Taming a wild caught parrot, please help.

I got a pm asking for help. Thought i'd post it here ,say what i had to say and see if anyone else might have some helpful suggestion. I'm not a CAG person but have been around many wild caught amazons.



Quote:
Hello!I tought you could help me with taming my wild-caught gray. I posted this in the forums , but nobody answered :
I accidentaly bought an wild caught african gray in January. The seller told me he was very tame and that I could teach him to eat from my hand in 3 days. A week after I got him he started eating seeds from my hand. He doesn't let me touch him and he doesn't want to step-up on my hand . He bites me or tries to hide when I try to touch him. When I put his cage on the floor , if I sit near the cage he would climb on me (because they always want to go higher ) but he is very scared in that moment and I can even hear his heart beats. He accepts to take from my hand nearly everything , but he doesn't want me to touch him. Sometimes when I'm near him he fluffs his feathers and opens his wings and move his hand up and down, making a clicking sound with his beak. I think this probably means he's very angry , but in that moment , if I give him a seed he takes it and becomes "back to normal".
He learned 2 whistles from me in these 4 months.
When I bought him I was told he was a baby but he had a white circle on his eye. I don't think he's very old as I saw pictures on the internet with other grays which had a much larger white circle.
My question is how can I tame him?? He is very far from being tame but I don't know what else to do. I tried to target train him but he hates the stick more than my hand. It makes me cry to think that I probably have to live with this wild untamed bird another 30 years , because I'm already very attached to him and I can't donate him to buy a hand -feed gray. I also don't have enough space to keep 2 grays.It's so bad to have your dream pet in your house and not be able to touch it.

Thank you for reading my message and I hope you can help me.

His post is here.http://www.parrotforums.com/congo-timneh-greys/30334-wild-caught-african-gray.html he got 2 pages of response.

I think your chances are good for having a great pet. It will take some time but you seem to care enough to make it work. Your progressing fine, baby steps is what it will take to win him over. Biting,,, they usually bite out aggression or fear. Your's seem to bite out of fear, His way of saying "NO". I'd avoid those situations and learn to read him. He wants to "belong" but needs strong guidance , Don't let him use biting to control his situation. Keep making friends with him and try to include him in your activities as much as possible.It's a slow process ,but well worth the effort. He hasn't been handled and will have issues with that for some time. When he does "step up" don't turn it into a petting session. Quickly place him back down and reward him. If he doesn't want to step up, act like he's missing out and don't ask again for a few minutes, go about doing something fun and then ask him again to step up. Don't keep pressing him to the point where he bites to say NO. When he allows pets and scratches, ,only give him a minute and quit. Leave him wanting more of your attention instead of him biting to say "i;ve had enough". Realize why he's fearful and try to see the world though his eye's. Yes a wild caught bird can be tamed and a good companion.

Taming wild birds takes a lot of patience and while I've never tried training a wild grey, I did have experience with four sun conures that had never been handled...they were parent raised and left with the parents, 2 for 18 months and 2 for 24 months.....wild birds have a natural fear of humans and only time, patience and continued interaction, even if the bird doesn't seem to be responding.....

While many people on the forum prefer to not clip their birds, I believe that there are times when clipping can be a benefit in helping tame and/or train a bird, and I would say that this would be a good case for wing clipping, though I would be careful of not giving a severe clip.....

Although wing clipping will restrict a bird's ability to get away from you, forcing the bird to like you will not work.....you are still going to have to be patient and win the bird's trust, and again, that's going to take a lot of time.....find a food that the bird really likes and use it as a treat, but since it is willing to take food from your hand, it is not totally afraid of you...part of its scared reaction could be that your moves are too fast, slow down your movements and maybe you should stop reaching into the cage except to change food and water.....

I see that now, I didn't look before posting. Sounds like good advice to me. In all fairness it took me a couple of days start this thread. Maybe 3 or 4 .

I have tamed about 5 wild caughts one of them being my cag that passed away, I went to write him a response and all 3 times I went to post my Internet disconnected-.- so I didn't end up writing it for him because I got frustrated I suppose I'll have to go and redo it again now the weather looks better.

Like everyone has said, give him time. Give him space. Go at his pace. I've worked with many unsocialized birds, nervous birds, aggressive birds. They all came around by letting them decide that it was fun, and well worth, being my friend. Be patient, consistent, and persistent. Do the same things, the same way, and don't give up.

well bills you shortened it up nice and sweet and i completely second what was stated.