My new conure is terrified of my hands! Help!

Hi all,

I got my little yoshi (GCC) 6 days ago, I've started to let him out for the past 2 days and he's fine, he doesn't get freaked out if i get to close to him but as soon as i put my hands towards him he flies away. Today i let him out and closed his cage door - i figured this way he won't be able to get to his food and will have to accept food out of my hand when he gets hungry. I've been sitting here with my hand extended with a piece of millet spray for about 4 hours - he looks at it but refuses to come and get it.

His feathers aren't clipped so it's difficult for me to attempt to start handling him.


Any tips?

You are rushing things. And also, you need to let him have access to his safe spot - his cage. Think about it - he just moved in and is trying to settle into his cage and get used to the perches and set up, and you are closing the cage so that he can't go back in. Doesn't sound like something helpful.
Trust building takes time. Let him be.

Did you meet this bird before taking him home? Were you able to interact with him and handle him then? Was he hand fed as a baby?

This is not uncommon behavior when getting a new bird. There can be an adjustment period that can take days, weeks, months, to get used to a new environment, cage, person, and even then it does take trust in order to allow handling.

This is a great article and I suggest you give it a read:

Tips for Bonding and Building Trust

The best advice I can give you is, be patient. Parrots are not like dogs or even cats that want interaction and love and cuddles. They are prey animals, and want to take flight away from danger. They have no real reason to like people. Some breeders will pull babies from the nest early and raise really nice tame babies that love people but others either don't socialize with them enough or were never tame to begin with so they are left indifferent or frightened of people.

It will take time. It will take patience. Make sure every single interaction you have with your bird from now on is positive. That can even be as simple as putting a tasty millet treat on top of the cage for bird to enjoy when you back out of its space. From then you just begin building trust from there.

RemiBird said:

You are rushing things. And also, you need to let him have access to his safe spot - his cage. Think about it - he just moved in and is trying to settle into his cage and get used to the perches and set up, and you are closing the cage so that he can't go back in. Doesn't sound like something helpful.
Trust building takes time. Let him be.

Click to expand...

Oh right! Only reason i closed his cage was because a parrot instructor i had seen on youtube recommended isolating the bird from its cage on its first days of being out the cage in order for him to become accustomed to his surroundings.

nattyd said:

RemiBird said:

You are rushing things. And also, you need to let him have access to his safe spot - his cage. Think about it - he just moved in and is trying to settle into his cage and get used to the perches and set up, and you are closing the cage so that he can't go back in. Doesn't sound like something helpful.
Trust building takes time. Let him be.

Click to expand...

Oh right! Only reason i closed his cage was because a parrot instructor i had seen on youtube recommended isolating the bird from its cage on its first days of being out the cage in order for him to become accustomed to his surroundings.

Click to expand...

I don't really agree with that technique, but that's just me.
I would first build up his trust and feeling of being safe in his new surrounding. Let him decide when he wants to venture out. When I first brought my GCC home, I just let him be for days. He decided to come out on top of the cage and hang out. I didn't touch his cage besides putting fresh water and food. After some days, I offered a perch so he can step up. I didn't really force him to sit on the couch with us or anything like that. He developed interest with time.
Just give it time, I would say.

You absolutely do NOT want to close the door to his cage right now!!! He's only been with you for less than a week, and his cage is the only Safe-Space/Territory that he has...When you shut the door you're basicallly trying to "FORCE" him to want to interact with you, with the theory behind this being that he would starve without taking the millet from your hand because he can't get into his cage to his food bowl...But notice that it's not working, right? Yeah, and it won't work at all to tame him or to get him ot accept your hands. That's not how birds work, you cannot EVER attempt to force them to do anything, because the more you try to force them to do anything, the less and less they trust you. Period. And right now he doesn't trust you at all because you've only had him for a week, so you're actually moving backwards and making things worse by doing what you're doing.

Just keep allowing him to be out of his cage, make sure it's located in the "main room" of you house, meaning the room you and others who live there spend most of their time when they're home (usually a living room, family room, etc.) so that he's among people whenever someone is home and not by himself in some back bedroom or the like, and give him time...You first have to "Earn His Trust" before he'll eat out of your hand, step-up for you, etc., and if he wasn't a Hand-Raised baby, it's going to take much longer to Earn His Trust. It's all about patience and time, not about forcing him or keeping him from his Territory/Safe Space...

And just as an FYI, if you bought him at a pet shop instead of from a breeder, and he was said to be "Hand-Fed", as the Green Cheek Conures from Petco are labeled, that does NOT mean he was Hand-Raised at all...It simply means that he was Tube-Fed his formula feedings on a literal "assembly-line" of dozens and dozens of baby birds and that's it, it doesn't mean that he was ever handled, interacted with by his breeder or any other humans, talked to, etc. It simply means that Petco buys their "Hand-Fed" Green Cheeks from large, mass vendors who breed hundreds of babies at a time, and who feed their babies their formula feedings by picking them up, sticking a Crop-Needle down their throats, filling-up their Crops with formula (whole thing takes about 30 seconds each feeding), and then they put them back down into their box...That's what is meant by "Hand-Fed" for baby birds that come from Petco, PetSmart, Petland, etc. They all get their "Hand-Fed" birds from the same mass-vendors who do this, and obviously it isn't anywhere near the same process as a breeder pulling the babies from their nestboxes between 2-3 weeks old and actually Hand-Rasing them, which means they interact with them every single day for most of the day, they handle them, hold them, and play with them often, and they actually do Hand-Feed them like their mother and father birds feed them, slowly and not with a Crop-Needle...I don't know if that's the case with your baby Green Cheek, but it's one explanation for why a "Hand-Fed" baby Green Cheek from a pet shop isn't really that hand-tamed at all...

Either way, it's all about time, patience, and committment from you to spend as much time with him/around him/working with him/talking to him every single day, and you finally Earning His Trust...And you won't ever accomplish Earning His Trust by shutting him out of his only Safe-Space/Territory in his brand new home and trying to force him to eat from your hand simply because you're literally trying to starve him into doing it...

Youtube pet advice can range from bad, to terrible, to disasterous, to often even dangerous to deadly...

You're getting great advice and support. I'm glad you found us!