by Dave & Karen » Sun Dec 09, 2012 4:15 pm
Actually, this is the first trick I taught our parrotlet and I did it by perching him on my finger then telling him "flip" while leading him with a piece of millet in my other hand. he would follow the millet most the time til he was almost upside down before giving up so what I would do was get him to that point then roll my finger so he was closer to completing the trick than he was to just going back up.
This worked to initailise the training and this took a few days before he would follow the treat all the way around.
the important part was to keep saying "flip" when I wanted him to flip and leading him with the treat.
this took about a week where he would do the trick but I still needed the treat close at hand to lead him with, then I switched treats on him when I found out he preferred broccoli over the millet so I would show him the broccoli and ask him to flip for it, i would lead him with the treat but then pull it out of the way so he could complete the trick on his own, worked with him daily for a few more days leading him with the treat less and less until now where I show him the treat and say "let's flip for it" and he'll do the trick all on his own and get the reward after he's back upright on my finger.
The key is patience and Lots of praise and reward every step of the progress, even if at first he doesn't do the full trick, reward every time he goes a little further until he completes.
Now I can perch him on other things, show him the broccoli and ask him to flip, he'll do the trick on whatever he's perched on and then get the praise and reward, as you progress, you can reward less often but praise every time or if you have a clicker, you click at each step of the progress til he completes it. The bird will also find this to be fun to do and you'll start to see him flipping on his preches in his cage or play pens ust as part of his usual play.