Can I teach an alexandirne colours?

[Tay2000]

I have been training rio up, she can step up, fly to and from perches on command, spin around (sort of ), half harness trained and can open drawers to get to treats. However, on these drawers I was thinking if paintng the doors certain colours, ie red, blue, green yellow etc. and having her open a drawer of the colour I state to get to that treat. I know it would take some time, and effort on both ends, but she is very smart! Has any one had an experience with training their alex to differentiate between colours? If so how did it go?

Thanks!!

 

[Betrisher]

I haven't tried training mine on purpose, but I do know that Barney prefers the orange bead to all the others and Madge likes the red one. This leads me to think they can at least distinguish the red/orange family from other colours. Why not try? As you say, they're really clever birds!

 

[Diesel_Hyland]

Can't be harder than teaching my daughter to put her dishes in the dishwasher or my husband to remember what day our wedding anniversary is...I'm still trying. LOL.
Please let us know how you get on and how you do it, I'd love to teach Diesel some tricks!...PS if you figure our any way to train my humans, that would be good too!

 

[Betrisher]

I have a very good method of training family members to clean dishes: serve up a meal on last night's dirty plates.

The plates don't have to be dirty: you just say they weren't washed from last night, since everyone was too lazy to do it. Works pretty well, IMHO.

Regarding the date of your Wedding Anniversary, you could use the method I used to teach Primary school children their Times Tables. Ask at random, several times a day 'What date is our Wedding Anniversary?' Keep doing it until the replies are immediate and flawless.

Teaching tricks is fun and pretty easy with Alexes, since they're so intelligent and, usefully, food greedy. First, you need to discover what your bird likes most in the whole world. For us, it's sunflower seeds. I cut them in half so we get more bang for our buck and the Beaks don't get too much fatty food.

It's very easy to teach 'Play Ball'. I used a whiffle ball with a bell inside (NB. DO NOT use these in your cages: Alexes will destroy them and eat the bell-clapper!!!)

You say clearly 'Play Ball' and hold the ball near your bird's beak. If he touches the ball, give him a treat. If he doesn't, try again and this time 'accidentally' touch his beak with the ball. Keep trying until he learns to do the thing for himself. Next, move the ball farther away so he has to travel to the ball in order to touch it. If he does that, then he knows the trick! The whiffle ball is helpful because the ringing bell is a cue that birdie has got it right: you reward when the bell rings. Sort of like clicker training. (NB. I dislike clicker training because the sound drives me and the Beaks mad!)

'In the Bin' is easy too. I used odd-shaped plastic beads (got them from Let's Talk Birds on ebay) and a small black tray. You hand the bird a bead and say clearly 'In the bin'. Hopefully, he'll drop the bead before too long and you need to be ready to catch it in your bin. When (and only when) it goes in the bin, reward the bird. If he misses, don't reward, but try again. Repeat until he catches on. Shouldn't take much longer than five minutes.

'Tunnel' takes a little longer and it depends on how big and how long your tunnel is. I used an International Roast tin with the bottom cut out of it. Barney and Madge took about ten minutes to learn how to 'tunnel' through that and it's all I asked of them, since they needed to be able to tunnel from their cage into the kitchen (NB. I have a hole in my kitchen wall that opens directly into their outdoor cage via a guillotine gate). They gain access to the house by 'tunnelling' through the hole, which is made out of the aforementioned coffee tin. Tunnelling in is easy. Tunnelling out is less easy. Whoever goes first gets the food reward and then cunningly parks in the doorway waiting for the next one. Madge is dreadful at this and is forever stealing Barney's peanut! Poor Barn: he often tunnels out without getting a peanut, but he's so good-natured, he doesn't seem to mind too much. Not Madge! She wants that nut and nothing will budge her until she gets it! She's such a girl!

I only do training sessions for ten or fifteen minutes at a time so the Beaks don't get too sick of being hammered with instructions. They have the attention span of a two-year-old! Nevertheless, they also have the intelligence and tenacity of a two-year-old, so you can do heaps with them.

I've had lukewarm success getting the Beakies to fly to and from a perch for me. Any suggestions? Tay? How did you do it with Rio?

As a final note, it was the knowledge of how to do the 'In the Bin' trick that got Barney back for us when he was lost. All I had to do was offer him his beads and he (predictably) chose the orange one and popped it straight in the bin. Without that, he had no identifying feature by which I could swear he was mine. :22_yikes: