- [Amy] I'm Amy Lee, with birdtricks.com,
and I'm a professional parrot trainer who loves what I do.
My goal with these videos is to answer any
and all questions parrot owners have
about their beloved feathered kids.
Ask away and I'll try to keep up.
See a bird in my videos you wanna see more of,
let me know and I'll feature that fluff member even more.
All right, so this question
came with the request that Bandit was here.
So, here's Bandit.
And the question is, "How do I build trust back
"with my bird after neglecting him for so long?
"He bites when I tell him to step up."
A lot of birds, this is like super common with birds,
if you neglect them for a long amount of time,
they hold it against you, they kind of hold a grudge,
and they're mad at you.
So their way of communicating the fact
that their mad at you is through a bite.
Oh, powdery!
And Bandit will actually let me know through a bite
if I'm doing something wrong.
For instance, if I walk into the aviary
and say hi to somebody else before him.
How picky is that?
So, anyways, it's super common for birds--
Can you chill out?
What's the dealio?
Okay, you wanna know what he's doing right now?
Seriously. I have another video of this online.
It's just ridiculous.
Every time Dave is in the bathroom,
Bandit likes to watch.
Seriously.
And Dave's just blow drying his hair,
so it's not like anything gross,
but I'm gonna show because this is ridiculous.
That's where he went.
And I'm gonna prove to you that Dave is in there,
because he only does it when Dave's there.
Yeah.
Bandit, why do you spy on Dave all the time?
Somebody requested to see you,
and this is what you're doing.
Okay, so, anyways, I'm gonna go back
to answering your question, which...
(parrot speaks)
It is so distracting.
It was such a bad idea to say I could include birds
in these videos, 'cause now I remember why I wasn't.
Anyways, what you can do to build your trust
back with your bird is to start training,
like start trick training, teach your bird something new,
because that's offering attention
in a way that's also diverting his attention
so he'll kinda forget that he's mad at you
at the time, and he'll really be focused on the training,
which is also building a bond with your bird,
so, in turn, it's doing everything that you want.
If your bird starts to get aggressive,
or starts to get sick of the training,
you always want to end the training session
before your bird does, so don't get too excited
and over-ambitious and keep the training session
going forever.
It should only be between, like, two minutes and 15 minutes,
at the high end, 15 minutes.
But, anyway, so if your bird starts to get upset
about it or starts to show signs of aggression,
just bring out the touch training stick
and get him to go back into his cage,
or have him end on a really good behavior
and then put him back, just to let him know
that when he starts to get like that
there's no more attention time, which is what he wants,
so as long as he doesn't want to go back into his cage,
make sure that that's if he starts to show signs
that you don't like,
that means that he's going away from you,
which is probably what he doesn't want
since he's taking it out on you.
So, just be careful, if that is what your bird wants
then obviously don't give it, but always end on a good note.
And trick training is just another way
to build the bond with your bird,
and it is such a good way to do it.
You could also do flight training,
but if your bird's aggressive
and looking for ways to bite you,
that could just be giving him an outlet to do so,
and the flights could be basically him attacking you,
so depending on how aggressive your bird's being
about everything will determine on what you
wanna work on, but trick training's a really good
basic thing to work on,
which shouldn't allow him to get too aggressive with things,
especially if you're working with objects.
So, I would suggest doing that with your bird.
And--
(parrot speaks)
I'll feature Bandit one more time
since he was supposed to be in this video the whole time,
but instead he's spying on Dave still.
There's Bandit.
Bandit.
Bandit boy.
You're just gonna stay up there?
I should've done this when Dave was out of the shower.
Hope this was exactly what you wanted.
Sorry the bird didn't sit here the whole time.
That's birds for ya.