How to befriend a skittish budgie? (kind of long)

Factual Questions
1

We got Oliver from a good pet store in San Francisco several months ago; he still looked pretty young. Ever since then I’ve been trying to work with him to make him feel at home and tame him. I have had budgies before and usually managed to have them finger tame, unafraid and feeling friendly within a month or less by using the gradual introduction method: getting them used to my hands and then getting them to perch on my finger, taking them out and letting them try to fly away before gravity and their clipped wing feathers brought them to the floor, then getting them back onto my finger or a perch. This, along with talking a blue streak to them and lots of millet treat bribery, worked really well with the other two parakeets and two cockateils I tamed.

Oliver, on the other hand, is still very leery of my hands at the best of times. If I go up close to his cage and talk to him he looks very nervous and gets on the highest perch in the cage and often turns his back on me. He’ll only take millet sprays from me once in a while and won’t get on
my finger or a perch I offer him without a whole lot of fuss and flapping around the cage like hke thinks I’m going to geek him or something.

And he won’t hardly ever come out of his cage unless I practically chase him out. Once he’s out it takes a whole lot of coaxing on my part to get him to perch on my finger or a perch, and this always involves him taking off and trying his best to fly away and going all over the apartment so I have to go after him and coax him onto the finger or stick. All the while, I’m speaking to him very softly and gently and patiently. He’ll sit on the perch I’ve offered him but usually he’s fairly obviously looking for an opportunity to bolt (NB: his wings ARE clipped of course, so he can’t really take to the air very well, but he can put the whole of our apartment between us very quick) .

I’ve tried taking him into another room. While sometimes a change of scenery appears to calm him down for a while it doesn’t always. I’ve also tried covering up his cage so he wouldn 't just fly back to it, but he still doesn’t want to hang around me or my partner. Bribes and sweet talk and ignoring him for a little bit don’t work; at the first possible moment he will try to high tail it.

And he’s frustratingly unpredictable --sometimes he will stay with me for a while and seemingly enjoy having me talk to him (doing that listen-close thing with his little head tilted so he’s looking at me with one eye very closely). Occasionally he even lets me nuzzle him with my nose and face; he seems to enjoy this at times, to the extent of bowing his little head so I can nose at his neck, but at others he tries to dodge and acts scared or annoyed, and never lets me stroke or scratch him with a finger.

What really maddens me is that twice (I remember these times very well because they were so uncommon and made me think we might be having a breakthrough) he’s actually reached out and given my nose a friendly-seeming little peck or poke with his beak. In between those times however he has remained heartbreakingly skittish acting and cage-stuck. I leave the door to his cage open a lot in the hopes that he’ll at least check out the outside world on his own but he doesn’t venture out on his own except under duress.

I’ve even, out of sheer desperation, tried the “drastic approach” a few times and held him cupped in my hands for a while, talking gently to him and letting him bite the heck out of me until he gets it that I’m not going to do anything awful to him; this hasn’t done our relationship any good
at all. The only times I’ve had any occasion to be coercive with him at all were one time trimming his wings.

What can I do? I really want to make friends with Oliver, and I’m sure he’s smart enough to have figured out that I won’t hurt him by now. But he acts like I am the scariest, awfullest thing in the world or at best a major annoyance in his life, and sometimes it makes me real sad.

One last thing: he seems pretty happy in his cage most of the time, for whatever that’s worth: always chattering away in the morning after he has his breakfast and singing along to the radio or CD player a lot of the time. He has toys – a ball, and a bell with beads hanging from it – but he never seems to play with them.

So does anyone have any suggestions or advice or bird-befriending spells to give me?

2

FTR, a budgie is a small adorable and colorful bird.

(I had to look it up to be sure myself)

3

Budgies are parrakeets (but not all parrakeets are budgies).

OP, you might like to read this thread, where I found myself in a very similar situation to you.

Basically…
-Don’t give up
-See if you can get the bird interested in a specific toy, then use this toy as a bribe to come near to/sit on you.

I’m of the opinion that mirrors make them antisocial (with everything except the mirror) - so if you have a mirror in the cage, I’d consider removing it.

4

Also, take naps in front of him. It made my wild-caught conure feel confident. Writing research papers seemed to help, too. It was a quiet activity that had my attention away from the bird long enough for him to get curious. Have you tried singing to him?

