Training Byron

Great job!

Byron is still doing well with his target training. He will now follow the stick and I can direct him up my arm and around his play stand, which is great. We have had a break from harness training, as suggested, but I have left it hanging around where he can see it. Yesterday, I laid it out on the table again and we both had a sunflower feast from it (with me pretending, of course, so that Byron would join in!) He did very well, and in the evening he snuck up to it to have a little explore (he moved the leash and made himself jump, which was incredibly funny. Two minutes later, he was back and a bit bolder but didn't play with it for long). I am thinking possibly of getting a harness in a different colour, but this one was quite expensive so I'm going to persevere with this first!
He's been outside twice now with me and David and Cleo just in his little travel house. He was quite overwhelmed on the first trip, but on the second venture, a cat wondered past. I drew a breath to hiss at it, but Byron launched himself at it, screaming, and saw it off. So no need! We didn't do training today, as he's got a lot of new toys and some new dried fruit foods (bought from a bird store, so all safe!) as I didn't want him to be too overwhelmed, but we'll resume tomorrow

Thought I'd give a brief update! We've taken a step back on the harness training and started again. If I lay the harness on the table, he will now happily scoff sunflower seeds from in the middle of it, and will edge along the table to collect some treats from my hand if I hold it up. He is almost completely target trained and will go after the target even if he doesn't get the treat afterwards. Today I started to teach him the 'turn around' trick using the target stick to encourage him to turn on his perch. It took me all of ten minutes to get him to do it, and then he repeated it five times in a row! He seems to really enjoy the one-on-one time and the heaps of praise when he does something right. I'm sure I'll have him taking to the harness in no time

Another quick update! We graduated onto Byron retrieving treats by putting his beak a little way through the collar of the harness. He still won't let me put it over his head, but I think we'll persevere with this for a bit until he is confidently doing this. He is going for the target stick without fail and doing the 'turn-around' trick in both directions now! And today he made a hilarious attempt to copy my laugh, which made me laugh, which prompted him to laugh more, which made me laugh even harder! What a pair we are!

Hey, well done! Hope your boyfriend is not feeling TOO neglected.

Further update: Byron is happily following his target stick around, doing the turn around trick both ways and he is putting his beak tentatively through the collar of the harness to retrieve his treat. I really don't want to move onto putting the collar on him yet. When we got to this stage before, I would gently cup my hand behind him to make sure I didn't knock him off his perch. I did this yesterday to see if he remembered what to do but he leaned back on his perch as if he knew what was coming and really didn't want to. Obviously I stopped immediately and went back to treats through the collar. I'm now wondering if it would be best to train HIM to put HIS head through the collar by himself but have no idea how to go about doing this. I've watched loads of training videos but they are all of bigger birds, whereas Byron is little. The only video I saw of harness training on a smaller bird was the most terrible technique ever and there's no way I'm putting Byron through that trauma! Any thoughts as to how I can persuade him to put his head through the harness?