Hello from Houston! (RBP)

[Wewin02]

What's up guys, I just picked up a 4 month old Red Bellied Parrot yesterday! . I am so excited about our new addition.
My sister has been constantly bugging me about getting another bird in the family because our Senegal (Yoshi ) passed away from our house catching on fire last year. Luckily no one was home apart from our beloved bird. We really miss the companionship of that goofball and have been craving it more and more lately. Luckily I stumbled upon a person rehoming her red bellied parrot for a low rehoming fee ($250 w/cage, mixed food & toys). Her dogs and other pets were too much for her and her parrot to handle and she couldn't provide her newly acquired red belly enough time, so I jumped on this opportunity to pick this baby up from her.
I wanted to get a Red Bellied Parrot, Senegal or Caique originally when I was shopping for a parrot before I met Yoshi last year. The Red Bellied Parrot just seemed really hard to find locally and the Caique was more than I could afford so I picked a Senegal instead.
Now that I got a Red Bellied Parrot I am so happy and anxious to start the bonding. (My Senegal bonded more so with my sister as much as I tried to be his favorite :/) Im hoping to meet a lot of you Poi owners to learn as much as I can to keep this relationship between me and my parrot as healthy as possible. Thanks in advance for the future tips and advice guys!

[Wolf]

Welcome to the forum.
We will be happy to assist in whatever way that we can, but as I am sure that you are aware of we can only assist in helping to keep all of you in the same flock as the bird will choose who it will to be its special human. The good news is that regardless of who this little one chooses now for its special person is likely to change to the other one when it passes through puberty. It is their nature.

[Wewin02]

Oh, so he could possibly switch favorites as he matures? That sounds promising. I came home today with an assortment of fruits and some thinly sliced almonds to bribe him into liking me. I'm beginning to be able to read his body language much better now. He is not fond of me at all. I'm hoping that if sit near the cage as I read the paper or mind my own business while talking to myself he will start getting used to my voice. He is completely motionless whenever i try feeding him almonds with my hand in the cage. (thru the bars is much more acceptable to him)

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your new friend. I recently took in a Red Bellied female, her name is Isis and she is also just a few years old and a sweetheart so I am feeling a bit guilty about the whole thing (I usually only take in birds that don't work out in normal households). I haven't had her long (about a month) and this is the only Red Bellied I've had so I don't have any experience to speak of but, for what I have observed, they are a slightly larger, much calmer version of the Senegals (have more experience on those: 3 females, 1 male). I have a friend who took in a male about four months ago and he is a mean son of a gun (just like male senegals are when hormonal and/or you are a stranger to them) and I actually meant this female as a companion to the male my friend has (he is a no-hands on bird) but the guy who was giving her up would not give her to anybody else but myself and he was leaving the country so I gave in. Not that I regret it because she is a real sweetheart! She adjusted to her new fresh food diet immediately (poor thing was fed nothing but nuts and green beans all her short life!), flies like a champion, takes good baths on her own, never screams and is very sweet-tempered (she stepped up and came to me in a matter of a couple of days on her own initiative). She also has no issues with the female Senegal I keep in the dining room (Isis is in the living room for her quarantine) although Zoey Senegal is always trying to pick a fight with her (she is so bad about it that I've had to cut her out-of-cage time to only 2 hours a day because I spend the whole time going back and forth 'picking her up' from Isis' cage).

Now, as to how to make friends. You are going about it the right way (keeping him company, talking, singing, whistling, offering treats) but don't expect to 'win him over' with food because although there are many species of parrots that are food oriented, and they all love their nuts or bread as treats and would gladly take them from you, the fact that you are the provider of food does not make a difference in their feelings. You need to win him over with love and patience. Personally, I like to keep them on the same diet they were before for the first couple of days unless it's a terrible diet in which case I add healthy stuff to it. The most important thing is for you to start the routines that will continue for the rest of the parrot's life so breakfast with sunrise, interaction/flight/out of cage time, noon rest, interaction/flight/out of cage time, dinner with sunset and sleep is the way to go.

