Training My Parrot to Fly Through Hoops

  Recently Dave joined me this month in trick training and just overall training our parrots new things... and one of the ideas he had was training them all to fly through hoops! So we got home hula hoops from our local Walgreens and started the training immediately.  Dave had already trained Tiko, his brother's blue and gold macaw, how to do t...
Continue reading

Parrot Tricks: African Grey Waves on Cue

I've just been on a training frenzie lately, I know! My goal is to catch my entire flock up to speed with where my cockatoo, Bondi, is. She is our "pro" training parrot. She knows so many things and learns super fast (but gets bored easy, too) and I just want the entire flock to be up to speed with her. So you might see many different birds le...
Continue reading

Getting Parrots to Like Other Parrots

Photo by Dave Location: Spokane, WA Pictured: African Grey "Cressi", Galah "Bandit" & Macaw "Jinx"   Remember my "Bathing = Bonding" post about how I used the act of showering/bathing my birds to get them to be OK next to one another, even though outside of that environment they hated one another? Well, I decided to try that AGAIN... and it...
Continue reading

Myth: Freeflighted Birds Don't Talk

Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, FL Cockatoos: Galahs "Bondi" and "Bandit" A huge discouragement to letting a bird be a bird and use its natural ability to fly... is this myth that flighted birds don't talk. This is completely false!  I know, because I have both types of birds; the one who never flew outside before (Bondi, my galah) and one who...
Continue reading

Treats for Training: What I Use

Recently on my YouTube videos, I've received a lot of the same question, "What treats do you use to give your bird during training sessions?"   And I know what those askers are really thinking... if they use what I use for my birds, their birds will do that which my birds are doing, right? WRONG!   That's the whole point of "Bird Treats for Trai...
Continue reading

My Bird Lands on My Head: Make it Stop!

Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, Florida Head lander: Congo African Grey "Cressi"  I have a lot of video footage and pictures of my birds landing on my head and I often get asked, “How do I get my bird to stop landing on my head?” as it can be quite annoying! First of all, my birds land on my head because I allow it. I’ve rewarded it before but...
Continue reading