Single Handedly Target Training Your Bird

July 11th, 2009

Posted By:
Mike

Once you have mastered target training with your bird, you may seek new uses for the process. Here are some excellent uses you may have for target training and they all involve targeting single handedly:

-Target bird onto your hand

-Target bird onto or off of your shoulder

-Target bird through a ring or other prop you must hold

-Target bird from your hand onto a stranger’s hand

-Target a territorial bird out of its cage and onto your hand without biting

In order to perform any of these listed actions, you would need to have one free hand to hold the bird or prop involved. This only leaves one hand to control three essential items: the target stick, clicker, and treat. Here is how to do it. You hold the clicker in your hand and use your middle or ring finger to click. Next you slide the target stick into your hand with the clicker in place. You don’t have to have a tight or perfect grip on the stick because it just sits there. Finally you can hold millet or a seed in your thumb and index finger prepared to serve the treat as the reward (or “reinforcement”).

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.