Most species of parrot are monomorphic meaning that sex can’t be determined by visual means.  Usually DNA testing is necessary to accurately tell if Polly is truly a she.  There are a few species, however, such as the beautiful eclectus, who are notably color dimorphic.  The female is red and blue, while the male is a vibrant green. But, this is not the norm in the parrot world.

The cockatiel is another species that can be visually sexed.  Using a standard cockatiel as the example is this comparison, the male standard shown here (Tinky, my first born) you will notice the vibrant yellow coloring on his head and the clear definition of his orange cheek patch,  Aside, from the white patches on the wings, his body coloration is a solid gray, down to and underneath his tail.

The female standard cockatiel has duller and less defined coloring on her head and perhaps the most telling sign of her sex is the barring underneath he tail:

Photo by Anne Lonjak

A species that is dimorphic is the Indian ringneck,  After reaching sexual maturity, the male will devolop the famous ring around the throat which they are named for.  The female may have a faint, much lighter ring.  It is not always an entirely accurate way of separating the sexes as birds vary within the species. Her body is stockier, her feet larger and her beak is less prominent than that of the male.

The cockatoo can be visually sexed by eye color, but it isn’t a reliable method.  A typical female will have a reddish brown eye where the male’s color will be very dark brown appearing black except when exposed to light when you might see the slightest hint of brown, although I had a female umbrella with unusually dark eyes.

The male parakeet can be differentiated from the female by the color of the ceres.  A male typically will have blue to purple colored ceres, while the female will generally have pink to brown.

It is important to keep in mind that, except in the case of the eclectus, none of these methods for sexing are absolute.  The only certain method (with 99.9% accuracy) is DNA testing.

Cutting budgie nails is not very difficult and can be done by the bird owner with some knowledge and preparation. There are a few items you will need before you proceed. You will want to have a brand new nail clipper that you will only use for your birds. Using a dull or well used clipper will only prolong and complicate the trimming process.

You should not clip your bird’s nails if you don’t have a styptic powder like quick stop ready. If you cut the nails too deep the bird will bleed and if the blood is not stopped, the bird will bleed to death. So not only have the powder available but have it open and ready to use.

Grab and hold the budgie in the palm of your hand. If you have a helper to do this, the process is significantly easier. Hold the bird steady and hold the toenail to cut away from the other toes. Budgie feet are really small so it is important to hold the toes apart to prevent them coming near the blades.

Observe the bloodline on the nails and cut the nail before the bloodline so that it does not bleed. Place the trimmer around that nail and make one final check that the blades are lined up correctly and other toes are out of the way. Now squeeze and clip the nail. If the nail starts bleeding, dab some quick stop on the area and it should clot within 15 seconds.

Proceed to trim the remainder of the nails in the same way.

If you have a brand new bird that is not accustomed to petting or if yours loves it and is demanding about it, here are some tips for you.

If your bird does not let you pet it doesn’t mean you can’t use a little bit of training to allow you to do it. There is no guarantee whether your bird will like it or not. There is a good chance that it will but needs to give you the chance to do it. If you try to force pet a fearful or aggressive bird, it will only worsen the situation. Of course you may feel that if you just do it, the bird can enjoy it but the fact of the matter is that if you do it in an unpleasant way, the bird will never trust you like that.

One thing to consider is scale. While you may be able to use your entire hand on a macaw, only a few fingers would be more suitable for a Senegal Parrot. On the other hand, with a budgie even one finger can seem large and intimidating. Scale wise a finger might be like getting pet with a first for a budgie. So definitely try to not be too big to the bird when you touch it.

It is likely that the bird does not want to be touched on its wings, legs, or tail. They can preen/scratch all of those areas themselves so they don’t need or want your touch there. However, they cannot reach their own heads and necks. In the wild birds all preen each other as both a convenience and a socialization ritual. Usually birds allow others to preen them as a sign of social acceptance. So of course your bond with the bird can be reinforced by petting its head and neck.

So if you have never pet your bird before, you will want to see how close you can get and try to see if it will accept petting or not. What I often do with a bird I’m unfamiliar with is put my hand about 12 inches over its head and see if it is calm or really agitated. Unless the bird looks like its ready to bite, I will inch in a little at a time and see its comfort level. If it looks more relaxed, I go a bit closer. Within the last few inches is the deciding point. Now it can reach your hand and bite you. If the bird’s head is still down, it is most likely safe to proceed. If it’s beak is practically on your hands then a bite is likely and continuing will only agitate the bird and it won’t be able to enjoy being pet.

One way I’ve taught birds to accept petting initially (to introduce them to it so they could realize they like it) is by cuing them to do a trick. While I am rewarding the bird for doing the trick I hold my hand closer and closer to its head with consecutive rewards. So on the first reward, while the bird is eating out of my left hand, I will put my right hand a certain distance away that the bird does not get distracted and continues eating. If the bird keeps looking at my hand rather then eating, then it is uncomfortable and I back off a little. I continue this until I can get close enough to touch and the first few times I just touch and don’t pet. Finally once I can definitely touch while it is eating, I start gently stroking the feathers. Once the bird seems more comfortable with petting while being fed, I start phasing out the feeding and just offering petting on occasion.

