Stupid Potato It was announced on her tumblr. Zeebs was egg bound and it was too big for their regular egg size and it stretched out her stomach from after they took the egg out and I believe she wasn’t able to heal properly so she passed away
I would love to share my process because I had what seems to be a very common mistake. My Parakeet (Kio) was not taking a liking to the stick at all! He would freeze up whenever I got it near him. He wasn't showing the body language that he didn't like it, just that he wanted nothing to do with it. Sooooo... I took a common tip into consideration and decided to "be creative". My parakeet is very food driven. He loves millet like Tony loves Chewy (Ha ha. Comic ref). He will do anything for millet. So I took a branch of millet and tore off one of the little ball things and put it next to the stick. Kio started biting at the millet. The more he ate, the more I exposed the stick. I took away the millet and he poked the stick! I said good boy (Because I'm still waiting for my clicker -_-) and gave him millet. After that, he had no problems with the stick. Now, we are well on our way to a perfectly target trained birb! I hope this helped anyone and everyone that had the same problem! I hope you enJOYed the tiny story thing. It literaly happened five seconds ago. He is chirping away from his cage... ~Joy~
Thank you! You continue to be one of the best, most detailed, most helpful, most thoughtful bird channels on youtube. Newt is a precious little bean, love his red tummy and smiley little eyes! I'm looking forward to seeing him learn all kinds of new tricks! (once those flight feathers grow back, a recall tutorial would be awesome!)
So glad I found this video! Pearly, my parakeet is about 6 months old. I estimate that she was 3 months old when I got her from the store. Her wings are clipped and she's an escape artist. And watching you do the target training with the bird inside the cage was just the answer I needed! I have gotten her to eat from my hand, and am now just starting to finger train her. I have a smaller cage that I've put her in and we sit on my apartment deck in the shade on warm afternoons. What's interesting is that she's catching on to the word "outside" and she will let me pick her up to put her in the smaller cage. I've refrained from using my hand that way, but she will sit on the side of her large cage and actually let me pick her up when she knows she's going to be outside. And she will go from the smaller cage, to her larger one when we come back in, all by herself. She's definitely the shy scared bird and easily traumatized. When I first got her home she sat like a statue and wouldn't eat or drink water for 2 days straight! I put a small pyramid under her cage and then she started eating and drinking. I really think the pyramid helped . Now I'm wondering how to get her to stay on a training perch when I do start getting her out for training.
I started doing this with my untame conures (because I wanted to start taming them ;)) they learned so quickly and are very eager to do it for treats haha. It's a positive experience for both me and my two conures! One of them wasn't comfortable with it being over their head but super quickly got used it. In a span of like 1 1/2 sessions (1/2 because one of them was small) all in one day, they learned it and are moving all around to get the stick! Thank you so much, I'm very excited to continue working on our bond!
Your conure is so cute! I love your chanel and have been following it for a while. I am getting a half moon conure and I was wondering if you could please make a video on setting up a bird cage and give tips about perch placement, food bowl placement, etc? I was also wondering if could please make more DIY toy tutorials. I have recreated a couple of the ones you made, and I love them. Thank you very much.
Hey @Flock-Talk I don't think you need to worry about making these excellent quality videos ALL of the time. Sometimes it's just nice to see you interacting and playing with your birds with no point. There are lots of great bird channels I follow where the content creators just share videos of their birds, and sometimes, that's all we want. Your excellent quality videos make you top-of-the-heap, but in the in-between periods where you aren't inspired and have nothing new to say, why not just share some random clips of the birds? That's enough for many of us!
Agreed! I'd love to have a video of just the birds playing, it would bring me joy as well as my birds! they love any videos of small birds making sounds and playing and will come down to watch with me when birds come on my laptop.
Thanks to this tutorial my lovebird now follows a blue ballpoint pen around! Im starting to think he actually enjoys this game especially since he gets a treat and praise afterwards ♡
Thank you for your videos!! Never thought I would be able to train my guy, but he is doing great since I’ve started using your advice and training videos 😁
at first my bird was trying to fly onto the stick😂 but seriously, thank you so much for making an extremely clear and detailed tutorial because now my bird has learned her first trick! I am so proud of her and if it weren't for you my bird wouldn't have learned this trick in such a short period of time. Thank you❤❤
*bows head* Master you have returned! 🙏 Don't leaves us again! Newt is adorable. I also wanted to say that I was inspired by you to get my own budgies! Thank you flock-talk! 🙌💕😆
I have a green cheek conure which is the same thing as a maroon belly conure! I’m so sorry for you loss. I had a parakeet names Kiwi, and he only lived for 9 months. All of the vets we met said we had the greatest connection. They have never saw a connection like that. They said the Kiwi would have died sooner but he wanted to say goodbye one last time. Have Zeebe forever be in your heart!
