Photo by Dave Location: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands Hugging: Blue and Gold Macaw "Chayko" Earning your bird's trust can be hard depending on your bird's situation. One of my favorite behaviors to train is based on trust and that is getting your parrot to lay on its back; whether it's on a hard surface or in your arms. It's important to g...

  Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, Florida On back: Congo African Grey "Cressi" and Galah "Bondi"  I recently joined a really great parrot related forum. A user named Cheryl asked for advice on how to properly socialize her six birds and I ended up writing to her about how I socialized my Congo African Grey, Cressi, with my Rose Breasted Cocka...

My favorite type of training is behavior shaping. It can also be the hardest because it requires finding a natural behavior your bird already does and having a clicker on hand to let the bird know it's a good thing to continue to do for a reward. I trained my galah, Bondi, (featured in the video above with Dave Womach) to do what is called "Th...

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Reno, Nevada Sleeper: Swainson Toucan "Meaka" One of my favorite things about Toucans is how they sleep. This picture is of Meaka, a Swainson Toucan I adopted from a lady in Sandpoint, Idaho of all places. She owned a petshop there and Meaka's original name was Skittles. She didn't know her name yet, so I chose ...

Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, Florida Trainee: Galah "Bondi" I just began target training our new Congo African Grey, Cressi. She caught on super fast to it and is learning the clicker more and more at the same time. She's still hand feeding but should be fully weaned soon enough. She's so smart and it's neat to watch her learn and gr...

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands Playmate: Swainson Toucan "Fiji"   Fiji is my four year old Swainson Toucan. I've raised her since she was six months old and she is so different from my parrots. Everything from her mannerisms to what she likes to eat in her diet, to her entire diet completely, actually! Mos...