Macaws:
Red Shouldered (Hahn's) Macaw
Severe Macaw
Blue And Gold Macaw
Blue Throated Macaw
Military Macaw
Red Fronted Macaw
Scarlet Macaw
Green Winged Macaw
Hyacinth Macaw
How to teach a parrot or parakeet to crawl through a tube or jump through a ring? This article should explain to you just how to teach parrots to go through different objects upon sight of them.
The tube trick is one of the easiest tricks to teach to parrots and parakeets but the biggest challenge is to avoid scaring the parrot or making it claustrophobic. A solid background in targeting is virtually mandatory, but already knowing some other tricks is advisable. The parrot should be tame and accustomed to handling prior to teaching this trick. If your parrot isn't comfortable with hands or does not know how to target, you can refer to a different article about taming and basic training.
The first thing to do is source a tube suitable to the size of your parrot. The smallest parakeets (namely Budgerigars), can go through a toilet paper tube. For small parrots such as a Senegal Parrot, Cockatiel, or Conure, you can use a piece of 3"-4" PVC pipe. You can also be creative and scout out other tube ideas such as carpet rolls and poster tubes. For the larger parrots, you're on your own. I used a 6" PVC coupling to avoid having to buy the entire pipe (which can be quite costly at that size). For even larger parrots you will have to get creative and keep your eyes open for suitable tubes. When they get that big you may even consider making your own by rolling cardboard or some other material.
It is not a bad idea to start with a shorter tube so that the parrot can have confidence that it can make it out on the far end. If you are using a toilet paper tube, you can cut it into a shorter piece and then go back to a longer one later. For some of the other options you may be stuck with what you got, but try not to make it terribly long or you won't be able to train effectively. You should be able to insert the target stick from the one end and have it emerge at the other side. If you can, tape down the tube during the course of training or have another person hold it for you to free up both hands for training. You will see in my video that I managed all by myself while holding the tube but it is definitely easier if you don't have to worry about holding the tube.
I recommend teaching this trick on a small table or an enclosed distraction-free area on the floor. I do not suggest teaching tricks to parrots on furniture or the kitchen table because that may encourage them to land where you may otherwise not want them. Try to have a place dedicated for training that you don't worry about having ruined. So besides the tube, all you need is a target stick and a clicker. I know that clickers are hard to come by, so I am now selling Parrot Training Clickers on my ParrotWizard online store for everyone who's been asking about where to get one.
Now we are ready to get to the training part. It is important to get the parrot comfortable around the tube and not let it get scared. So don't immediately shove your parrot into the tube but instead let it play or target in the tube's presence. Once the parrot is comfortable around the tube, you can begin targeting the parrot toward the tube. At first it doesn't matter that much where as long as the parrot is being rewarded for coming closer to the tube. Always click and reward when the parrot touches the tip of the target stick.
As the targeting progresses, aim the parrot closer and closer to the opening of the tube as you continue targeting. Then start targeting through the tube. Insert the target stick at the end of the tube away from the parrot so that the target stick comes out the other end right by the bird. Let the parrot touch the stick outside the tube but close to the entrance and then reward with your other hand. Now begin holding the target stick deeper and deeper into the tube so that your parrot has to progressively stick its head in further into the tube. After it has done so, it can back out to receive it's treat.
Once you get to the halfway point where the parrot is willing to go halfway into the tube to touch the stick, you can pull the stick out and show the parrot the reward on the other side. So rather than backing out it has to finish its way through the tube to get the treat. After this point you should be able to lead the parrot through the tube by moving the target stick just ahead of the parrot without letting it touch. Just pull the stick through letting the parrot follow. Once the parrot emerges from the tube, you can reward without letting it touch the target stick. After this, you can check if placing your parrot at the entrance of the tube is enough for it to go through on its own. You may need to remind it to go through by showing the target stick or treat at the far end. Never reward the parrot for going around the tube though. It must only receive treats after going through.