Your trainig and info videos are the very best i have come across on you tube! Thank you so much for such in depth explanations! I just rescued a budgie that had flown into my place of work.. no one claimed it after weeks of having adds up.. so i guess i have a new friend and she's already climbing onto my finger for treats! Even sat on my shoulder for the first time last night! :)
I’m so happy you got a green cheek! This channel is one of the best bird channels out there, and me, getting a green cheek myself, am happy that you have gotten one! I have one question, what is Newt’s cage? It’s hard to find big cages for creek cheeks with a good size and design. Thanks!
I'm starting this process with my two parakeets, they're both more used to my hand in the cage so that's what I've been doing. I expect it to take a long time but hopefully we get it!
God damn, i used to follow this lady on tumblr YEARS ago and only just now saw that she still does bird stuff and on you-tube. Good job with the birds, and nice hair. I still say you do a whole video on training cats while still featuring the birds and not clarifying the joke
On your blog you've posted a lot about doing easy foraging for newt and more difficult foraging for mia. Could you do a video on all the different ways you do foraging for them, diff ideas for how to hide food, and how you vary the difficulty and work them up to more difficult foraging? My bird is great at the foraging I provide for him but the moment I make it more difficult he just ignores it. Thanks!!
While you say this is basically the first thing you've taught him, how did you get him accustomed to you? He seems very comfortable on your shoulder; how did you reach that point in only a few weeks?
It's got to do with character of the bird and also whether they came from a breeder who raised the chicks by hand. Im quite new to budgie care, since Iris flew into my room, but I got her a friend that was handraised and within a day she was on my head. It's a bit of a hit and miss anyway, birds are very smart and have personalities, so they might just not be human climbers or on the contrary very clingy. From what I hear Newt has had some issues, so definitely the person's confidence and lack of nervousness is a huge asset. But if newt didn't want to do it, it'd be practically impossible for her to reach that point in a relatively short amount of time regardless of experience a d attitude.
Thank you for this video, I am considering getting a ringneck that was hand raised but not sold and has been waiting for a home for a year and not had much interaction, I'm going to practice on my daughters bird that is very much in need of training, but will be going to visit this ringneck in 6 days so want to see if this will help with him. I had almost given up hope on getting him because I knew he hasn't had much handling.
!!!! Birb mom is alive lmao. Edit: on another note, I do wonder if the mirror you have is "safe"? It's still a bit blurry concept since at another vid you said it can get birds in a little complicated situation. Anyway, great vid, as always. Newt is incredibly awesome :v
My parrotlet will not target train with me outside of his cage, he actually seems more comfortable when I give him his treats etc with my hands inside of his cage! He is so cuuute!
Yay! An upload! I noticed you have a green cheecked conure on your hand for the video, it's so adorable and it looks like the parrot I'm looking at adopting!
I know your birds were hand trained, but how did they get comfortable around you? I enjoy watching your bond with your birds grow, thank you for informing us in your videos.
With treats, do you hold off food in their cage to ensure that they're eagar for treats for training sessions? About to begin training tomorrow. Thank you, loving the videos ☺️🇦🇺
I target trained my cockatiel and now I'm trying to get into recall training, but she's having trouble flying towards me when I'm standing. She'll fly to people by choice if they're sitting. Otherwise she seems afraid to land on any surface that isn't her cage (If you say "back to your cage" she'll fly straight to her cage). She can even do laps, as long as it's back to her cage. I'm wondering if this is a trust issue? She steps up, accepts petting no problem, yet she seems scared to fly towards people.
