by Pajarita » Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:13 am
Welcome to the forum, Linlin and tiel (you did not tell us its name). The bird doesn't perch because it's a baby. Four week old babies are still inside the nest in the wild so, although it can physically perch, it's not yet time for it to do it all the time.
The baby is also not anywhere near weaning so I would suggest you continue handfeeding it (four times a day) even if you do put some soft food in the cage for it. Now, tiels do not eat chop so putting it there is not going to do any good. They eat leafy greens and they love grains so what you need to feed it is cooked whole grains mixed with finely chopped veggies. Gloop is great for little aviary species and the only difference with a baby is that you would cook the grains softer than al dente and start by mixing them with pureed baby food (use things like sweet potatoes, berries, etc. but no spinach and very little kale, please). Birds can learn to drink from bottles but, in all honesty, they are not mice and a drop at a time from a bottle is the most unnatural medium for drinking water one can think of when it comes to birds so I would strongly suggest you use a bowl of water for it.
You cannot start training until the bird is, at least, over its juvenile molt so relax because you stil have months before you can start training. This doesn't mean that the bird is not going to be learning, it will. But it will be things like its name, the daily routine (you know it needs to be kept at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk with no artificial lights on, right?), how to eat (you know you cannot free-feed seeds once it's older, right?), how to perch, how to fly, to trust you and, later, to love you as well as simple commands like 'Step up' (which doesn't need to be taught to them because they always want to be on us), 'Step down', etc. But none of these things are taught on a training session, these are things that they learn as we go along from repetition and praise when done correctly (no rewards, just verbal praise). Also, a tiel is NOT going to learn to do a magic trick, my dear. Tiels are WONDERFUL little birds, they are beautiful, smart, loving and have, by far, the sweetest temperament of all the parrot species but they are NOT companion parrots, they are aviary and, although they can learn to do things, the actual range is VERY limited because they are more flighty and have a shorter attention span than companions. And, in truth, trying to teach a tiel the same tricks that, say, a senegal might do, is not kind to the poor little bird. There is a reason why a tiel is under $100 and a senegal will cost you $700 to $1,000 even though they are almost the same size. They might all be parrots but each species has different needs and cockatiels, being a very flock oriented aviary species, can only live a healthy and happy life when they live with, at least, a mate of their own. They do learn to love humans but they need other tiels. See Liz's thread on the Parrot Care forum about her little rescued flock of tiels and you will see what I mean.
Please do more research and don't believe everything you see on Youtube or read in the internet because it seems to me that your expectations are way too high.