How do you teach your budgie to jump on your finger by saying up?

Answer 1

That's actually a long process.

In general, you're talking about behavior modification, which can be done, with varying degrees of success, with any animal.

There are two types of reinforcement - positive and negative. Some animals are better handled with negative reinforcement (like sharks, for example) but for all domestic animals, I'd strongly guide you to positive reinforcement.

The most basic positive reinforcement is, in simple terms, food.

What you begin with is a simple association process. Come up with a word or sound that is unique -- and begin making that sound when you are offering food to the animal.

Let's say you decide to whistle when you approach the bird (I'll write that in this post as "tweet").

So, now every time you bring the food, give it freely as normal, but now you say "tweet" every time you bring the food. Do it loudly, do it regularly, and do it BEFORE you give the food.

In a very short period of time, you'll begin to notice that if you tweet, the bird will react in anticipation of the food, displaying the same behavior that it does when it's seeing you put food in the cage. (If you are using a "constant feeder" for the bird, you'll need to stop that so it learns the absence of food and anticipation of food -- but be sure to feed it daily).

Once you've associated the tweet to the food, begin the next step -- which is getting it to associate the tweet to food IN YOUR HAND.

Now, take the bird out, have it stand on your hand (possibly with your hand resting on a tabletop so you don't get too much motion to disturb the bird during training) -- and treat your hand like a small feeding dish.

Tweet and then put the food in your hand. The bird will eat.

In a few days, once it has learned to associate food in your hand to the tweet, leave your hand on the table, with the bird about a foot away on the table, tweet and put a little food in your hand.

The bird will come to your hand -- but you may already notice that the bird will come to your hand before the food is there. If the bird does that -- IMMEDIATELY reward it with food.

Play it by ear -- watch the bird -- tweet before the food, always follow up with the food when it behaves correctly -- and pretty soon, the bird will be coming to your hand for food at a tweet. Once that happens, increase the distance, but keep it on the tabletop.

You can decrease the food over time, possibly only putting down a single grain -- but always give it some sort of positive reinforcement when it arrives (stroking it gently might be good, but some birds are disturbed by physical contact in that way).

Finally, now that the bird has a true command sound available -- you can extend it.

Start small, put the bird on the table, have your hand nearby and up a bit. Tweet and see if the bird figures out to hop up to your hand. If so, reward it, and raise the hand. Remember, there's another brain involved here -- it's figuring things out too -- so feel free to watch it -- if it seems to be figuring it out well -- extend the range more quickly ... if not, make it easier -- but ALWAYS REWARD RIGHT BEHAVIOR and just ignore wrong behavior.

If all of this has worked -- you'll have the bird flying up to your hand at a tweet. At that point, you can begin to teach it alternative words -- each of which begins with a tweet.

It may feel a little frustrating at first, because you've got this great tweet working -- and now you're trying to add or replace it with another word.

Basically -- the tweet will bring the bird wherever you have your hand.

If you want it to come when you say "up", once you know that it's really dialed in on the tweet, you can likely just start saying up after a tweet and it'll come -- then gradually work the tweet out.

Teaching a bird on words is likely a bit of a challenge -- they respond to sounds better than words, I think.

-----------

Alternatively, you can also teach wild birds to eat out of your hand this way. You start by putting food out for them and just getting them used to you being there -- reading, at a distance.

Over time, you move closer to the food, and they begin to associate your presence with the food.

Eventually, you can put the food right on yourself (shoulder, knee) and they'll tentatively come to eat it.

Finally, one brave bird will get to know you -- make the decision you're ok -- and rest on a shoulder or knee. Then, putting food in your hand is easy, and the brave bird will try it first -- then shortly thereafter, the others.

Once that happens, you can arrive standing.

Eventually, you just come to the bird spot, put out your hand with food, and they come and eat it.

Pretty cool.