I'm pretty sure it's common for a bird to bond more strongly to one person, so since she's your bird and you're the one training her, she's probably just not comfortable with being told to fly to just anyone (I imagine that it makes sense in her mind to be okay with flying to them just because, but not when told, but I'm just guessing). If that's something you want her to be able to do, same with her landing on other surfaces, maybe just occasionally give her the option to try it, but in a way that lets her easily leave if she's uncomfortable, sort of like how Courtney mentioned Newt not really liking her desk because of how slippery it is for him. She still had him target close to the desk, so that he's rewarded when he's leaning towards it (though that wasn't the goal specifically), but lets him go back to sitting on the cage door where he feels safer. As she said in the video, you don't want your bird to associate target/recall training with being stuck or forced into situations she's uncomfortable with. Honestly, it sounds like you're doing alright with the training thus far, though you might need to break down the steps a bit more. You mentioned that your bird will recall to you when you're sitting, but not when you're standing. If you're getting her to land on your hand while sitting, maybe you could start off by sitting, calling her over, but then very slightly lifting your hand partway through flight? (Just make sure she has enough time to adjust for the slightly higher landing point.) She might not respond well to that still, or at least not immediately, but it's a much smaller step that'll allow you to incrementally build up to her landing on you while standing. I think there's a recall training video on the channel that has Courtney teaching the girls to do laps by slowly acclimating them to just flying in a circle around her, starting with a very small body rotation when they're mid-flight to teach them to follow her hand through the rotation. I think she uses a similar method in the video about teaching a bird to high-five? She started just with getting one of the birds to touch her hand from the table and then slowly lifting it further up off the table after several tries. To go back to the landing on other surfaces thing, a thought just occurred to me: is it possible that she just doesn't feel safe landing on them? It's mentioned in the video that the desk is too slippery for Newt, which is extra scary for him since his previous owners had him clipped so extensively that he can't even glide to safety if he falls off. I don't know where you want her to land, of course, but if it's a slippery flat surface, I wonder if she'd take to landing on something she can get a better grip on? After acclimating to that, of course. Overall, based on what you've said here at least, it doesn't sound like it's a trust issue, per se. I'd say just try breaking down the training steps a bit more, consider if there's a potential safety issue with the surfaces you want her to land on, try to mix things up when she's comfortable with a step, and especially don't force her to do a thing if she's not comfortable doing it, or takes a bit of time to do it. You've must have done many of these things already if you got her target trained and started on recall, so just keep on trying and be patient with her. I'm sure you'll do great!
malogranatum491 Now that you mention the slippery surface issue Newt had, I think I know why my bird is a bit afraid of landing on standing people. She might think standing people are more likely to move, so they seem unsafe to perch on for her. I don't want her to land on just anyone per say, but specifically my older brother, best friend, or me as she seems to like all three of us quite a bit, and in the case I'm on some kind of trip they're typically the ones to watch the bird while I'm gone.
Bryden Vargas That's a fair reason. Don't know how you can train her to recall to them in that case. Maybe train her with one of them nearby and somehow work them into the training so that she learns to accept a recall request from them? Hmmm... maybe have her recall to you, but then step up onto their hand before getting a treat? And then slowly ease the step up command out? I'm not actually sure, tbh, I'm mostly spitballing ideas here :P . If you think she's afraid to recall to people standing because she thinks they move too much, I wonder then if my idea to acclimate her is that good of a suggestion. On the one hand, she might REALLY not like that something she thought was safe (landing on a sitting person) is suddenly not safe (landing on a sitting person who's moved partway through her flight). On the other hand, she might accept the new movement more easily since it's occurring in a situation that she is normally fine with. You could always try once to see how she reacts and then go back to business as usual for a while before trying again. Maybe try doing that a few times, each attempt a little closer together, until she's comfortable with landing on a slightly lifting hand every time? Basically, it might be a scary movement for her at first, but then going back to the normal steady hand might help reassure her that it's still generally safe, just that the hand might move a little bit from time to time. Either way, it does sound like you're doing great training her so far and I have no doubt that you'll find a way to make it work :D .
HI. I love how calm you are with your birds! I have been using this video to target train my GCC, Gillian. I’ve had Gilly for just about a week and it is 7months old. When I get him to the top of the door, he just flies off or goes to visit my keets cage. If I try to get him to step up, he just backs away, but he will come to the stick for a treat nearly every time. How do I get him to stay put on the door and learn to step up? You make it look so easy but I’m not getting it :( Thank you
I rescued a pigeon a month ago. She was kept in a flock with hardly any human contact, and she's pretty scared of hands, but we're making progress! She's comfortable eating from my fingers (but huffs and growls at my open hand... no idea why) and will 'touch' my finger gently when I ask her to. She knows the basics of targeting and that touch=click=treat, but she won't move very far to get it. But she won't let me touch her at all and attacks my open hand if she decides she doesn't like where it is. I know parrots and pigeons are very different but I'm hoping I could learn some of the basics to help make her less afraid of/aggressive towards hands. Any advice?
Aloha! This is a little off-topic, but my 6-month-old parakeet has an annoying habit of sitting on my shoulder or chest and yanking out my facial hair. I don't really scold him because im unsure if hes just grooming affectionately or being a jerk. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Huge fan of your channel. Big mahalo for everything you do to educate people about these incredible creatures.
