Well Largo seems to have calmed down considerably

[Kjarva]

I'm trying the method of putting my hand in his cage for five minutes at a time and then slowly taking it away. He tolerates it, he does puff his feathers up initally and open his beak a few times but other than that he's fairly calm. I hope by doing this for 5 minutes at a time, maybe 4 times a day he'll decide that hands aren't scary and we could maybe work up to feeding him treats before I touch him. I think it could take a while though, but we'll see how he goes.

Right now he's over on the end of the perch where I'm sat, sleeping

 

[cdog]

That's a great starting method to tame your birds, I did it with my budgies and it worked great!
Keep up the good work.
Best of luck, Chris.

 

[Kjarva]

Wow, progress seems to have been made already. I had my fingers just between the bars while I was reading parrots for dummies and he flew over to take a look.He just stood still looking at me and he let me stroke his tail for a second before he backed away. I'm really frightened that he'll take flight while I'm trying to train him over the next few weeks/months and I break his trust by having to towel him or something to recapture him.

How has everyone else dealt with the prospect? I know he can fly - I saw him fly in his aviary and he does fly a bit in his cage. On the one hand I don't want an escape but on the other hand I don't want to have to catch him in a towel to take him to the vet to be wing clipped - he'd hate me for a good while after that. Mmmmm.. don't know what to do but on the plus side, everything is going better than I ever thought it would!

Oh, another random question - when he's preening himself he has pulled out a couple of fluffy looking grey feathers and his tail looks really tatty. Is this normal? Is he just going through his first moult?

 

[friedsoup]

Letting someone else clip his wings is a good idea because he'll most likely blame that person or the towel. and they do pull out down feathers while preening nothing to worry about. Remember that clipping is just a temporary thing and your bird will learn that getting around requires that person he wasn't sure about cooperation thats why it's called dependant transportation. Also a bird who can fly away is like a child who says "your not the boss of me!" makes it extreamly hard to teach when he's sitting on the top of the curtain rod. Sounds like your on a good tract with patience and reading the right books (I love birds for dummies) if you can afford it get the Good Bird Videos for training and or go to youtube and look up training videos and come here and ask questions from the forum we never get tired of helping birds or their owners.

 

[Kjarva]

Omg - he just hopped onto my fingers!!! He had a little nibble of them first admittedly but I think he was just testing they were stable. He looked at me for a minute as if to say 'Yeah?' Then hopped off on more important birdie business.

 

[DebsFlock]

Omg - he just hopped onto my fingers!!! He had a little nibble of them first admittedly but I think he was just testing they were stable. He looked at me for a minute as if to say 'Yeah?' Then hopped off on more important birdie business.

Yay!!!!!! That's great progress!

 

[Trina]

awesome, so awesome when a bird starts putting trust in us..I remember taming my conure, so good luck I had a hard time LOL

 

[Kjarva]

I've also now found the key to his heart - oranges I had him sat on my hand for half an hour eating a bit of orange. About an hour later he got totally hyperactive and bit me for the first time but I just took my finger away without comment, while keeping my hand in the cage.

So at least he is getting over the fear of hands. I'm not sure what I did to cause the bite, if he was just over excited or if I did something wrong. I'm going to leave him alone for the rest of the evening and try again tomorrow. I feel really quite bad that he's stuck in his cage for now but at the rate he's progressing I wouldn't imagine it will be long until we get to step up training.