Continue practicing these steps until the parrot makes the connection that going through the tube earns it the treat. It's just a matter of repetition until it happens. Truman made this bridge on the third training session. After targeting him through, I was preparing another treat. Without targeting, Truman decided to go through the tube again on his own. After rewarding this, I knew this was the final stage of teaching the trick. It only takes a few times rewarding the parrot for going through the tube on its own for it to realize that is what it has to do. However, the early targeting parts must not be rushed because if the parrot becomes scared of the tube, it will refuse to go through all together.
At first, reward the parrot for going through the tube whenever it goes through. You have to be ready with multiple treats and clicker in hand because it may decide to go through unexpectedly. You want going through tube to be a super rewarding experience. However, just going through the tube whenever it feels like it does not make it a trick. The last step is putting the trick on a cue. For the most part, just the sight of the tube is a sufficient cue. I like to supplement all visual cues with a verbal cue to use for encouragement so I also say "go through tube." To teach the parrot to go through the tube immediately, take the tube away and then present it. Have the tube in one hand and clicker/treat ready in the other. Place the tube down with the entrance facing your parrot and wait for it to go through. At first you can wait longer, but eventually you should not reward long waits. If the parrot doesn't go through within a reasonable span of time, take the tube away and try again. Give big rewards (and don't make it go through again for a while) when it goes through as soon as you put the tube down. Take the tube away after you reward for going through so that it does not go through again until you cue by putting tube down. If the parrot is not going through when you put the tube down, go back to practicing the previous methods or wait for a more motivated training session.
Keep practicing the trick for some time and make it more challenging. Put the tube down further from the parrot so that it has to come further to get to go into it. Also, begin angling the tube more and more away from the parrot so that it has to come around to search for the entrance. Don't start immediately with the tube entrance turned away or the parrot might not realize what is going on, but if it is at a slight angle, it will realize it has to come around to it. Make sure the parrot is used to going into the tube from either end and regardless of which way the tube is oriented. If you get into too much of a rhythm (like always going left to right), then the parrot may be learning a specific motion rather than the general trick. You'll know the parrot really knows the go through tube trick when you can place the tube in front of your parrot on any surface and pointed any direction and the parrot walks over, goes through the tube, and comes out the other end.
A common question I am asked by parrot owners is how I get my parrots to eat new foods. I'm not going to lie, my parrots don't have the best diet out there, but they do get a fair mix of pellets and fresh foods. It used to be much harder to get them to try new foods so I can understand the frustration parrot owners feel when their parrot refuses to try anything.
There are three main factors affecting if the parrot will eat a new food:
1) Hunger 2) Taste of the food 3) Motivation/interest
We can control all three of these variables and the likelihood of success is best when all are managed. While it is true that if you starve the parrot long enough, it will eat practically anything, there are many reasons we do not want to do this. Instead, we just want to focus on offering new foods when the parrot is hungriest. This generally tends to be in the morning and evening prior to meals. Similar to the food management practices I recommend for training, withholding food for a few hours prior to offering new foods increases the chances of the parrot eating them. As they say, everything tastes better when you are hungry. Which brings us to taste.
There will be foods that the parrot will not eat no matter what. It just doesn't like them and you have to accept that. However, there are other foods that it may desire a preference for that it is just being too stubborn to try. These are the foods we can try to get them to eat through hunger and motivation. If you know that there is a particular food that your parrot never likes, your chances of getting it to eat something similar are slim. For example, Kili doesn't like mushy foods no matter how sweet they are. She hates blueberries, raspberries, watermelon, etc. You would think most parrots should like these but she just doesn't. For this reason when I want her to try a new food I try to make sure its more similar to other foods she likes. She likes hard/crunchy foods so I knew that I had a better chance of getting her to eat pineapple on camera than some new kind of berry.
This brings us to motivation. This is where most people go wrong when introducing foods and then are disappointed the parrot won't eat them. Think about children refusing to eat what their parents try to force them to eat and then being insatiable when it is something their friends are consuming. Whenever I am eating something, the parrots are always flying over to check it out and watch anxiously. On the other hand if I just slop something in their cage bowls, they couldn't care less. In fact, if I put an unfamiliar food in their food bowls, the most likely thing is that they chuck it out piece by piece. Forcing the parrot by stuffing the food in its beak is pretty much the worst thing you can do because then it will not trust that foods you offer are enjoyable. No. The way to motivate parrots to eat new foods is to make as much excitement and anticipation about the new food as possible.
