A REVIEWOF BASIC RECALL TRAINING If your bird does not know how to come to your hand,
here is a brief review of the basic steps. I highly recom- mend you start by target training your parrot. Teach your parrot to orient his beak towards something in order to earn a positive reinforcer such as a food treat. I like to usemy fist as a target to avoid having toomany props inmy hand.Use your target to train your bird to voluntarily step onto your hand. This is critical. You perch hand should remain still. Your target hand can move to direct the bird where to go. But the bird should be the one doing any othermoving. In other words it is his choice to step onto your hand. Coer- cion is not a part of good step up or recall training.
launch off a perch. However the skilled, confident flyer can go through this process quickly and soon might be launching willy nilly. And your next steps in your training strategy will be important to reign in the enthusiasm.
SOLIDIFY YOUR CUE There are two parts to training your eager flyer to learn
towait for your signal before launching.One part involves teaching your bird there is a cue that indicates it is OK for your bird to fly to your hand. In most cases the cue is a hand being presented in front of your body.As soon as that hand is raised a well trained bird should be heading your way. Try to present your cue right before you think your bird is about to launch into flight.Thiswill help teach your bird to respond to the raised hand. This will also mean being very attentive to your bird’s body language. I rec- ommend never taking your eyes off of your birdwhen you areworking on fine tuning this behavior. Itmaymean even walking backwards so you can keep your eyes on your par- rot when he is on the perch waiting for his moment.
At first your birdwill be looking for every opportunity to
fly to you.Youmay be presenting your cue repeatedly and rapidly. Be sure to reinforce your bird for the repetitions in which your cue is presented right before your bird flies.
Use your target to train your bird to voluntarily step onto your hand. Photo credit: Barbara Heidenreich
Once a voluntarily step up is solid. You will want to
gradually move your hand farther away from the bird so that hemustmove a bitmore to get to your hand. Positive reinforcement makes an eager participant who will work hard to get to your hand. Your approximations may have to be small at first. This may mean accepting a big stretch of the legs to get on your hand, or reaching with the beak to get there.
At some point the bird may reach with the beak or legs
and flap to help traverse the space between hand and perch. I get excited when I see that because it allows me to reinforcewing flapping.Usually shortly after that a bird will hop or fly to the hand.
For birds with no flight history this is a much more dif-
ficult process. And in truth those birds are not the ones who usually have a problemwaiting for a cue.Their prob- lem is quite the opposite….gaining the confidence to
What do you do if the bird leaves the perch before the cue? Photo credit: Barbara Heidenreich
Good Bird Magazine 33
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