After so many of you raved about the video I sent you last week, I knew I had to scour the internet to try to find the rest of the video for you.

So I found a website where you could actually buy the whole video for $10, for those of you who mentioned you wanted to do that.

But the website that you can buy the whole video from also gave me this video that is supposed to play the entire clip… for those of you who wondered what happened at the end of the last one.

Just use the little forward and backward buttons on the video player and you can skip ahead to a different chapter. There are three chapters and each is 20 minutes long. It’s the 2nd chapter that leaves off where the last video I sent you ends.

Who said Budgies couldn’t wave? If a budgie can be taught to wave, then I am certain that so can other parakeets, lovebirds, parrotlets, and cockatiels. Here are the top three reasons why it may seem impossible to teach these small birds to wave:

1) Their feet are really small

2) They often hop onto hand rather than step up

3) They aren’t as agile with their feet as larger parrots

I’m not even going to get into people thinking the birds are too dumb to learn tricks or that they are too wild to learn. That is complete rubbish and it’s the owners fault if they actually believe that. While the wave is considered a very elementary entry level trick for larger parrots, it is actually a fairly advanced trick for the smaller birds as you will see here. I would recommend at least teaching a few easy tricks beforehand like target, turn around, and go through tube before attempting to teach the wave. I’m not going to explain teaching the wave trick but rather will focus on how to apply typical techniques for training the trick and modifying them to work for a smaller bird.

Now I will address the issues with training small parrots to wave. Their feet really are small and much harder to get to than even medium sized parrots let alone big ones. While you can hold a macaw’s foot in your entire hand, you have to use just your smallest finger to handle a budgie’s foot. Initially when I began training the trick, I really wanted to use precision about lifting one foot rather than hopping or stepping up, so I used a pen for the bird to place its foot on. Later on I regressed to using my small finger. The issue with hopping can often be solved by using better precision about the foot lifting motion by directing it with a thinner finger or stick.

Finally, the last issue is that they are not so agile with their feet. I know for certain that budgies and cockatiels are ground feeders so they don’t have a need to eat out of their feet as the perching parrots do. Therefore they do not have as developed leg muscles and are not used to picking them up so high. This is probably the biggest problem with training them to wave because they just aren’t strong enough to pick their foot up high enough to make the trick even if they comprehend the cue. For this reason it took a whole month to train the wave trick to satisfaction to Duke.

He got the basics of the trick down within a few days that it had something to do with moving one foot around. The problem was that he just wouldn’t lift it very high. This is where patience and persistent training for over a month came in. We trained him twice daily with a big emphasis on wave trick to exercise his leg so he could lift it higher. It took a while before we started seeing results but it really worked. Training was more like physical therapy than training. He knew what to do but just wasn’t physically fit enough to do it. So the foot lifting exercises he received paid off and he learned to wave. His wave is still very quick and you will miss it if you blink. But hey, budgies do everything faster, it’s how they live.

So if you own a small bird, now you know that it can be taught to wave. You just have to have the patience and persistence to practice with the bird enough that it can strengthen its leg to be able to lift so high. I don’t want to see any more videos on youtube of the so-called “shake hands” trick where the owner basically grabs the bird’s foot and lifts it up and down. I want to see more people take the time to work with their bird so it could do a full wave by itself!

Since my personal experience ranges in the small to medium birds, this article is really intended for owners of budgies, cockatiels, lovebirds, conures, senegals, quakers, and mini macaws. While I am sure the same overall techniques apply to larger birds, the actual details of it may be slightly different. However, what I write here applies the same for all birds that can fit in your hand. I am going to write about how to do it by yourself but if you can have a second person help you do it, it would be so much easier.

If your bird is very hand tame and allows you to grab, hold, and cuddle with it, then you can follow the procedures I lay out directly. If your bird is aggressive, timid, or just not that tame, you have two choices. Either you can focus a lot of effort on getting it to this level of tameness (which I highly recommend regardless) by training it and teaching tricks. Otherwise you can use a towel by doing the same technique that I describe but with the towel between your skin and the bird’s beak to avoid getting bit.

Warning, doing it my way can get you bit. You need to be careful and respect your bird. I prefer to do this bare handed on my bird because it involves trust both ways and the bird does have the freedom to give me feedback if something is really wrong. I try to be gentle and not let the situation turn to biting and if the bird does bite I ignore the bite to avoid teaching biting. However, knowing that the bird is biting tells me that I am either doing it too long or too hard which teaches me how to go about it better in the future. So I really trust my bird and my bird trusts me. I don’t push it too hard or file her too long and she doesn’t bite me (even though she is in the position to). She doesn’t bite me too hard or any more than necessary so it doesn’t bother me too much if she does and I just ignore it (but take a mental note what to avoid next time). So if you are terrified of your bird or really afraid of getting a little bite, don’t do this. Use a towel or let a bird expert do it for you.

This is the grip to use to file nails solo.

So what you will do (assuming you are right handed, probably reverse this if left) is hold the bird in your left hand and file with your right hand. Grab the bird with you left hand with your thumb curled around its neck. The rest of your fingers will be on the birds back and lay the bird in your hand so it is laying on your fingers. The thumb goes under the beak as high up as possible. Under your bird’s beak is the safest place for your finger to be because it is harder to bite so close.

