Does Your Parrot Understand Mirrors?

Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, Florida Taking a peek: Galah “Bondi” I always go through “introducing the new bird to the bird in the mirror” phase when I get a new member to my (giant) flock. What this means is a new bird typically has never seen a mirror before and thinks that it is another bird in the mirror that they are looking at and n...
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A Touch Training Trick I Discovered Using 2 Birds

 Photo by Dave Location: Holland America Cruise Line Theater Pictured: Galahs "Bandit" and "Bondi" I touch trained my 4-5 month old rose breasted cockatoo, Bandit, in two days with three training sessions. It’s the very first thing I taught him (aside from flight training outdoors) and it was actually harder to touch train (or target train) h...
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Parrot Tricks: The Bat and Upside Down Retrieve

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Orlando, Florida Bat Look-a-like: Galah “Bondi”   Some people are able to train the “bat” behavior using behavior shaping. I personally prefer using behavior shaping for everything if possible but it’s not always. Some birds love to flip upside down while others will bite you for merely looking at their backside....
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Bathing = Bonding

My three year old galah, Bondi, is not so fond of her new younger brother, Bandit. However, he is fond of being around her! So what to do? Well, I found that they both needed a bath one day and there was no sense in me taking two just so they could each have one so I decided to give bathing them at the same time, on the same perch, a try. I ran ...
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How to Properly Hold Your Parrot

One of the many reasons it can be hard to introuduce your bird to new people is because new people who don't know birds, don't know how to properly handle or hold them. I've experienced it before - both not knowing what the heck I am doing and witnessing someone else not know for themselves! Neither feels better than the other!   Here are some p...
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Flight Train Using Targeting

  To learn what it means to target train your bird, go to my blog entitled Target Training and Clicker Conditioning. The training that happens from your bird already knowing targeting, can be flight training your bird using the target stick. This training is very simple and happens pretty naturally for a flighted bird when just teaching them the...
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