How to Pick Up my Senegal

[dawood55]

When my Senegal bird is sitting on its perch, how should I pick it up? They say put your hands firmly around its wings and just pull, but I don't want to pull to hard and hurt it. Does pulling the bird hurt it?

[Kathleen]

Your bird is not aggressive toward you, right?

If it isn't aggressive, you should have no problem having it step onto your finger or your hand. Put your finger out in front of your senegal, level with its abdomen but above its feet and push your finger in gently and not too fast. They should get a little imbalanced and step onto your finger to balance out. When you do this, say something that will be your cue for your bird to step on your finger. You could say "up" or "step up" or something else. When your senegal does step up, give them lots of attention, tell your senegal it's a good bird and get excited.

To me, step up isn't a trick and not really something that deserves a treat. I think it should be, for the parrot, stepping on you is a positive experience.

[dawood55]

Sometimes it does step-up wonderfully, but sometimes it's stubborn and doesn't. This could possibly be because the bird is brand new to my household and is getting use the things, but when he's stubborn and won't step-up, I feel it'll be easier to just pick him up, but I don't want to hurt him or squeeze to hard.

[Michael]

Be careful about grabbing the bird. I certainly do that with mine and have grabbed baby birds but if you do it wrong it could build up a detrimental experience and kill trust between you and bird.

Work on step up. It depends on what you mean by stubborn but there is not stepping when you say so and there's biting instead of stepping. Sometimes if it ignores your request, you can nudge its belly gently to make it step. Eventually it will get so used to it that it will pick its foot up as your hand approaches to avoid getting nudged.