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Charlie

First off, I have never really done any 'formal' training with Alfie. Apart from step up, he doesn't really know/respond to many commands. He sort of knows 'wave' and used to know 'turn round'. I think he understands what I mean when I ask him to fly to me- but he ignores it unless he wants to. 😄 He mostly comes and goes as he pleases. He is good with stepping up to a perch. He is mostly fine with stepping up to an arm but will occasionally refuse or sometimes bite if he's not happy about being asked to move. I've had some 'issues' with Alfie - he took a dislike to me a while back and favoured my housemate who recently moved out. Whilst Alfie will interact with me he no longer wanted to sit with/on me and no longer asked for head scritches. If my housemate was in the room Alfie would follow him and want to sit with him. He also went through a short period of flying to the back of my neck/head and biting me... but thankfully that was relatively short lived. However, things still haven't got back to how they used to be. I've been working hard to regain Alfie's trust and build our friendship back up again... especially now my housemate is no longer living here (he does visit though). I have been trying to start clicker training with a target stick for a while but Alfie usually ignores the stick completely or gets aggressive with it. I've only tried this when he's been in the cage so far. I also have to watch my fingers/hands when offering treats as sometimes he opts to lunge at my hands/fingers instead of taking the treat. This has knocked my confidence with Alfie somewhat, which I know is a problem in itself. So I'm working hard to find ways to improve things for us both. Yesterday I managed to get Alfie to touch the target stick a good few times whilst he was out of his cage. I put the stick close to him, used the command 'touch' then clicked the clicker as soon as any part of his beak touched the stick. I then put a treat down for him on the window sill so he could get it. I didn't quite trust him enough to offer him the treat directly, but putting it down nearby seemed to work. I kept the 'training session' really short and asked him to repeat the behaviour about 5 or 6 times at most. I also managed to get a couple of clips of our attempts which I uploaded to the forums just now. Hopefully these should be available below, assuming I did everything correctly!

That's a great start! I have done clicker training with our dogs, but have not tried it with my parrots. I hope it works for you both & builds a bond. Keep us posted!

Very interesting. I've always been curious about clicker training. I suspect Timber would be much more interested and taking the stick from me and chewing on it than touching it. Good luck!

Oh Charlie is just so precious! Such a beautiful baby!

Thank you for the information. He is also learning to talk and mimics my dog barking. He also knows his name. Rio IMG_0534.MOV IMG_0535.MOV