Training Budgie to Turn Around

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.