Parrot Tricks

Parrots, being the amazingly smart birds that they are, have been tested and proven to have the intelligence level of a small, human child.  Therein lies what is probably the main reason that people like to have Parrots as a pet; to teach it tricks.  Teaching your parrot tricks will improve their behavior and create a more sociable bird. Training is not just for entertainment purposes; it will solve some behavioral problems.

Training Sessions

You must keep the training sessions short.  Do not tire your parrot. That will cause the session to be a negative experience for the bird.  You also keep their training sessions positive and do not start a training session until your parrot is ready.  Training in a quiet room free of distractions will increase your success rate.  Make sure the room is well lit and your parrot likes that room.  You need to be stress free when training your parrot.  Patience is a virtue and will affect the way the parrot learns.

Stepping Up

Most parrot caretakers begin with teaching their parrot how to step up onto an object that is placed in front of them.  This is extremely useful and will be used often and throughout the parrot’s lifetime. This maneuver can simply be done by placing your finger in front of the parrot’s feet and asking them in a calm, soothing voice to “step up” (use a forearm for larger birds).  You could use a piece of food to entice the parrot to step onto it.  When the act is completed, food is given to your parrot as a reward.

Dancing

It’s fun to watch your parrot “turn around”.  To teach this, as the parrot is standing on its perch, offer it a piece of food.  When it reaches for the food, move your hand slowly to its backside so the bird has to turn its head around to see the food.  You may have to coax your parrot to do the full turn while other parrots may immediately turn themselves around on the perch.  After the parrot has completed a full turn, reward him with the food.

Talking

If your parrot screeches too much, teach it to speak instead. It’s only after attention, and once it realizes that human speech gets lots more attention than screeching, he will gladly speak instead of screech. Start the teaching process with only one simple word that contains only one or two syllables.  Most people start with the word “hello”.  You repeat the word slowly to the parrot several times until the parrot makes the same sound in response.  Once the parrot responds correctly, give it a food reward.  The first sound it makes may not be the word that the owners are trying to teach, but the idea is to get the parrot to respond to your human voice.  Repeat this drill several times until the parrot begins to mimic the word.