Here are two quick tips that may help you with your bird if they are a “1 Person Bird.” Remember, diet is important so if you haven’t yet we highly suggest you switch your bird over to a diet that includes organic pellets.

We suggest our own brand which you can get at www.feedyourflock.com or Harrisons which you can find in most pet stores.

Got this question sent in this week about how to tame a flighty Cockatiel.

“I was interested in your targeting procedure.but how can i reward a Cockatiel for taking a few steps toward me if i cant get near it. Whenever he flies across the room and i try to go near him then he flies to the other side of the room. Also what would i reward him with if i could get near him? do i try to reward him after i finally catch him? Should I try it in the cage or a bathroom?

What kinds of treats do you suggest for a Cockatiel?”

My Comments >>>

This subscriber’s question brings up a great point… and reveals why this bird won’t come to it’s owner.

In their own words they phased the above question as “do I try to reward him after I finally catch him?”

Now I realize that this person has a valid question… what are you to do when you can’t even get close enough to your bird to reward it, and I’ll talk more about that in a second. But the language used in the question tells me that this subscriber is not thinking about bird training from the birds perspective.

It tells me that this person is not thinking about how they can motivate the bird to come to him on it’s own free will. Instead the goal is to “catch” the bird.

For this person to ever have any success in bird training, the first thing that needs to change is theirperspective. He needs to start thinking about how he can convince the bird to come to him, NOT how to catch him.

By asking that question you change EVERYTHING! If you’ll start taking this perspective towards your bird you’ll get a lot better results.

Let’s take this different approach and look at what we’re up against:

1. The owner can click when his bird looks at or comes closer to his hand (even if he’s on the other side of the room) but then can’t get close enough to distribute a treat.

This exact case is why I preach a training technique that I call the “Power Pause”. It’s a technique that uses a different kind of motivation to convince the bird that it’s OK for you to be close to him. I recommend you check out the video of how to use this technique on your bird by clicking here.

What the Power Pause technique does differently is it takes what your bird wants more than anything in the world… for you to leave it the hell alone… and gives that as a reward when it behaves in your presence. It’s not meant to be a long term strategy, but just a strategy to use long enough to desensitize your bird to your presence. This is just one of the strategies you can use on a bird that won’t let you close enough to take a treat from your hand.

The other stratagy is along the lines of what you already mentioned…

To do the target training in a confined space can be VERY effective as long as your bird isn’t TOTALLY freaked out and flailing and flapping all about his cage when you come up to him. If your bird is freaking out whenever you get near him in his cage, then the Power Pause technique might be more effective for you.

But if your bird is just mildly nervous when you come up to his cage than you’re in good shape.

All you have to do is put a target stick in the cage, and follow the directions that I teach in our Clicker Training CD that comes in our Taming, Training and Tricks course. Whenever the bird looks at the stick, you click and reward.

To get a bird like your Cockatiel to actually take the treat, I’d recommend getting some Millet Spray as a reward… most Cockatiels will kill for that stuff… my own included.

You could choose to stick the Millet through the cage bars and see if your little guy will come on over and eat off of it.

Hope some of those ideas can be helpful!

As soon as you can get your Cockatiel to realize that he gets rewarded for following some of your directions you’re on the fast track for overcoming his fear of you and your hands.

Well the sale for our new Secrets To Stopping Screaming course is now over. It was obviously a product that was a long time coming and sorely needed by MANY of our customers. If I learned one thing from releasing this new course, it’s that I need to do a better job of listening to people like you when it comes to deciding which products we should make.

So I’ll be in touch in a few weeks with a few new ideas we here at BirdTricks have for a few other products, and we’ll be sending you out an email asking you to sorta vote on which one would be the most helpful for you.

But enough about business… It’s Memorial Day!

I hope lots of you are out camping, or visiting with friends and family this weekend. I know that’s what I’m doing… just spending time with friends and family. Like our little son Jimmy (who buy the way TODAY just had his first 8 hours of straight sleep!)

In fact in a few hours I get to go pick up my brother from the airport and spend the week with he and a few of his birds. He’s even got a new baby rose breasted!

Here’s a shot of my brother’s wife Jamie holding him. His name’s Bandit.

Hope your Memorial day was spent with as wonderful quality of people & birds as mine was