Momma needs (training?) advice for Drake

[Effervescency]

Hello! Just joined the boards today!

My black capped, Drake, is 8 months old and I'm need of some, what seems to be, training advice. We've had him 3 months, and I'm afraid he hasn't made any progress of warming up to us. We try to handle him as much as possible, sitting on the floor, the couch, walking around on our shoulder, everywhere. He can get up to a solid several hours of hang time with us, if he actually stayed put. He spends most of the time flying onto the floor and making way back to the cage.

When we got him from the same exotic bird store as our pineapple GCC, Alice, the woman mentioned they had a couple clutches at the same time, and that didn't get held as much as they always do with their birds. He barely seems hand-fed and raised.

He's incredibly skiddish, very prone to flying off your finger, running from you on his cage, etc. If you try to spend time with him on the floor, he's always fluttering back toward the cage. Unfortunately, with all this running away he does, he's managed to mangle his tail feathers to practically nothing because it's what he lands on. He has also managed to turn Alice neurotic (we've had her 8 months and she's 11 months old, and they get along great!). Alice dips and ducks from you petting her, also runs when it's time to go in their cage, and flies away from you. He will rarely hand-feed unless it's a favorite like pomegranate seeds or sunflower seeds (then he gets pretty bossy and extroverted). Otherwise, it's hard to even get him to bathe in the sink without him staring in terror at you. He steps up almost instantly once you can get your finger near him and he's not busy running away (by fast or very slow chase). It won't matter how long you stand there and try to get him to be okay with being around you, he'll just stare and stay frozen.

I'm afraid I'll have a lot of questions regarding him and his behavior. This is just one topic I'm touching on with him. I know he's young, but I'm no skilled bird trainer and I'm hoping I can do this with the amount of time I have to spend with him daily (around 4-5 hours, if needed).

Please, any thoughts and advice is welcome! Thank you for taking the time to read!

 

[Pedro]

Reading between the lines i think your bird is terrified & needs time to settle in better. The reason he keeps running back to the cage is because that is the only place he feels safe. If you are going to have him out of the cage take him to a room where he can't see his cage & see how he behaves there. I think 4 or 5 hours are to long to have him out. Lots of short time out of the cage if you can. You really need to build up some trust here with this little guy, you could be moving to fast for him. As soon as he starts to feel uncomfortable take him back to his cage, You can even leave the door open so he can come out on his own. Give him time.

 

[roxynoodle]

I also don't force my birds to bathe in any certain place. My conure bathes in her water dish, so that is what she does. My amazon wants to go in the shower with me, so that's what he does. My Grey wants a large bowl to use for her bath, so that is what she gets.

And some birds never like being touched much at all. My conure doesn't, so I abide by her wishes. She plays on me, but no petting.

 

[Helitorian]

Pedro stole my advice lol My little Con has the same cage fetish. If she can see it, she wants to be on it. She's settled in fine but she's just an odd little conure. Con was also deathly afraid of water bottles when I brought her home but thanks to the advice of the amazing people on this forum, she and I tried several different things until we found that she doesn't actually mind the spray bottle when it's in my hand. She is now over her fear and will try and play with it all the time.

Training a bird takes a lot of time and patience. You can't force them to do anything that they don't want because it can severely damage their trust in you. I've been wanting to harness train Con and I've had the harness for nearly a month now. Today, she finally let me slip the large noose over her head and around her body. We reached that point with lots of kisses, cuddles, sunflower seeds and a weeks worth of five minute sessions spread throughout the day.

So my advice is please take your time. He'll come around Also, Roxy may be right (she usually is ). He might not be a cuddly pet-me kind of bird. Take each day at a time and you'll slowly figure each other out.

 

[Effervescency]

I also don't force my birds to bathe in any certain place. My conure bathes in her water dish, so that is what she does. My amazon wants to go in the shower with me, so that's what he does. My Grey wants a large bowl to use for her bath, so that is what she gets.

And some birds never like being touched much at all. My conure doesn't, so I abide by her wishes. She plays on me, but no petting.

Alice will bathe anywhere, but you're right, Drake bathes in his water dish almost every day. He had progress today when bathing with Alice. My boyfriend is a paramedic and brought home a pink bedpan just like the one below for baths. It works perfectly. The water only rises about 2.5 inches or so before it spills off the end. Drake hung onto the side while he chased/chomped water bubbles and got his head clean from the tiny stream into the pan, and then finally dipped his chest in and ruffled his wings. Too cute! He does stay in the sink now, before he tried to always fly out, so we just gave up on baths until he was maybe a bit more comfortable with us.

 

[roxynoodle]

That's actually a good idea.

I know it's kind of a pain to change her water all the time in the water dish, but she also dips her pellets in it, and makes a mess of it generally, lol! And in some ways it's nice that she takes care of all her personal grooming needs on her own. I tried giving my amazon the large bowl to bathe in, but after 3 weeks of his not using it for that, he was getting pretty icky. So into the shower with me he went! Merlin's previous owners told me she didn't like being in the shower or being sprayed. I knew she wanted a bath when she tried getting into her water bowl, but was too big to fit. So I gave her that big dish I had gotten for the amazon and she took her bath. She did make quite a mess though, lol! I may try the sink and see what happens, or at least put her into the tub with the water dish. I'd rather have water all over the bathtub than all over the front room, lol!