Wave Trick

[ChrisJ]

Hi! Most videos that I watch for training your bird to wave tell me that your bird has to step up without touching it rather than stepping up while pushing your finger on its belly. How would I train my parakeet to wave using the step up method I use which is pushing on his belly?

 

[FlyBirdiesFly]

If you have to push on your bird’s belly to get him to step up, you should do a little more work on getting him to trust you so he will step up on his own. You can lure him onto your hand with a treat so you don’t have to touch him in order to get him to step up. As for the wave trick, I only had success teaching my conure and cockatiel, but not my parakeets. Parakeets seem to not like holding their foot up because they don’t eat with their feet like other parrots. Just keep working on step up for now.

 

[ChrisJ]

Thank you for your advice! What other verbal cue tricks can I teach a parakeet?

 

[SassiBird]

Thank you for your advice! What other verbal cue tricks can I teach a parakeet?

Maybe I misunderstood, but most behaviors start by capturing something natural (like scratching their head) or shaping (following a target to shape turning around) and then get put on cue (verbal or hand gesture) later.

If you want some trick ideas. This is one of my favorite sites.

Flock Talk

 

[chris-md]

You can also teach your parakeet Flighted recall training, which is simply teaching the bird to fly to you on command

 

[bug_n_flock]

My budgie plays the "flapflap" game. When I say "flapflapflap(and sometimes "flap" my hands along with it)" he flaps his wings like mad. He loves it. Came up with the game himself, and he will seek me out and flapflapflap to get me to play it with him. :3

And I agree, you shouldn't need to put your finger in their belly to get them to step up. Fatty is not flight trained yet(feathers growing in and we are making progress on training, but have had to "pause" learning new things for the past two weeks and just have worked what he already knows while I have been busy with the baby), but even he will fly/extended hop up to 3 ft to come to my hand when I ask him to "come here". "Step" is for closer ranges, and he uses both phrases to call me to him also(Fatty Dingdong is a talking(and rather rude) little dude).

Enjoy your little friend. I'm glad you are interested in training. Even the little guys can learn neat stuff and figure things out. So many with parakeets don't bother to train them, and you get a much better relationship with the bird when you engage with them by training.

Budgie love forever(to paraphrase an ant-loving youtube channel I've been watching a lot of lately)!

 

[FlyBirdiesFly]

Flight recall is great and lots of fun. Turn around is another super easy one to teach any bird, and so is going through a hoop or tunnel, if the bird isn’t scared of it. Doing a flip around a perch on command is easy for the more acrobatic birds, and many parakeets would gladly do it. But before you teach any of those tricks, I’d recommend target training your budgie. Luring them with a treat can also work, but target training is a good first behavior to teach so they can get the hang of trick training.