Now on the other side of the spectrum is a parrot the likes getting pet so much that it will bite you until you do it. This is unacceptable behavior and absolutely should not be rewarded with the action the parrot desires. In this case I try to change the petting request language from bite to a trick behavior. For instance cue the parrot to wave and when it does, you reward it with some head petting. Not only does this give you an alternate treat to use to food, it also teaches the parrot to do tricks instead of biting to get pet.

In this video you can also see that I created a pseudo cue for accepting petting for my parrot. I had two issues with her. First off, she would nip my fingers if I didn’t pet her the way she wanted. Second, I often get requests from children to pet her and even if she looks like she will let them, I am worried about her changing her mind and biting them. So what I started to do is to hold her beak whenever I pet her. She wants the petting so she doesn’t mind the beak hold but for me it guarantees that she can’t nip me because I got her. Now when I let others pet her, I hold her beak. This way I know that she can’t bite and if anything it will be me and not a little child petting her.

Usually I either lean the thumb of the same hand I pet her with on top of her beak or I hold her beak between my fingers on the hand she is perches on. This guarantees me that she won’t nip or bite and also it signals to her that enjoyable petting is on its way for her. This way when I want to give other people an opportunity to pet her, I just hold her beak. This signals to the bird that she is going to be pet and takes her mind and worry off that stranger because I just told her that petting is coming and not harm. She lets them pet her and probably won’t bite them because she knows a good thing is coming. And as backup, I got her beak so I know exactly where it is!

I have heard several people asking about how to get a bird out of the cage initially just to get to the point of target training and trick training. I do realize that this is a major issue for a first time bird owner. I had gone through this myself when I got my first bird and it must have been a week or two since owning it till I took it out for the first time. This article is for all those people at the very early stages of bird ownership that want to know how to get the bird out of the cage for the first time so they can begin to interact with it and train it.

Budgie stepping up to come out of cage

Now before I get further into this, I want to say that this is merely my personal opinion based on personal experience. Some may disagree with me and suggest other ways and that is just fine. I just want you to know that this technique proved successful for me with 3 separate birds to get them to be willing to come out onto my hand within one month or less. However, this experience was with 3 different baby birds from a store. If you are working with a rescue, rehomed, or older bird these techniques may or may not apply and use at your own discretion. If anyone has had success or failure with similar technique on birds of any of those categories, please feel free to leave a comment detailing how it went.

Basically there are 3 things that the bird could do if you reach your hand into its cage:

1) Run away (flapping, crashing into cage walls, running, etc)

2) Bite (ouch, blood, pain)

3) Step onto your hand

Naturally we all want the third outcome but if you have never opened your birds cage and tried you will never know which of these 3 cases your bird is. And if you don’t know which of these your bird is, you cannot know how to proceed. There is a good chance that the bird already knows how to step up or is tame enough to be grabbed that you don’t really have to do much to get it out of the cage. Seriously!

I’ve been going back to the birdstore where I bought my 2 recent birds and check out the birds they have. I go around to the different tanks/cages they keep the birds in and reach my hand in to see what their reaction is and see if they will step up. Many birds have been taught to step up and tamed to hands/humans by their breeder and just the site of your finger will trigger them to step up. Sometimes I get bit, sometimes the bird runs away, sometimes it steps up. Often times it seems to be species specific. Every Senegal I’ve ever tried to pick up at that store stepped up for me no problem (that is probably the same reason I bought Kili from there) but on the other hand the sun conures always bite me. I don’t know if its a certain vibe I have with certain kinds of birds (perhaps they step up for other kinds of people) but I do know that there is an approach to grasping every kind of bird. If you haven’t tried picking up your bird yet, I highly recommend you just give it a try. If you don’t get lucky and have a step up off the bat, at least you’ll know what kind of bird you are dealing with. And don’t just assume that it won’t step up or want to come to you if you’ve never done it, you must try first.

If bird is a stepper, just proceed with taming and training.

Sometimes you just have to grab bird out of cage and then make the out of cage experience super rewarding until it can learn to step up.

