chatter but with words coming out clearly between chatters and quiet singing.
I have also noticed he'll start his chatters if there's enough background noise like an electric razor or the shower running so I"ll perch him on my shoulder and turn on the razor acting like I"m shaving and he's singing and chattering away. Once I hear a word come out, I repeat it to him and give him tons of praise. He even says words or phrases neither of us taught him so he's getting it from the tv too. I reward it all and repeat anything he says back to him to encourage it more which seems to be working.
Also, I remember reading somewhere that if he has a rival that'll bring him past his shyness so the wife and I will play this role but it didn't seem to be that effective... until we brought our IRN home and I perched Blue in front of her cage and off he went showing off to this female IRN that's 5x his size.. he asked "what are you doing?" perfectly clearly, then firmly told her "gentle beak" a few times and told her "peek a boo" repeatedly... I was impressed with his vocabulary and didn't even know he could say gentle beak etc, but he does now like to chatter in front of us more and more, and of course, this gets him LOTS of attention and praise so he's definitely losing his shyness around us.
Try the background noise thing first to see if you can get him to chatter and reward every word he says while chattering etc, try to do the rivalry skit with your wife or a friend as the bird will get jealous of this person getting crazy attention for saying these words you're trying to teach the bird, or place your bird in the presence of another bird, preferably of opposite sex, even if you have to take him to a pet store and be ready to reward with treats and praise. The bird will talk more and more in front of you after you find which exercise works best.