[Wolf]

Well you have both the right idea and the wrong idea at the same time about taming and bonding with this bird. No one except for the bird has any idea as to how and why they choose who they choose to bond with. What we do know is that as babies they bond to their parents who are responsible for teaching them everything from how to eat and drink and what to eat down to how to function as part of their flock. This bond lasts until puberty at which time they release this bond and venture out into the flock in search of a mate from among the other young parrots in the flock, when they find the right one they then bond to that member of the flock as mates, usually for life, but not always.
At this stage of your birds life you are taking on the role of one of its parents and it will choose again when it goes through puberty, and at that time it may choose a new person or it may choose the same person again.
Now you can and should work with the bird to tame it and this does help set the stage for bonding. You have the right general idea about how to proceed with the taming of your bird, but let's back up just a little bit and see if we can tweak this process to achieve the results a little faster and better.
Set aside several 15 minute time slots at least three of them for the purpose of taming your bird. If you have more time to devote to this then increase the number of sessions not the length of the sessions to maximize your results.
You begin each session by entering the room with the bird in its cage and stop. Take a minute to look at the bird kind of sideways, not directly as a predator would, and start to approach the bird slowly until the bird either starts to act nervous or moves away from you in its cage and stop, take a step back away and stay there for the remainder of the session. Now you just talk to the bird in a normal but calm voice. While it is not real important what you talk to the bird about it is a good ides to use some words of praise like you will normally use , such as good bird, good boy or whatever you will normally say to it. For subject matter I find that it sounds more real if I talk to the bird about things that I would like to be able to do with the bird as well as how I want our relationship to be. At the end of the session say good bye and leave.
It really won't take too long, in most cases, before you are able to approach all the way to the cage without the bird pulling away or getting nervous. when this happens then you still approach slowly and you must still talk to the bird in the same manner but now you can introduce treats into the picture. It will only take three or four treats for the session as you offer them randomly to the bird through the bars of the cage. and you will end the session in the same manner as before. the goal here is for the bird to take the treats from your fingers in a calm and non aggressive manner. When this is accomplished then you will begin the sessions by standing in front of the cage and opening the door. You talk to the bird as always and offer the treats directly from your fingers. If it does not take the treat place it where the bird can get it while you continue talking to it. Your goal is for the bird to approach and take the treat from your fingers in a calm manner. when it does this for a couple of sessions then you hold the treats so that the bird has to step onto your hand to get the treat. If it doesn't do this but at least tries to then let the bird get the treat from your fingers and keep working on this step until he does it three or four times successfully. Now you are ready to begin target training. You will have established a minimum amount of trust towards you from the bird.
In addition to this the bird will need to have at least a couple of hours a day of free out of cage time, where there are no demands or requests made of it so that it can explore its new home, fly about the room or even just hang out with you. This is best done in the evening about two hours before dinner time for it which should be just before dusk. The reason for this is so that it can watch you put its dinner in its cage and it will likely go into the cage on its own to get its dinner and go to sleep.
you have only had the bird for a day so I would not be too concerned as to who it seems to like the better for now as it isn't settled yet anyway. But this is how I would proceed if it were me and my new bird. I hope that this will be helpful to you.

[Wewin02]

Thank you so much Wolf & Pajarita for all the pointers. Yeah I understand that I'm only going on Day 2 with this process of building trust. I work nights so as soon as i come home at 7:30a I calmly greet him because His cage can be seen by the front door. He seemed to be up eating his mix of seeds and I threw in a few pellets to see if I can get him to like that in his diet. The previous owner had a couple of dried foods which im sure are good quality (I'll list the names once I get home). She ordered a couple of the bags of pellets online but they are unlabeled. I dont see him eating the pellets much. As far as his food bowls go, should I always leave it filled? Or just fill it a couple times a day with a little bit of food? When I come in to offer him fruits for breakfast he seemed to be irritated with me being too close to his cage. (Grinds his break with an irritated look on his face lol).He's still may be trying to mourn the loss of his previous owner (She only had him 1 month). He is usually motionless waiting for me to make the wrong more before he can justifiably lash out at the food/my finger. But he doesn't seem to like the fruit very much. I brought him pineapples, cantaloupes, blueberries & strawberries. The strawberries are his favorite because he loves the little seeds on them. I will start the 15 minute sessions in the morning, most likely after I settle in from my shift. I dont want him to get the impression that I come home straight to bother him, although I can't quite stop thinking about him constantly hehe. I plan on getting a clicker and work with him on clicker training as that was a successful method that I used at the early stages of training my old Senegal. He is very skittish with random sounds and noises, more so than I was expecting. I'm assuming it must be due to the animal filled household he was previously in. I'm hoping to get him to realize there is no threats here at his new home but this will only be accomplished with time.

