Rasta the alexandrine parakeet waving on cue

Using capturing, I was able to teach this alexandrine parakeet trick training, tricks like the wave (shown above) on cue. I wave, he waves back.

I did this by waiting for a natural behavior to capture, and then shaping that captured behavior into exactly what I wanted with a clicker.

So, I would wait for the alexandrine parakeet to scratch his head, click and walk over and offer him a treat. If your bird is too mean to take a treat from your hand, use a dish to offer the treat in.

Once the alexandrine parakeet understood to scratch his head, he offered it often to get a treat. So I then began treating a bunch to get him to continue to offer it. In order to shape the behavior from a scratching of the head to a mere lifting of the foot up (like a wave), I clicked right before he could scratch his head so he realized he didn’t have to exaggerate the behavior so much.

Eventually he understood that lifting his foot and twitching it a bit, but NOT making contact with his head got him a treat. And I was able to put that on cue.

A cue is probably the most important part, along with the timing of the training clicker. If you mess those up, you could lose the behavior entirely.