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Thank you for the replies and restoring my confidence that i am moving in the right direction. Im seeing progress since yesterday. He is allowing me to give him a long session of scratchiess but from him being inside the cage. I am not taking fast steps and directly approaching him by opening the cage and taking my hand to him. Last time i did that, caused me a bleeding wound on both my hands. But this is progress that he is allowing me to give him scratchies by him being inside the cage. Hope to progress more, slowly.

I'm just waiting for the day when you update us that Alfie has you wearing the harness and sticking your nose through the loop for a treat 🤣😂

There is the possibility that he bonded to someone else in your family over time as well. They can sometimes change who their 'favourite' person is. Alfie favours my housemate. He's fine with me but he will actively seek my housemate out when he's in the room, he will check on what my housemate is doing, he learns words and phrases really quickly from my housemate but ignores most of what I say etc. I think you're doing the right things - just by backing off and letting him come to you is probably the best bet right now. He will get over his grump and interact with you more as time goes on. they can be a little change adverse at times so it may be the changes in routine and the fact you were gone for a while has put him in a bad mood. But he will come round- just give him time and keep doing what you're doing. If he goes to bite (or does bite) just back off and leave him be. He will soon let you know when you are worthy of giving him scritches again! 😂

Just take things very slowly and let him call the touching shots. I'm confident that he'll come around again.

To be fair, that's probably much more likely than him letting me progress to touching his wings! 😂

Here's an update on the harness training so far... Training has been a bit limited recently because I was in the process of redecorating half of the house (all three bedrooms and hall/stairs/landing). This meant the cats had to have their litter trays and food moved downstairs to where Alfie is. As a result I had to limit Alfie's out of cage time to make sure the cats weren't bursting to use the tray or missing out on food. I didn't focus on the training too much during his out of cage time, just let him fly around and get as much exercise as possible before the cats woke up and wanted to come downstairs. However, I did make sure to get the harness out pretty much every day and ask him to put his beak through the bars and through a hoop to get a treat. This was pretty easy for him as it was only ever his beak coming through the bars, but it allowed me to familiarise the words 'head through' and the action of putting his beak towards the hoop to get the treat. Things are (almost) back to normal in the house now and the cat stuff has all moved back upstairs. The last few days I allowed Alfie just to play and fly around as much as he liked to get used to having the extra time out of the cage again. I carried on asking him to put his head through when he was in his cage and now I'm starting to work with him out of the cage too. Yesterday I asked him to put his head through the large loop three times - then he wandered off to play so I stopped the training. Today I let him out, let him fly to his shelves and settle down then grabbed the harness and 5 cedar nuts. I managed to get him to repeat the behaviour 5 times (giving him a nut each time) AND I was able to make the loop a little smaller each time. Now that he's training out of the cage I am asking him to put slightly more of his head through. He was a little hesitant a couple of times but I didn't force it, just kept the loop and the treat in place until he was ready to lean forwards. I'm letting him come to the treat each time. A couple of times I managed to move the harness back ever so slightly so more of his head was going through. He also brushed the harness with his head a couple of times. Again, not a major update but I am being very cautious and not forcing the issue at all.

That's great news! Glad to hear she's settling down ok!

Great to see you back! I love hearing about Inara's antics! It's amazing how much you continue to learn about birds, no matter how many years you have spent with them. Alfie continues to regularly surprise me and we've been living together for 16 years!

Dixie and I watching TV and sharing some popcorn

So glad to hear from you Maggie! I haven't had an Amazon, but I'd like to. Sounds like they are the clowns of the bird world.