A very easy way to make a parrot want to try a new food is to let its "friends" try it too, meaning if you have other parrots that will eat the food, the new parrot will want to try it too. I wrote previously about how Truman refused to eat veggies until I had him watch Kili eat them. Of course that article didn't help if you only have one parrot or a new food that none of your parrots has yet tried. This is why I am writing this article to get you started.
I truly appreciate the power of modeling new foods when I got Kili and Truman to try Mango for the first time. The two parrots were spending outdoor time in the aviary when I had some mango slices to offer them. They were becoming accustomed to a midday fruit snack time so they waited eagerly to get their day's share. I had a lot of Mango so I wanted to eat off some of the pieces before giving the birds some. The two parrots watched eagerly as I ate it. Truman was just boiling with jealousy that he wasn't getting any. In fact he flew over to me in hopes of getting some. I stood there relishing the mango until it was nearly finished. I broke the remaining pieces into smaller bits and offered them to the parrots one at a time. However, I did not just give them mango outright but made them do tricks for it. This wasn't just an ordinary "here you go" kind of food, this was a super treat that they had to earn. They didn't know what it was but if they had to go through so much to get it, they knew it must be good. They eagerly performed their tricks and loved the mango off the first taste. During previous occasions when I offered equally tasty food to them in their cages, it would get tossed out uneaten. This is why turning the new food into a treat rather than a chore is so important.
This is just another reason why trick training is so important to parrot ownership. The parrot learns that the food it receives for performing a trick is always a good thing so when you offer the new food in reward for a trick, the parrot is more likely to try it. However, this only gets the parrot to put the food in its beak. How much it enjoys the food and is likely to eat it again depends on the taste and how excited it is about the food. Even if the taste isn't the best, if the entire experience is highly pleasant, a positive association will still be established. It can develop an acquired taste for the food in response to the positive stimuli coexistent with the food. This is why those first experiences are so critical.
The first piece offered should be quite small. A large piece is more likely to be dropped and less likely to be tasted and swallowed. Start with very small pieces so that the parrot has a better chance of feeling the taste. Then if you see it eating the small pieces can you go onto bigger ones. You see the parrot isn't likely to hold the food with its foot unless it likes it. And it doesn't know that it likes it until it has tried a few pieces. Once you see the parrot use its foot to hold or at least support the food, you will know that it approves of it. If you see eyes pinning or other signs of excitement, then you'll know the parrot absolutely loves the food.
Once you have developed this first level of food acceptance, it is your choice whether to continue offering it only as treats or as cage food. If the food is healthy in large quantities, then it is alright to offer it in the cage. However, if the food can be considered empty calories or junk food, then save it strictly as a treat.
Just remember that even though a food might seem really tasty to you (and even other people's parrots), it doesn't mean that your parrot will eat it. Most of the time the experience around eating the food plays a large role in it but sometimes your parrot will not eat it no matter what. Do your best to get your parrot to try stuff but if it just isn't working you have to accept that. Just because a parrot won't try something this time or even a bunch more times doesn't mean that it will never eat that food. I had tried to feed banana and grapes to Kili many many times and she always refused. Then I skipped offering it to her to avoid wasting time. Then at some point I tried again and they became some of her favorite fruits. So even though you may fail with a particular food in the short term, it still pays to try every once in a while in case your parrot changes its mind.
In the video, you will see me offering pineapple to Kili and Truman for the first time. They had never seen or eaten it before. I picked pineapple because it is less mushy than other things I could think of that they hadn't tried. At first I just ate the pineapple in front of them to build up the anticipation. I peaked their interest by not giving it to them even when they made it clear that they wanted it. Finally I gave in but only gave it to them in response to tricks. Truman liked it off the bat but Kili was being picky. She was dropping the pieces at first. But after watching Truman enjoy it a lot, she began to chew/swallow as well. I did this new food introduction during training time but just before starting any training so the birds were at their hungriest. So without further ado, here are Kili & Truman eating pineapple for the first time.
