Since we had already taught our budgie to jump through a ring, we wanted to take this a step forward and teach him to go through a toilet paper tube as well. The first difference between the ring and toilet paper tube was that toilet paper tube is more confining so the budgie was adamant of going through it at first. This was no problem however, because Duke had received all the requisite training to learn this trick and we had him go through the tube willingly by the end of the training session.

Prerequisites:

-Clicker conditioning

-Target training

-Jump through a ring training

So before training your parrot, you will want to make sure that it is proficient at the above skills. If not, you may want to go back and practice those a few times before proceeding to teach this trick. While it is not required that your bird knows how to go through a ring, it will make it easier that it knows how to go through something round as a tube is just a deeper version of a ring.

What you will need:

-Target Stick

-Clicker

-Treats

-Toilet Paper Tube

-Tape

If you are training any bird larger than a budgie, you can substitute the toilet paper tube with a wider diameter tube such as PVC. I used a 3″ piece of PVC for my Senegal Parrot because I could not find a suitably sized tube. You can also try an oatmeal can with the ends cut off or a wide roll from paper.

For your first training session you will want to tape the tube down to a surface so that your hands are free to control the bird, target, click, and reward. You may even want a second person to assist you because there are so many tasks required at first. In the video you will see that the clicker, target stick, and treat should all be placed in the same hand in order to liberate the other hand to hold the bird. If you are not used to targeting your bird in this way, you should refer to the blog post about Single Handedly Target Training Your Bird which teaches you how to do it.

Once you’ve prepared the toilet paper tube and taped it to the table, put your bird down in that area and let it familiarize itself with the tube a short while. You may get lucky and the bird just goes through it out of curiosity in which case you can click and reward. Most likely this will not be the case. Start desensitizing (aka getting your bird used to) your bird to the tube by targeting it near and to the tube. Once the bird is ok with being near the tube, you can target it to the entrance of the tube. After this point, place the bird at the entrance to the tube but insert the target stick from the other end of the tube. Stick it through the tube to come out on the end near your bird. As the bird starts walking to nip the target stick slowly start pulling it back and into the tube. Hopefully the bird will follow it all the way or part way through the tube. For this you should certainly click and reward. If the bird follows the target stick to the entrance of the tube but refuses to go in (as was the case at first with my bird), you are going to have to force it through the tube a few times for it to realize that it actually isn’t scary and that it will earn it lots of rewards.

Hold your bird in your hand at the entrance of the tube and stick its head in part way. Keep your hand behind it so that it has no chance to recede out the rear end of the tube. With your target stick (also clicker and treat) hand, show the target stick at the exit of the tube. Even without the stick, odds are the bird will just come through the tube toward freedom on the other end once it realizes there is no backing out. When it comes out the exit end, click and give lots of reward. You may have to repeat this a few times but pretty soon you will see that the bird is coming through the tube more readily. If this is the case, you can try to relax the hand you force it in with so it can choose to back out or come through the tube. If it backs out, don’t reward and try again. This will teach it that only coming through the tube earns a treat. After this stage, just place the bird at the entrance of the tube and show target stick on the other side. If the bird chooses to go around the tube for the target stick do not reward and try to place it closer to the entrance next time or block the way around the tube with your hands. If the bird is still showing improvement, you may be able to stop targeting through as it knows to come through the tube. Now in your next few training sessions you can start to place the bird farther away from the tube entrance and let it make the choice of running through the tube and not around. If it is not going through the tube, return to an earlier stage. If it is still making progress, try putting your bird at the side of the tube and let it figure out to come around the tube to the entrance side.

An extra tip for you. Don’t point the tube the same direction every training session and don’t have the bird alawys go through the tube the same direction (except the first few times as to not confuse it). If it gets too used to running right to left all the time or something like that, it may get confused if you turn the tube. So after you no longer have to stick the bird in the tube, use your free hand to hold the tube (instead of taping it) and aim the tube in different directions for every run.

Once your bird has mastered the toilet paper tube, you can try moving up to a paper towel tube instead.

