Taming a Pet Bird

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As with many aspects of successful birdkeeping, taming your bird requires a great deal of patience; do not expect results within a few days. Try starting off by offering the bird little titbits of its favourite food through the cage, but do not be alarmed if it initially backs away from your hand, because this behaviour is very common in wild birds. After a week or so, you should find that the bird will take the food from your fingers.

After a few weeks, it should be safe for you to put your hand inside the cage without being bitten. Once you reach this stage, put both hands in the cage with the hand furthest away from the bird containing some of its favourite food. This situation coaxes the bird into stepping onto one hand to reach the food in the other. If you continue with this technique, slowly but surely your bird will become tame. To ensure that a parrot remains tame, handle it as often as possible. As your bird grows older, it may start to nip occasionally. Every time it does this, gently tap it on the beak and tell it off.

Taming a bird kept in an outdoor aviary basically involves the same approach. The best way to tame softbills, for example, is to offer them livefood; they will do practically anything for such a treat. Taming your bird, even to a modest degree, can result in lowering the stress level. If your daily routine keeps you very busy and you rush around much of the time, it is very important to slow down when you are close to your bird. Otherwise, you will achieve exactly the opposite effect of the taming process. As with any new arrivals, always enter the aviary calmly and slowly. In this way, your new bird will gradually become acquainted with you and possibly with any pets that wander around the garden.

In a large collection of birds kept in an aviary, it is common for one bird to become noticeably tamer than the others. In fact, you may discover that such a situation helps to calm any new arrivals that you may introduce into the same aviary.Use a bird’s favourite food to tempt it onto your fingers. Keep your hand still the first time you do this. You will need to do this many times before you can move around with the bird.