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...

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....

Photo by Dave Location: The Dawn Princess, Princess Cruise Lines Twins: Swainson Toucans "Meaka" and "Fiji" It wasn't always this way with these two toucans... A lady in Sandpoint, Idaho owned Meaka (left) and she was the same age as Fiji (right) who we got at six months old. Meaka stayed in a pet shop all day and was a very calm and sweet bird...

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Holland America Cruise Ship "Veendam" Wide Eyed: Congo African Grey "Cressi" Yes, this post really is about how I cured my bird’s racism… and towards African Americans. In the following video you will notice three adult men in the background at one point and how Cressi, my Congo African Grey parrot, flies near th...

The easiest treats to train with are things that already come in small sizes such as sunflower seeds, pine nuts and spray millet. It's easy to hand your bird a single seed for a job well done or give them a quick bite of a millet stick. Other treats, such as peanuts or almonds, are more time consuming to prepare since you have to break them int...

  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...