by Pajarita » Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:42 am
Welcome to the forum! I don't know how you planned his first days at your home but, in my personal experience, the BEST thing you can do with a rehomed bird is NOT to do anything at all. See, the thing is that parrots are not like dogs, they are not bred to like people, they don't belong to hierarchical social groups so obedience and/or subservience to a 'leader' is hard-wired into their brains so they need to get to know you first, then trust you and, finally, love you. You would not ask anything of a guest in your home, would you? I mean, you would not be touching the person or asking her/him to touch you, etc. Well, it's the same thing with parrots that belonged to somebody else before they came to us. Training doesn't make the bird like/trust/love you, it's respect and bonding that does. So, if I were you, I would re-evaluate what you have been doing to see if, maybe, you assume familiarities with the bird that the bird was not ready to allow.
All my birds belonged to somebody else and, a lot of them came to me because of aggression issues which have all been resolved so I'll tell you what works for me. When a bird first comes to me, I make sure that its cage looks exactly as it did in his previous home and that he gets the same diet for the first two days or so [well, unless the diet is TERRIBLE and the bird is at an age where you can't really wait a single second to make it better]. This doesn't mean that it's not getting the better diet, it just means that he gets both. Then, I never ask for anything. Not a single thing. No step up, no nothing. After a couple of days spent in their cage so they can start getting used to the new home, human and routine in the 'safety' of their familiar cage. Then I start opening their cage at dawn [I just walk away after] and allowing them to come out to fly, walk, climb, whatever they want to do. When it's time for them to go back inside [my birds are out for, at the very least, 7 hours a day -this is during the winter when the days are short], I simply put the food in their cage and, if necessary, I use a stick to transport them back to it. Once I see the bird wants a closer relationship, I allow it BUT I never take the initiative, it's always them who decide when and what.
The thing is that if the bird is biting you at the very beginning of the honeymoon stage and you don't figure out why, you might end up with a bird that bites you all the time. The trick is to avoid at all costs getting bit and, although I know that this sounds stupid ["DUH!, Of course that I don't do anything to get bit!"], it's really not. People think that interacting physically with a rehomed parrot is the thing to do but it's not. It might be the thing to do with a dog but it's not the thing to do with a parrot. Parrots need to be treated the same way you would treat a stranger that is a guest in your house: warm hospitality, patience and respect.
My recommendation to you is to stop training immediately [wait until the bird trusts and likes you], stop asking the bird for physical touch or to do anything the bird doesn't want to do, establish strict daily routines and follow them every single day, make sure he is kept to a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk [macaws are low hormone birds but they can become overly hormonal when kept wrong, just like any other bird], and that its diet is adequate [macaws need A LOT of produce daily], spend as much time as possible with it talking, singing, whistling and, every now and then, offer the bird a high value item but not as a reward for a trick well done, offer it as a gift, as a token of friendship with no strings attached to it and, if the bird doesn't take it from your fingers, just leave it where he can get it. The point I am trying to make is that you need to win him over, to make him realize that you want to be his friend and that you will always treat him with affection, patience and respect. Once you achieve this [and it will take months, mind you!], you can start training him.
Also [and I hope you don't take this the wrong way because I am not trying to offend you by saying this] I would not use your cockatiel experience as a basis for how to treat a macaw. Tiels are pretty special when it comes to temperament because they have the sweetest, most docile temperament of all the parrot species and are the most forgiving animals - I don't know of any other species that compares... especially the large species which KNOW they are powerful.