All Psittaciformes have zygodactyl feet which means that two toes face forward and two face back. However, for the purpose of filing the nails the feat could just as well be anisodactyl (typical bird feet with 3 toes forward and 1 back) because the fourth digit evolved to swing back from the forward position. So even though the long toe faces rearward, you can actually hold it forward because that is the original position from which the rear facing joint evolved. The hallux (small rear facing toe) cannot be moved and is very hard to reach when filing. The nail is so small and outgrown by the others that I often don’t file it at all and just wait till the next time the nails get cut. It is nearly impossible to hold and file it because it is so small and not end up filing bird’s skin or your own.

Hold bird on back and grip toe with thumb and forefinger

So I hold the bird’s 3 large toes one at a time between my thumb and forefinger. I hold at the tip of the nail and try to hold as much of it in my hand as possible and leave just the tip exposed to file. If you hold too far back, the file will just drag your bird’s entire nail or even toe back and forth without progress. I use a sturdy coarse nail file and quickly make some large deliberate strokes back and forth on each nail. I will go for as long as the bird lets me but usually only enough to blunt the  tip of each nail. If you really want to file the hallux you will probably need a smaller file and to be careful. The grip I use to file the bigger toes does not work so well for the hallux and the foot is in the way. That toenail, even when sharp is usually no bother because it is shorter than the rest.

Some other things to remember. A challenge while filing the nails is to keep the other toes out of the way. The bird may like to bite the file or rip it away from you. You may end up filing yourself a bit in the process because it is hard to grip so close. I take the hit because I don’t want to hurt my bird, rubbing my skin a little doesn’t bother me so much.

No matter how much my bird bites or squirms, I do not stop until I am finished. The more I’ve done it, the more enduring my bird has become so it is a good thing that I do not give in. She usually does not give my any trouble for the first foot I file but only by the second. If I had more time, I am sure I could file one foot per session without any trouble at all. After I finish filing I usually give my bird a treat but she usually doesn’t care about it. She just wants to relax or cuddle. So I will pet her and put her on my shoulder as a reward for being brave. The positive ending is essential if you want your bird to let you file again in the future.

It is obviously important not to let your parrot’s nails get overgrown. If they are too long, the have a higher likelihood of getting broken and are sharper which would cause anyone holding the bird discomfort. Some people freefly their parrots or have them in particularly natural environments so they don’t cut the nails but I would say they are the exception to the rule.

Given that your parrot lives in a cage at home, it is understandable that it is not exposed to the natural claw cutting things it would encounter in the wild. Naturally the nails keep growing to compensate for the rate at which they are used. At home they are not used, so they become overgrown. Since we live in unnatural environments and use tools/helping devices for different things we have to cut our own nails and our companion parrot’s.

There are basically three ways to keep a parrot’s nails trimmed:

1) Cut them with a nail clipper

2) File them with a nail file

3) Provide filing perches

I use all three of these and highly recommend that you use all of these methods. I would like to describe the benefits of each of these.

The advantage to cutting the nails is that it is relatively quick and leaves a clean cut. The end of the nails is very blunt and it takes a longer time for the nails to grow back from this stage. The downside is that it is a dangerous/stressful process. If cut incorrectly, the bird can bleed to death so it is important that you have a vet or bird expert do this.

To prolong the benefit of the cut nails, I file my bird’s nails every few weeks. By doing this, I can stretch visits to the vet or bird store from once every two to once every three months. I would have to file the parrot’s nails every other day if I wanted to avoid having to get them cut altogether but it is difficult to find the time to do that. So instead, I just blunt out the tips every so often. By holding my bird for nail filing every so often, it makes her more used to the process and better behaved at the store when she gets trimmed.

The disadvantage to nail filing is that it is a lot of work for a little benefit. One filing session takes as long as one nail cutting session because each toenail has to be individually worked on. But unlike the cut, the amount of nail scaled back is barely noticeable. The other problem with filing is that even if the nails are kept short, they end up getting sharper and sharper. A cut every now and then helps to keep the nails blunt and not cut your hands when your bird is on them.

Finally, I provide my parrot with natural branches with bark and filing perches to keep the nails trimmed. Unfortunately, this does not seem to help that much. It does help me prolong the duration between visits to four months because filing and perches take about a month off out of every four but it is not enough by itself. Also the filing perches seem to make my bird’s nails sharper while keeping them shorter. This forces me to have to file them by hand every so often to dull the points. However, because filing only takes a little bit off at a time, it doesn’t take long for the nails to get sharp again.

Even if I cut the nails myself, I still find benefit in taking the parrot by the bird store every quarter. At the bird store I bought Kili from, the women that runs it is quite expert in birds. It is reassuring to me to have an outside expert take a look at my bird for a quick assessment. Vet checks are very expensive and in my experiences, general veterinarians aren’t very proficient with birds. An exclusively bird veterinarian is very hard to come by. But by bringing the parrot by the store every so often, I can have an unbiased glance over health inspection, nail trimming, and beak trim all in one.

So what I recommend is to have your bird’s nails cut but to use filing perches and manually file them in order to prolong the duration between required cuts. Following these steps will help ensure your own comfort and bird’s safety.

I’ve finally gotten around to adding a new content section to our website on Lovebirds. These little guys pack a lot of punch and I’m excited to announce that we’ll be releasing and update the new Lovebird Section of our website over the next several weeks. If you’re a Lovebird owner, or thinking about becoming one, you might want to swing by and check it out.