5

Although you say he came from a very good pet store it is still possible that he was traumatized by some event before you got him. Particularly, the reluctance to leave his cage makes me think that. Sounds like the little guy is hiding. I’ve seen that behavior in pet birds that managed to escape a house, spend some time being chased, nearly eaten, rained on, etc., who were then re-captured and decided cages were real nice places to stay safe from the horrible outside world where things try to eat you.

I would suggest doing things next to his cage. Reading, homework, watching TV, whatever. Move his cage to be with you if you have to. He needs to get very comfortable with your rather large presence near him.

I’d also say attempt to finger-tame him everyday at roughly the same time for, say, a half an hour to 45 minutes. It’s possible that he will never be as finger-tame as some of your other birds, but if you are persistent I’m sure you will make progress in winning him over.

6

I agree - it is important to spend a lot of time with the bird, even if you’re not actively trying to tame him - just sitting next to the cage, reading a book, will get him accustomed to the idea that you’re not a threat.

7

I can be absolutely no help here (other than to offer the trivial fact that “budgie” is a shortening of the bird’s ‘proper’ common name, budgerigar).

But I had to pop into the thread to say that every time I see the thread title on the forum menu, I at first read it as “How to befriend a scottish Judge?” :o

8

Which is apparently derived from an Australian Aborigine term meaning ‘good to eat’.

9

Although in general, parrots are very social. It is possible you may just have a not-so-social (not necessarily “anti”) budgie. My mom had several budgies, and most, once they realized we (humans) would not harm them, would really become friendly and even tried to see how much they could get away with.

But my mom was given this one (I think an escapee that was rescued by a friend), and he never warmed up to her or anybody else. Like your bird, he always seemed very happy and animate in his cage. But would be very anxious and jittery whenever you held him or had him on your shoulder. He would jump back on his cage, and race inside at the first opportunity. I know my mom tried to make him more comfortable and friendly. And I would give him attention whenever I would come over. But eventually we just concluded that he prefers to just hang out by himself. He may have been traumatized by humans before, and has never really gotten over it (not unreasonable - think of how many humans are traumatized that never get over it !).

So the point is that there are exceptions. I would continue to keep working with him. It may take years. I think their social/flock tendencies will finally get the better of him and he’ll start to bond to you. But it may take a while. So long as he’s happy (healthy, eating well, etc.), that may be good enough for the time being.

10

Sorry to hijack with a second semi-joke post, but the quoted post definitely wins the January Best Match between Username and Post Content Award. :wink:

11

I definitely endorse doing normal, calm activities within Oliver’s sight. No violent stuff like swinging your arms or yelling (knock off the Wii!), just routine stuff like reading, watching TV, paying bills, peeling potatoes. You want him to see you as nonthreatening.

If you can actually step him up and talk to him, great, go with that, but as long as he’s not yet fully bonded, also keep doing the stuff where he sees you as nonthreatening. You want to be in his sight a lot of the time, so he’ll pine to be with you.

I strongly advise against any shock therapy. We were advised to hold our first budgie close to our hearts in a darkened room to calm her down – she hated us ever after. Eventually she grew to love our friends when she was boarded at their house, so she didn’t hate people per se…just us.

How many months has it been? It might simply be too soon, this can be a lengthy process. When we adopted a cockatiel who had been flying around loose outside, it was about 4 or 5 months before he permitted me to preen his head. We were using our noses because he was hand-shy like your Oliver; I eventually tricked him a little bit, but it would not have worked if he hadn’t had time to come to terms with us. What I did was, while petting him with my nose, ever-so-gradually inch my index finger up the side of my face until it was alongside my nose, then, scritch him very gently with it, and then, when his eyes were closed, verrry slowly withdraw my nose and leave the finger scritching him. It’s importatnt to emphasize that I did this as slowly as I could stand; the idea is to make movement imperceptible. He opened one eye, saw it, froze for a split second, but then seemed to conclude “This feels good!” and after that he was pettable.

But time first. Time is your ally – he is born with a flocking instinct and he wants to be social with someone. He will pick you if you are patient and gentle enough.

Good luck and keep us updated!

Sailboat

12

It took me a long time to tame my budgie (named Olive, coincidentally), even though I’m mainly house-bound and spent all day next to her cage, interacting with her frequently. I got her when she was about 5 weeks old, and it wasn’t until she was about 8 months old that she really warmed up to me and voluntarily started hanging out with me and being affectionate.