Here is a video of my Senegal performing the same trick (not as exciting):

Here is how to hold target stick, clicker, and treat in one hand

Be sure to practice this grip before working with your bird. Last thing you want to do is frustrate your bird because you can’t figure out how to hold everything at the same time and click. This could confuse the bird and hurt your training efforts. It is not difficult to do but it may take a couple minutes to get used to holding things this way.

Try to hold the stick in such a way that the treat is hidden or farther out of the way. You are not using the treat to lure the bird but targeting with the stick. You should practice this a few times on a training perch or table before moving onto the next steps.

Now you should be ready to target using just one hand. This frees your second hand to hold the bird or prop. To target a new, shy, or scared bird onto your hand (that has been target trained away from hands already), place your hand on the perch so that they connect together. Hold the target stick to point over your hand in a way that it is only accessible from your hand and not the training perch. The bird should walk across the perch, onto your hand and to the stick. If it is not doing this, you are should try holding the target stick closer or go back and practice targeting some more.

For targeting an aggressive bird out of its cage, you can basically use the same technique. In the following video, you can see Kathleen targeting Kili my Senegal Parrot (who can get territorial and bite strangers approaching the cage) out of the cage without getting bit.

You can also use this technique for targeting your bird onto a stranger’s hand from your hand. Hold the target stick over the stranger’s hand and bring your hand, on which the bird is sitting, up to the stranger’s hand. The bird will be so focused on the target stick, that it will overcome the fear or aggression it has toward the stranger. One time I had a stranger (to the bird that is) over and he wanted to try to pick my Senegal Parrot off of her climbing tree. The moment he put his hand on her tree she came running right over. However, this was not to step up peacefully but to bite in retaliation for violating her territory. I told him to try again but this time I held my target stick right over his hand. This time the bird came right over and went on his hand without the slightest hint of aggression. To him, it looked as though I waved a magic wand over the bird and magically it obeyed. What I was really doing was cuing my bird to do her “target trick” which made her forget her aggressive motives.

White Budgie

I noticed that my birds learn certain tricks better in a certain order. For instance, it was very easy to teach the budgie to go through a toilet paper tube after he’s already learned to go through a ring. Also, we taught him the toilet paper roll trick just a few days after teaching turn around but the tricks did not interfere. To me it seems like there are 3 types of tricks (and basically one of each can be taught simultaneously as they do not interfere):

- Taming (handling, touching, petting, etc)
- Prop induced tricks (fetch, jump through hoop, bowling, etc.)
- Cue induced tricks (wave, turn around, wings, etc.)

I have found it very effective to teach a bird several tricks at a time if they are in separate categories as above. I don’t mean literally at once but interlaced in the same weeks as each is taught. I can only teach about one to two cue induced tricks per month or else my Senegal parrot gets the cues mixed up or one trick overwhelms the other. On the other hand, the prop induced tricks are very memorable to the birds and the props look different so they don’t get confused on those. If the tricks are different enough, they can learn several at a time. And finally taming just takes a long time and a certain type of taming like holding on back in hand take a long time to teach so the bird gets comfortable. A good routine for a month might be to handle the bird and progress toward getting it on its back. Teach going through a hoop with the prop. And teaching to turn around. These three tricks being completely different do not cause any interference and can make a good routine. Of course target training and training diet are prerequisites to it all.

Parrots in the wild have to learn to deal with many different situations on a daily basis. And like humans they learn to adapt to their surroundings. But also, like humans they forget things as well. This is why you can’t train too many things at once. However, it seems that they remember tricks differently. A taming routine is something they slowly get used to over time so this is mostly taught through calm and continuous repetition over a long period of time. The prop tricks on the other hand, the birds seem to remember exceptionally well because each prop looks unique. The cue tricks are harder for them to discern because the prop is almost always your hand or a verbal cue so just the sign of a hand vs a prop is not enough to determine what trick it is. The bird has to look at the hand motion or position to understand what trick is being asked. What happens with these cued tricks is that you might teach the bird how to do the trick in just a few training sessions and then spend weeks practicing the cue so that it remembers that that exact cue goes with that trick.