Kili and Truman were thrilled to find their stockings filled with goodies on Christmas morning. After coming out of their cages, they checked out all the wonderful things Santa Claus left for them on their climbing tree. Truman was as (if not more) impressed with the stocking itself as he was with the contents of it. Kili, having had a similar Christmas surprise last year, was less shocked.
While Truman focused on toys, Kili munched away at the almond she got. Truman loved the foot toys he was pulling out of his stocking and almost missed the Brazilian Nut waiting inside for him. He worked at it and finally cracked it open. Kili jumped down to the table and approached stealthily. She snuck up and cautiously grabbed small leftovers of Truman's nut from the table below. Truman didn't mind sharing the little bits with Kili and she benefited from mutual cooperation. In the spirit of Christmas, the two birds did not fight at all and played nice.
This article is about how to teach your parrot to show its wings on command, often called the big eagle trick. I simply call it Wings. The trick involves showing the parrot a cue or saying "Wings" and then the parrot opens up its wings and holds them high for everyone to observe how beautiful they are. Wings is a more intermediate trick and requires the parrot to be good at trick training. Ideally the parrot should already know some tricks like wave and shake. It is possible to teach Wings without any prior tricks but it would be much harder for the parrot to realize you are trying to shape a behavior. So far Wings was the hardest trick to teach to Truman.
Before beginning, it is very important that your parrot is already hand tame and is comfortable with you touching/opening its wings. For information about basic taming for parrots, refer to my Taming Guide. For information about taming a parrot to let you open its wings, refer to this article about Wing Taming. Even if your parrot knows other tricks, this one if very hands on so the special hand taming should not be overlooked. If the parrot is not already very comfortable with hands, the steps required in teaching this trick could make it become scared of hands. So please review the steps in the taming guides and make sure your parrot is very comfortable being touched and having its wings pulled open.
You will need to have a convenient place for your parrot to perch while teaching this trick because when you press on the wings, if the parrot doesn't have a good grip it may fall over. A table is no good for teaching this trick because your parrot will slide back when you press on the wings during training. The best tool for teaching the Wings trick is a Parrot Training Perch because you can adjust the height to train standing up or sitting down while your parrot perches comfortably. If you cannot get a Parrot Training Perch, your next best thing is to use a table top perch, however there is a chance of it tipping back or sliding as well. Using a chair back is also a possibility but it is likely too slippery and the same sliding issue would occur. Although it may be tempting to train on your parrot's cage, playtop, or cage door, it is best not to do this because it will get distracted and not learn as well.
Now we are ready to begin Wings training. The process is remarkably simple, however, extensive repetition is likely to be required for the parrot to catch on. I know three methods that the trick can be taught but I have only had success with one of them. I will briefly mention the other two but then I will focus on the one that worked best for my parrots. One way to teach wings is to capture the behavior by clicking whenever your parrot opens its wings on its own. This can be expedited by holding the feet and quickly dropping your hand so that the parrot puts its wings out reflexively. Click and reward whenever the wings come open and start putting it on cue. This works great for parrots that put their wings out to glide but does not work at all for parrots the tend to flap. My parrots flap when dropped and never just stick their wings out entirely when stretching so it couldn't work for me.
Another method that can be used for teaching Wings is to grab both wings and pull them open entirely, hold them there, click and reward. Once again this method did not work for me because it required too big of a jump from nothing to everything and it was making my parrots uncomfortable. So instead I offer to you the third and final method to teach your parrot Wings:
My method for teaching a parrot to open its wings begins by using the index fingers on both hands. Point them toward your parrots wing armpits, say wings (or whatever cue you would like to use), and press your fingers into the armpits gently pushing the wings open. Although the parrot will not understand the cue immediately, it is a good idea to start using the cue from the start because this gives the parrot more exposure to the cue by the time it learns the behavior. For the first training session, just keep practicing this procedure.