The turning point was actually when I took her to the vet and she flew across the room during her examination and landed on my head. It probably wasn’t quite as clear-cut as I remember (she’s five years old now), but as I recall, that was when she began to trust me completely and view me as a source of comfort, I suppose, instead of someone to get away from. (Maybe it just put things in perspective for her; once she met someone she really really *really *wanted to get away from, I didn’t seem so bad in comparison :slight_smile: )

As others have said, sometimes it just takes a lot of time. And a lot of patience. As **cormac262 **said, it might also have something to do with the bird’s personality; Olive is a very assertive, independent, stubborn bird. I mainly just tried to be as gentle with her as possible and to move slowly and quietly around her. You also need to be flexible in your expectations - Olive doesn’t really like to be touched, for instance, so I’ve never been able to pet her.

I’ve heard that it is a sign of trust for a budgie to close its eyes in front of you, and that it helps to close your eyes in front of the bird as well to signal your trust in them, but I have no idea if that actually works. I’ve also read that you need to make sure to blink frequently when you look the bird in the eye; supposedly, being stared at freaks them out a bit, as that’s something a predator would do. Again, I don’t know if that’s really true.

One last thing - I’m a stubborn bird too, and in the beginning, I would often push taming sessions past the point where I (inwardly) lost patience, but I think that was a mistake. As soon as you begin to feel frustrated with the bird, you should back off for a while. They seem to pick up on things like that. (Not that I think you’re doing this, but it’s something I had to constantly remind myself of, so I thought I’d throw it out there.)

Good luck, and here’s hoping your little guy warms up to you soon.

13

I just realized that I admitted ignorance about eye contact with birds and didn’t even think of looking it up (on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, no less! :smack: ). Sorry. A quick search results in some confirmations of the ‘don’t stare without blinking because that’s predator behavior’ theory, but I didn’t see any sites that I would consider authoritative and can’t do extensive searching tonight. I’ll try to find some tomorrow.

14

I tried everything with my parrotlet, but only succeeded after I threw in the towel.

I was distracted a lot during the holidays and so left his wings unclipped for too long, so he took to flying around my apartment. Having worked for years in pet stores and knowing how not good an idea this is, in general, I nonetheless decided to totally bird proof my apartment. It’s tiny, and I have no ceiling fans, I keep the bathroom door closed, and the turtle tank well covered. I moved the fridge out from the wall so if he happens to fall back there there’s plenty of room for him to get out. Etc.

Anyway, starting just this last week, he’s been flying into my room in the mornings to sit on my Ikea wire-drawer rack and stare at me. After a couple of days he started flying to my bed, standing on my midsection and watching me. Another couple of days, he was perched right on the edge of my comforter, inches from my face. The last couple days, he’s been grooming my mustache and eyebrows–sometimes eliciting a barked “ouch!” from me, but that seems to be working: it doesn’t scare him off, and he’s biting less.

So, he’s not finger-friendly yet, but I think he’s making his own way there.

15

Thanks very much for the tips and advice, everyone; keep 'em coming if you’ve got more. I didn’t know about the eye contact thing (although I had read that a straight-on stare might intimidate the little guy by reminding him of a predator, so I’d been trying to turn my head sometimes and look at him one-sided, like he himself does). So, I reckon I’ll start winking at him and maybe even batting my eyelids in a flirtacious manner now and then. I’ve decided to definitely ramp down the tactics of intensity and intrusiveness and let him set the pace for our interactions more than I have been.

WRT “budgeregar” meaning “good eating bird” or something very similar in the Australian Aborigine language: yes, I’d read that in a few places, but it certainly isn’t something I’d bring up in conversation with Oliver or any of his kinfolks!

16

My wild conure warmed up when I played blinking eyes games. He really dug the whole coy-sideways-glance thing, and seemed to admire brief flashes of Super Wide Crazy Eyes, and would dilate his pupils back at me. Eventually, he became a good companion who hardly ever tried to stuff dead spiders or pizza crusts in my ear.

17

He’s not gonna commit til you get rid of them damn bugs.

18

This works for me too (I mean that my budgie likes to interact with my face, not that I am susceptible to nose-preening), but it’s not without risks - some birds will accept a bit of preening this way, then suddenly nip - and it hurts when it’s right on your nose.