So the point of this post is that you should consider what set of tricks you would like to train your bird in the upcoming month. You can think of a taming exercise, prop trick, and cue trick to work on and then span that training out over the necessary period of time. But at the end, you will have taught your bird 3 things in parallel rather than taking 3 months to teach these in a series. The more tricks your bird knows, the better it can learn more tricks. You should still emphasize one trick at a time for introductory training sessions, but you can definitely teach multiple tricks this way in the span of days and weeks.

Training your budgie, other type of parakeet, or parrot to turn around is very easy. It took me a few days to teach it to my Senegal Parrot and we taught in just one training session to Duke the budgie.

Before you start training your bird to turn around, make sure that you have begun basic training with a proper training diet, clicker conditioning, and target training. While the bird might be able to learn the trick without some or all of these prerequisites, it will be very quick and easy to train the trick if the bird has been properly prepared. So if your bird is not yet target trained, you should go back and read the article about target training. If you have properly target trained your bird (or taught it some other tricks) you will already know when the bird is most motivated to train and what its favorite rewards are.

The purpose of the trick is to have the bird do a 360 degree turn on its perch. To begin. Hold the target stick in one hand and the clicker/treat in the other. Warm the bird up by doing a couple targeting exercises on the perch. The bird should be eager to touch the target stick and be willing to make multiple steps toward it. Now hold the target stick over the birds head with the tip at about eye level but far away enough that it cannot reach it. Bring the stick around the bird at a pace that it can follow. Once it has completed the full turn, click and reward. Be careful not to click too soon or the bird may learn to do incomplete circles. Practice this until the bird follows the target stick in a complete turn every time.

The next step is to start holding the target stick lower so that your finger is pointed down but not completely covering the tip. This will help to later establish your cue. Continue targeting the bird in circles with this kind of grip. If the bird is confused, try exposing more of the target stick. Once you have completed this stage, start reducing the distance which you target the bird around. Move the target stick in a 270 or 180 degree circle and take it away and see if the bird completes the 360 degree turn to face you. If it is catching on, it will finish the turn on its own. Progressively reduce the amount of targeting you do and let the bird do more of the turn on its own.

Now at this stage you should be able to use just your finger without the target stick. You might start by targeting the bird 360 with your finger and then reducing the turn as before and letting the bird do more of the turn on its own. Finally, once the bird is doing this with minimal involvement on your part. Start receding your finger from doing a loop gesture over the birds head to doing it in front of the bird. Now the pointed down finger twist becomes your cue for the trick. If at any point the bird seems confused, try going back to the last successful stage. If on the following day the bird is having any difficulty remembering the trick, remind it with a 360 over the head with your finger or target stick to remind it. It should be much quicker on the following day to reteach the trick.

You can also throw in a verbal cue and with enough practice have your bird perform reliably on just a verbal command as you can see my Senegal in this video. Also, you can challenge your bird by having it perform the turn around trick on a flat surface like the table or floor. This way it has to really focus on doing a 360 turn as opposed to two half turns on a perch. If your bird does a complete 360 turn on a flat surface on cue, you know it learned the trick completely. We taught Duke the turn around trick in one long training session. He still remembered it on the next day and even did it on a table. What a fast learner. Good luck.

The wave was the first trick I taught my Senegal Parrot and so it had become her best and most practiced trick over time. That is why I was surprised that she forgot the cue for it when I started to train her to lift her wings. I use the word “wave” as the cue to wave her foot or I can use a hand cue by waving my fingers. To lift her wings I say “wings” or I point two fingers at her. She started to do wings not only when I would say wings but also when I would say wave. I realized that the “w” sound in both words was what confused her.

Senegal Parrot

I felt bad that she forgot her best trick and wanted to correct this before the problem got any more serious. So instead of continuing training for the new wings trick, I went back to practicing wave for a while. I dropped variable frequency of reinfocrement techniques and went back to rewarding every trick. I started to practice the wave for maybe 80% of the tricks in the session rather than the usual maybe 10% (because she used to do it so well, would get less practice). But I did not practice the wave exclusively. I would stick some other tricks in on occasion so that she wouldn’t get so used to waving every time that she wouldn’t listen for the cue.

