Very afraid when inside the cage, super comfortable on our shoulders

Hey guys, hope someone can help with my Linda (Yellow-Faced Parrot).

She’s super docile, loves neck scratching, hanging on our shoulders etc, everything you’d expect from a comfortable and happy bird.

The problem is we accomplish this only when she’s outside her cage (like flying out on her own). If I try to interact in anyway with her while she’s inside the cage, she demonstrates a lot of fear and I stop to avoid stressing her out.

Can someone give me any tip?

Few details:
- She’s 1.5 years old
- Female
- Raised by hand by the breeder
- Has untouched wings... I didn’t want to clip them to avoid stressing her out, but some suggested I should clip 🧐
- I feel she has some fear of hands
- I try to feed treats while she’s inside the cage and sometimes it works, but as soon as she takes the treat from me she runs back to her perch. She never eats from a “gun stanced” hand (like you do to train finger hop)

Is she possibly just being territorial and not actually fearful?

KawaiiTori said:

Is she possibly just being territorial and not actually fearful?

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Could be... but she doesn’t try to bite me or anything (what I would consider as a territoriality behavior). She enlarged the pupils and run to the farthest perch.

If indeed she’s being territorial it’s, so you recommend a way for me to take her out?

Maybe try getting her to step up on a stick instead of your hand...any way around it, if you can get her to do this it will hopefully make life less stressful for both of you!

My newest addition - Mr Tee has a fear of hands and has no idea how to step up, runs away from hands in his cage. He loves people and is quite happy on shoulders and sometime likes scritches so I’ve been encouraging him to come out of the cage on his own and then approaching from there. It’s slow-going so far, but he’ll now step up onto my forearm from the top of his cage. I’m thinking that I’ll just keep working toward him getting used to my hands being nearby and then start working on step up. I’m not sure how long you’ve had your girl, but Mr Tee came to me a few weeks ago - so we’ve not been working at it too long yet.

Jen5200 said:

My newest addition - Mr Tee has a fear of hands and has no idea how to step up, runs away from hands in his cage. He loves people and is quite happy on shoulders and sometime likes scritches so I’ve been encouraging him to come out of the cage on his own and then approaching from there. It’s slow-going so far, but he’ll now step up onto my forearm from the top of his cage. I’m thinking that I’ll just keep working toward him getting used to my hands being nearby and then start working on step up. I’m not sure how long you’ve had your girl, but Mr Tee came to me a few weeks ago - so we’ve not been working at it too long yet.

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Few weeks here too... Her behavior is quite close to Mr Tee. She did spend a lot of time with us on the afternoon, but the fear of hands (hence not stepping up) is still there.
We’ll keep working and playing 🦜

What is a "Yellow Faced Parrot"??? I'm sure that is not the proper name/breed.

Jim

AmyMyBlueFront said:

What is a "Yellow Faced Parrot"??? I'm sure that is not the proper name/breed.

Jim

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https://www.mascotarios.org/en/amazona-del-cerrado/