You may find progress to be slow at first because not only does the parrot have to learn the behavior, it may also need the daily exercise of practicing the trick in order to be able to easily hold its wings out that way. The first goal you are working toward is getting the parrot to release tension in the wings and let you push them open. If you feel that you have to press hard to get them open, the parrot hasn't learned anything. However, when it begins feeling easy because your parrot relaxes its wing muscles, then you know you are ready to continue to the next step.
In subsequent training sessions, it is important to let the parrot do as much on its own as it is willing to do. You cannot find out how much the parrot is willing to do if you keep doing it for the parrot. So after pushing the wings open with your fingers a few times, push slightly slower, less far, or don't hold as firmly the wings open. See if the parrot will make up the last bit on its own. A good time to click your clicker is at the moment you see the parrot making any motion to open or hold open its wings on its own. For instance if you get the parrot in the habit of you pressing open the wings for 5 seconds each time and one time you only hold for 3, if the parrot continues holding open a bit longer, then you know it is learning what to do.
Don't expect your parrot to open the wings entirely at this stage. Just opening them a little is progress already. Your first goal is to get the parrot to learn that you want it to do something with its wings. Getting the parrot to go all the way and open the primaries will just take lots of practice. Be sure to click and reward every bit of possible progress. However, if your parrot does a worse than usual job (for instance closing its wings while you try to hold them open), then do not reward and even ignore the parrot for a brief time.
Eventually you will reach a point where just touching or approaching your parrot's wings with your fingers will cue it to open them on its own. This is when the real cue training begins. At this stage I prefer to use a single hand (if the bird is small enough) to cue the wings open. I use the pinky and thumb of my right hand to press on opposite wings. This frees my left hand up to hold the clicker and treat. It is good to make this switch as early as possible because the parrot might get distracted by the clicker/treat hidden in your fingers when you use the two hand method. I found that Truman was bending his head down while opening wings to look for treats in my fingers, so I corrected this by blocking his head and serving him treats from above. If you want the wings trick to look like a bow, feed the treats lower but if you want the trick to make the parrot look proud, then teach it to hold its head up by feeding treats from above.
Once you've transitioned to the single hand cue method, all that is left is receding the cue. You have to work on using as little touch as possible. Just practice a lot of times and try to hold your hand further and further away when you issue the cue. If it works, try holding further away. If it doesn't then try again closer. Try pulling away a tiny bit while the bird is holding the wings up but before it drops the wings. Get it used to seeing your hand more away from it while still holding its wings up.
It only took me 3 training sessions to get Truman through all of the steps outlined so far but then it took nearly two weeks until he learned to respond to the trick from a remote cue. If I brought my fingers in close he'd do it but from more than a few inches away he simply wouldn't. It just took a lot of practice until he just got it. I knew he was going to get it when he randomly opened his wings for the first time without me cuing/poking him. This showed me that he knew I wanted him to open his wings and he was opening them to beg for a treat. Now all I had to do was reward when he did it on cue and ignore it when it wasn't cued. In that one breakthrough session I went from him opening his wings only when cued within an inch of his wings to opening his wings on cue from several feet away or even just saying it. The duration will vary with every individual parrot and species but this is not a quick/easy trick to teach. It definitely took longer to teach to both of my parrots than most of the other hand cued tricks.
This is a good trick for teaching the "hold" on. You teach the parrot to hold the pose for as long as you hold the cue or until you click. If the parrot drops its wings while you are still holding the cue, then it does not get rewarded, but if it holds out till the end, you click and reward. Obviously start with shorter durations but work them longer and longer so that the parrot learns to hold the wings out for as long as the cue is going.
After two weeks of training, Truman is still only opening his wings part way. It will take a lot more training to get him to open them all the way like Kili does. However, this was the exact method I successfully used on her. I just kept cuing wings and rewarding the best 4 out of 5. When the parrot is really eager to get the treat, it will show of by stretching the wings open as much as possible and as long as it is just a tad more than last time, you're making progress. By always rewarding the better ones and ignoring the worst, you can continually encourage the parrot to try harder. This takes a long time (weeks to months) to perfect but rigorous training is no longer needed beyond this initial training to put it on cue. Once the parrot clearly knows to do wings from the cue, you can just practice wings a few times each day perpetually and the bird will improve how it opens its wings over time. The stretching/exercise will certainly help get there. It took many months but definitely less than a year to get Kili to open her wings all the way.