[Wolf]

I feed my birds twice a day. In the morning I feed a cooked mixture of whole grains, white beans, brown rice, whole wheat pastas, dried fruits, and mixed vegetables to which I add, when I feed it, a fresh fruit or two and a fresh vegetable or two. I give them enough to last all day. I feed a high quality seed mix for dinner, and I remove it after they go to sleep for the night. during the day, if I eat anything, I try to share it with my birds like it is a treat, because it is usually a fresh fruit or vegetable and I am always trying to expand on the list of foods that they will eat.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I leave the house I say good bye to my birds and when I return, I give it the old Hi, honey I'm home type thing as soon as I am in the door.

I don't think that your new bird is just waiting for an excuse to lash out at you at all, Rather I think that being in a strange environment, with strange new people, that he is terrified as he is motionless, which is a pretty good indication of intense fear. And of course he is going to try to defend himself in the given circumstance as he can't very well fly away from what he is afraid of. He is in a cage. Now it is possible that this is being made worse because of his high protein diet, which always makes them more irritable.
You need to find a way to let him out for a couple of hours in the morning and in the evening so that he can explore his new home and get some exercise. It will help him to adjust to his new home and new people.

[Pajarita]

No, he is skittish about noises and he stays in a 'frozen' position because he is scared. This is a young baby and he has already had three homes, and that's not good at all. It's hugely traumatic for them. Birds that are stressed out when babies, remain high-strung all their lives so, if I were you, I would concentrate on making him feel comfortable and nothing else at this point. And that means no training. It means putting his cage in a quiet spot with its back against a wall (the cage is high, right? The top perches should be, at least, at your eye level, never lower) where he would get natural light from a window (he needs the exposure to dawn and dusk), good artificial light (should be a good quality full spectrum -CRI 94+ and Ktemp 5000-5500) and spending lots and lots of time with him. The taming technique that Wolf wrote for you is good but, usually, it's not needed for babies because they need company more so than adults and have not yet learned to distrust humans. But, in his case and because of his going from one hand to another, you might want to watch him super carefully and see if you need to follow it.

As to diet, no parrot should be free-fed protein and that means no bowl full of pellets, seeds, nuts, nutriberries, etc in the morning and for all day eating. It means feeding them the protein food in the evening and the healthy food for breakfast and all day picking. He is still very young and needs soft foods (fresh twice a day). Soft foods are, just as the name implies, something soft (think of baby food) like old-fashioned oatmeal (better if you make him the steel cut or Irish oatmeal), polenta, couscous, pasta -any of them mixed with pureed veggies and fruits (baby jars). Or, you can switch him to gloop, mash or chop (my birds eat gloop) so you can start him on a healthy food that he will continue to eat for the rest of his life.

[Wolf]

I agree that the taming method that I use should not be needed for a baby bird, but if not needed then the progress through the stages is very fast. The main reason that I like it is that it addresses the issue of fear and helps to reassure the bird. Sometimes it does more for training the human to respect the bird than it benefits the bird, at least in my opinion. Because it is based on paying attention to the bird it also is easily modified to suit any situation.

This in no way disagrees with what Pajarita has said, nor does it eliminate the need to relieve the stress that is induced through fear by any and all ways possible.

[Pajarita]

Absolutely! Observing body language is a must with parrots and this method teaches you to put your whole attention on them so, even when it's not needed, it should be used if, for nothing else, training ourselves to always observe, register and remember.