@flock-talk I'm wondering if you have any tips for helping tame birds that have never been tame. My cockatiels have never been tame an I am struggling with getting them to want to interact with me, or others. Great video! I will be starting target training ASAP!
I noticed that when you showed video of training Newt you choose to do a voiceover instead of using the original audio that went with it. Were you including a verbal bridge? If not, when do you introduce a bridge? My parrotlet is terrified of the clicker, so I use 'good bird', but I would like to try the clicker again sometime.
I love your videos!! If one was to get a bird where would they get one? I am assuming not at a pet store. Does it matter if you have to ship the bird? Just a few questions...
Hello... I am new to birds. I have 2 budgies I wish to train. Both female. One is now 5 months old and I have had with me for 2 months . And the other is 5 weeks old and I have had with me for almost 2 weeks. My question is when target training are you using the clicker when the bird touches the stick? Are you saying “ Target” or any word(s) to indicate you want the bird to respond to a command? Thank you
awe i have a maroon belly named Pablo Escobar lol. i think thats the type you have too? correct me if im wrong. I also have a Turquoise Backed Conure named El Chapo we call them the gangsters. Chapo learned target training the first session we did! its very cute and Chapo is learning how to spin!! Pablo isnt really getting the idea and just wants to eat and play with the stick bit i think hes getting it lol
What can I do to lower one finger-hating conure's hatred? I got an rescued cinnamon green cheek counre who likes to be around people (on the ground or on the shoulder) but REALLY HATES human fingers. Each time he sees my hand, he jumps toward it fiercely and tries to bite me on the hand. I am really frustrated.
Hellooo, I'm going to get a cockatiel in 2 weeks. He's about a month old and still being handfed and getting used to eating by himself. Would you recommend to do this the first day he comes home, or for him to get used to his cage and environment?
Is it beneficial for birds to see other birds training? I know with puppies they often learn from an older dog, so im wondering whether to have my birds watch each other or if this will make one jealous.
I noticed you used a smaller parrot, can this also be done with a large macaw? I saw your video on the top 5 toys, my bird will not play with toys she ignores them. Some of the toys you mentioned I have bought baby toys it is a lot cheaper and stand up more because they are for babies. Also, the bird I have is uncooperative, stubborn, mean and the biggest brat. I hope she trains well.
My bird is fine with the stick, he's not scared of it or anything . When he's in his cage he'll bite the stick and I'll give him a reward but when I move the stick to say the wall if his cage he won't follow, just looks at it. When he's out of his cage he just wants to play with his toys, when I take his toys away he'll fly back to his cage OR he'll bite the stick for a while but lose interest VERY quickly. Please help! He's also scared of hands.
hello! I'm sorry I'm late but I've been really struggling with my two little parakeets and cockatiels. My parakeets are scared of the stick, I have tried everything, from putting food on the stick to just not using a stick, they are terrified of it. One of my cockatiels are aggressive, and she hates when I try to slowly hand feed her treats or anything like that. HELP!!!
I watched one of your older videos about Parroletts. I have two female parrotlets in a large cage, about 2 years now. I did not know they shouldn’t be in the same cage. One is very sweet and one is very dominant. If you separate them, they seem really upset, what do I do now? The dominant one is plucking her own feathers and then she plucks the feathers around her sisters face. I am so concerned about them, do you have any Suggestions? I want them to be happy and I don’t think they are as happy as they could be, is it too late?
I want to target train my cockatiel (she's not tame) but she's terrified of anything that comes near her. she will just start flapping about her cage and i don't want her to hurt herself
Thank you for all the great training videos. They’ve been really helpful for us and our small flock. For some reason I’ve had a hard time target training our birds. What do you think of clicker training?
I have been trying to target train my bird for months now. She just doesn’t get it she’ll look at it once and then she’ll completely ignore it. I don’t know what to do. Is there any suggestions anyone could give to help me get her to understand what to do and to ask her do it????? Help me!
Ella’s Life You can try putting water on the stick, and then put seeds on it. Once she taps it with her beak, you can give her a bigger reward other than plain seeds. Hope this helped!!!
Hi, I am having a problem in feeding my parrot bcoz he doesn't like to eat the food which he already have, for example if he eats sun flower seeds at next time he doesn't want to eat that again and how to find his favorite food
Hi. Any advice on training/taming two parrotlets living in same cage. I read it's not a good idea to keep two but they do seem to get on well and both are interested in me and eating millet from my hand which I thought was good after only a few days of getting them. So is it possible to train two? Thanks