If bird is a biter, and you are genuinely afraid of handling the bird, refer to my biting article series.  But if you have a baby bird or are not afraid of the bite it might give you (particularly if it’s a baby or small bird like a budgie) you may use a combination of flooding with positive reinforcement. This is actually the technique I used on all my birds. What I discovered at the store was that the bird handlers at stores are pretty rough with the birds so they are pretty used to being grabbed and handled. They may test you with a bite to see if it scares you or not but may not persist if you don’t give up. So if you just reach in and grab your bird despite biting efforts and overpower it to get it out of the cage, you will be showing it that whether it puts up a fight or not, you will get it out eventually so give up biting. This of course can be detrimental to your relationship with the bird so I like to outweigh the negative association with positive immediately. I give the bird its favorite treats immediately. Take it out, play with it, train it target and other tricks. I make being out of the cage a really good experience. Of course if you do this so rough, you may traumatize your bird and it will be forever afraid of you. It is important to understand balance. However, the worst thing you could possibly do is to make an attempt to get it out of its cage and prolong for a long duration of time and ultimately fail at getting it out. If you take a minute, 5 minutes trying to get the bird out of the cage and it is biting and you are pulling your hands away and trying over again, you will only reinforce biting behavior and create a nightmare for yourself. If you are going to reach in and grab the bird, just do it. After doing this just a few times with my birds and the positive training outside the cage, within a few days there were stepping up to come out and within weeks were always eager to be taken out.

If your bird is terrified of you (and I’m not saying a little shy, I’m talking running scared like there’s no tomorrow), you can apply a similar approach to above but with some modification. You definitely have to give such a bird time to relax and get to know that you are safe. This could be a matter of minutes or a matter of weeks depending on the bird. While I think an aggressive bird could gain a respect for some toughness on the part of the owner, a scared bird will only get more scared. So it is important to give it more time to get used to you and realize that you will not cause harm. Even if it is not stepping up yet, if it calms down and perhaps takes treats through the bars from you, you are ready to apply techniques similar to a biting bird.

One last note. I do not recommend ever letting your bird out of its cage on its own. I know there are many people who just open the cage and let the bird climb out by itself and eventually go in by itself. If you want to have a tame bird, never do this. In my household, the only way a bird ever gets to come out of its cage is by stepping onto my hand. No step up, no out. Climbing out by itself, mean going back to cage and staying there. Thus my birds are conditioned to station on a perch and wait between when I open the door and reach my hand in and not jump/fly out. In fact I don’t even let the birds cling to the cage door to be let out. This discipline ensures that you maintain some control over the bird but also associates the positive association to you for being allowed to come out rather than just the door miraculously popping open!

Of course once you get your bird out of the cage for the first time, you will also have to get it back into the cage at some point. In my next article I will talk about how to get a new bird back into the cage.

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!

Cleaning cage bare, removed all toys and perches.

I started by removing absolutely everything from the cage including bowls, toys, and perches. I got a bucket of hot water that I mixed dish soap and a little Clorox into. I cannot endorse this cleaning method in any way and don’t have a strong justification for this over other methods so it isn’t really relevant, tested, or proven. Substitute whatever cleaning agent you choose to use. Because of my own doubts about the validity of any cleaning solution for bird cages, I just try to use something mild and then rinse very thoroughly to leave no trace. I only use soap on the cage this way about quarterly. Other times I just clean with water and wiping.

Thoroughly washing cage out in bathtub.

Once I get started it’s easier to just keep going and clean everything all at once. Taking the time to do it, preparing the solution, getting wet, and working on it just makes more sense to do all bird stuff together. Usually I team up with my girlfriend and we can get things done much quicker by delegating responsibilities. She will soap and rinse everything in the bathtub while I take cages apart, deliver the parts, and dry thing when she finishes washing.

Washing out climbing tree.

We wash all perches, ladders, grates, and cages this way. I even shower out her climbing tree like this once in a while. It may be easier to hose down cages but since I don’t have access to a hose, doing it in the bathtub is the next best way. Since the perches soak in water and the birds chew them actively, I am especially careful at rinsing them out thoroughly and wiping away any trace of chemicals. Since my Senegal parrot’s cage is bulky, I normally wash it on the spot but the budgie cage easily fits in the tub. However, I’ve decided that once a year I will lug that big cage to the bathroom and stick it in the tub and clean it out completely. It was a bit of work but now the cage looks like new so I think it was worth it.

New cage layout after rearranging.

Since I neither remember nor care about restoring the previous cage layout, I use cage cleanings as a reason for rearranging the cage anew every time. I layout all available perches and swings from my small collection and pick the ones I want to use this time. I always try to arrange the cage differently. If the perches ran across last time, I try to run them depth wise this time. If the last time she had a swing, this time I put a spiral rope. By constantly changing the cage layout, it helps relieve territorial aggression, it keeps the bird challenged, and it makes the bird accustomed to changes. I am confident that if I had to replace her cage or move to another home, she would have no trouble adapting.

While I was arranging the new layout, I let my parrot watch from her carrier. I had to put her in there or she would fly over to check it out every 3 seconds and wouldn’t let me work. So she watched intently and when it was finished I put her in. Rather than panicking, biting, or getting shy as many unaccustomed parrots would have been, she was immediately excited. Her eyes lit up and she looked like a little boy on his birthday opening presents. She just had to climb on every perch, check out every toy, chew on every piece of wood. I know many parrots could have a panic attack from these alterations but if next time you get a bird, you keep this in mind and build this kind of relationship with novelty from the start, you can have a parrot that is  very open to change. And instead of causing them grief, you can give them pleasure in getting new toys and an exciting new cage layout.