I am happy to report that Percy is getting much more confident with the new items in his cage. Now he goes on the swing (although he continuously tries to stabilize it and hasn't really realized that swinging is fun), he goes on his new perches, plays with his foraging toys and even goes up and down his ladder (whose mere sight used to frighten him not so long ago). So he is getting to be more of a confident bird (at least in his cage), which is great
As far as step up training, I haven't made GREAT progress. He will go on the hand-held perch if I use it together with the target stick, but he will go down as soon as he touches the target. Also, he doesn't like it when the handheld perch is not resting on his normal perch and thus he has to step to it. I think it has more to do with the hand-held perch being less stable than with the actual step.
Also, I have made some progress with the taming. What I do is to move the cage to a different room from what he is used to. This instantly makes him more cooperative. At this point I start to touch in areas that are usually off limits and reward him. This seems to be slowly giving me more access even when the cage is back in its usual place although it still heavily depends on his mood