The wings trick is really impressive and beautiful. It shows off the parrot's wings which is a unique feature that makes it a bird. You can use the wings trick to show your friends what bird wings look like up close without forcing your parrot. The wings trick is also a good way to inspect your parrot's wings for broken feather or new ones coming in. Although it may look fairly simple, it's not a natural behavior for most parrots so much training is needed. The hard work and patience teaching this trick will be greatly rewarded because this is a spectacular and uniquely avian trick.
Here is a video from actual training sessions that shows how I taught Truman the Cape Parrot the Wings trick:
Kili and Truman love Christmas. They enjoy all the activity, decorations, attention, and treats. I had to help put up the Christmas tree over at my parent's house so I brought the parrot duo along with me. In the beginning they just watched from their carriers but eventually I started letting them out and closer.
I brought a Parrot Training Perch along to give the birds a familiar place to fly to. They watched as my brother and I erected the artificial tree and sneezed endlessly from a year's worth of dust. I took Kili out first and showed her the beginnings of a tree coming together. Then I let her perch on her training stand at a distance to watch.
Although a bit cautious, Kili was not scared of the new environment and activity. She was most happy sitting on the sidelines watching rather than being directly involved. On occasion Kili would fly back to me to be more involved or I would recall her over to help out. There was no trouble getting her to come as she was eager to see what was going on. Kili rode my shoulder while my brother and I strung out the colored lights onto the xmas tree.
Truman watched from his travel cage, so none of it was a big surprise to him when I took him out and let him join us. One time he slipped off my shoulder and flew through several rooms and landed on the chair in the kitchen. I was happy to know he could find a safe landing place. Another time he flew off, went to another room, circled around, and came right back to me. He's a good flier and can think well on the fly. He did not knock anything over, poop anywhere, or do anything someone would fear a bird doing as a visitor in their home. Whenever the birds needed to poop, they went back to the training perch I had set up for them (with a newspaper below).
While we put up fragile decorations, I put the birds back into their carriers for a break. After clean up, when the tree was finished, I took the parrots out one more time to see the transformation that had happened. They looked on in astonishment and just dreamed of how incredibly awesome it would be to chew every bit of it all into tiny shreds. I did a few more flight recalls with the birds and they had no fear of flying around the Christmas tree. They didn't fly into anything or cause any trouble.
This is just one of many such social outings I take my parrots on. I want them to be exposed to as many different environments and situations possible while they are still young. Since they are flighted, every time they get to fly some place different, it builds their flight skills and makes the chances of recovering them if they get out better with every time.
While the parrots were out, I took several precautions for their safety. I locked the doors and made sure there was no cooking going on in the kitchen. I put their carriers out in a place where they can see everything but also such that they could fly back to them while out. I brought a familiar Parrot Training Perch from home not only to provide a comfortable perching location but also a safe spot to fly back to if spooked. The birds got used to a new situation, had fun, and lightened my day through all the labors of holiday preparations. What are your parrots doing for the holidays? Leave a comment.
Trained Parrot is a blog about how to train tricks to all parrots and parakeets. Read about how I teach tricks to Truman the Brown Necked Cape Parrot including flight recall, shake, wave, nod, turn around, fetch, wings, and play dead. Learn how you can train tricks to your Parrot, Parrotlet, Parakeet, Lovebird, Cockatiel, Conure, African Grey, Amazon, Cockatoo or Macaw. This blog is better than books or DVDs because the information is real, live, and completely free of charge. If you want to know how to teach your parrot tricks then you will enjoy this free parrot training tutorial.
Trained Parrot site content Copyright 2010-2020 Michael Sazhin. Reproduction of text, images, or videos without prior permission prohibited. All rights reserved.
Older Articles 
Newer Articles