The way I got her to learn the verbal cue back for wave was fairly simple. She still clearly remembered the hand cue so I would say wave but she would do wings. I would ignore her. I would try this a few times. If she waved, she would get rewarded. If she did not, I would ignore her and then on the next try say wave and wave my hand for the hand cue. What I was doing was retraining the verbal cue for my bird for a trick she had already known. I would also practice the wings verbal cue in between as well so that she can learn the difference in the sound. Parrots are really good at discerning sounds so I think anyone who tells you that the bird cannot remember verbal cues is misleading. It just takes more practice to maintain the verbal cues but they can learn them and be consistent. My bird knows 6 tricks on verbal cue and growing. Teaching a verbal cue is easy but time consuming. If your bird already knows a trick with a hand cue or is learning a new trick, just be sure to say the verbal cue every time you are cuing it for the trick. Eventually it will associate both the word and the hand cue and will perform for either.

So in that same 10 minute training session that I realized that my Senegal Parrot forgot how to wave, I practiced it extensively with her until she could do wings or wave consistently on verbal cue. I was sure she learned the difference because on the following training session that day she was doing significantly better. Seems like she just needed a reminder of which word goes to which trick.

So I bought my girlfriend a budgerigar which we decided to name Duke. He is a dark eyed clear with white feathers and black eyes. This is different from an albino which has no pigment and red eyes. Budgies are a type of parakeet native to Australia. The term parakeet refers to many long-tailed, small-sized species of parrots.

From the very first day that we got him home, the training began. Honestly, this is the easiest time to start setting boundaries and establishing routines. Think of it as starting a new school or being the first day at a new job. You would have to observer your new surroundings and go with the flow to fit in. By starting basic training from the very beginning, starts building a bond with the bird and letting it know that it’s how things are going to be.

The first training sessions basically consisted of having him step up on fingers and being clicker conditioned. We would just hold or perch him and click and immediately reward with millet. We did this several times a day for the first few days to make him get used to the concept of a clicker. Now we were ready to start some real training.

We used a chop stick as the target stick, clicker, and millet as the reward. My girlfriend held the target stick and clicker in one hand and millet in the other. We placed the budgie on a perch far away from its cage to keep him focused. She put the target stick in front of Duke just a very short distance away. Also she kept the stick pointed at the bird so only the tip would be visible and the rest of the stick facing back toward us to avoid him beaking the wrong part. He looked at the stick for about 10 seconds and then nipped it really quickly at which point she promptly clicked and gave him some millet.

We tried a few of these and then started holding the stick slightly farther away so that he would have to turn his head or take a step to beak it rather than just bump into it accidentally. In the following video you can see the result of target training a budgie on just the 5th try. We started holding the stick further away and at first he would not make a move toward it. Instead of bringing the stick in closer, we waited it out until he’d make a move for the stick and then reward. This is so the bird doesn’t start to think that waiting the stick out will bring it in closer by itself rather than having to walk over to it. If the bird is unresponsive to the stick from that distance for too long. Take it away and hide it for a little bit and then present it again closer.

Within a few training sessions since we can get him to run anywhere on his perch after the stick and up a person’s arm. Target training is a very easy and useful thing to teach your bird because it helps you show it where to go. I was once trying to show my Senegal Parrot to a man who was eager to hold the bird but she would try to bite his hand when he brought it near. I told him to stop and just place his hand near her perch and I held my target stick over his hand. My parrot walked right up onto his hand after the stick and he was absolutely amazed at how I used my magic wand to get the bird to come on without biting.

A few useful tips on target training your bird:

• Get your bird when it is hungry by taking the food out of its cage for a while. It will try harder and learn quicker.
• Try to do target training outside of and away from cage if possible
• In the beginning hold the target stick so that the bird cannot touch any part but the tip. You don’t want it develop a bad habit of touching anywhere but the tip.
• Start targeting close and then work your way out as far as bird seems responsive.
• Do not get into a pattern of targeting the bird into the same place or direction every time or it might learn a dance routing rather than targeting.
• Be patient and let the bird come to the stick rather than bringing the stick in toward the bird once positioned. The bird can only learn by experimenting and that does including failing as well.

I will keep you posted on the progress we are making with training Duke and any advice folks with parakeets can use.