Help me love my cockatiels

[Tangie]

Everything is about the same. Still been working with the male. I'm going to have to start working to get him to come out of the cage voluntarily. He's fine when he's out and does step up pretty well and seems much more comfortable but I don't like having to towel him and pull him out of the cage. So it seems like I'll probably end up taking some steps back.

We did have something weird happen. My younger brother, who is 16 and lives with our mom across town, is spending the long weekend with us. Almost as soon as he walked through the door BOTH birds started calling to him. At first I thought they were scared of him but they were both following him around the cage and seemed excited/happy to see him. They are normally very quiet birds.
How good is a bird's memory? Do you think my brother reminds them of a former (nice) owner?

My brother just ate it up! Lol. He spent all afternoon talking to them and whistling to them. The little stinkers were whistling back too! They have never whistled back at me!

Does your male cockatiel step up on your hand, Leah?

It will take time for your male Cockatiel to want to come out of the cage willingly. My male Cockatiel was exactly like that, he would be fine when he was out of the cage, but he never willingly came out. I toweled him the first times too, to let him know how great it was outside of the cage. I don't recommend toweling, but I had hit a bump in the road when I didn't towel him. So for a bout two months I would bring him out every day and spoil him with tons of treats and attention. And then for about four days I kept him inside of the cage and didn't let him out. On the fifth day I opened the cage, and it took a little while, but he came out by himself. Ever since then he loooves to come out. I don't touch him because he hates hands, but I sit by him, or let him crawl up to my shoulder and I show him attention.

 

[MikeyTN]

Tangie,

She's been working with him and he's been stepping up some. Go back to the previous page and read her reply and the page before that too.

 

[Leah00]

Yeah, he will step up pretty good when he's out of site of the cage. He will not even let my hand get close to him when he's in the cage.

So....today's session was interesting. I don't know what to think. Wallace (that's the male's name) wanted absolutely nothing to do with me.....he only wanted my brother! He would step up on my hand and then as soon as I would move away from Joe (my bro) he would fly back to him! We were laughing about it but it kind of hurt my feelings. Wallace spent most of the time on my brother's shoulder. We watched a tv show and the bird sat there happy as a clam the whole time.

 

[MikeyTN]

I call those trader birds....I have a few of those myself.....lol.....Just like last night my neighbor came over to see the babies as I'm giving her two of them so one of the babies took a liking to her instantly and did not want to come back to me. She was looking at 4 of my babies, the other three came back to me as they want me instead as I've been their momma/daddy for 3 months. But one of the girls left me right away....

 

[Leah00]

So I'm kind of stuck with a hard choice. My brother has been here this weekend and him and the birds have gotten along great. They whistle at each other and there seems to be an automatic bond there.

My brother is practically begging me for them. I know that he would take great care of them. He's 16 so he's in school but he lives with my mom who stays home. My brother used to live in Florida with my dad and my dad had birds that my brother loved and helped take care of. He must have gone so far as to text my mom about them because she called me today asking if I was going to give them to him or if I wanted money for them... I was like "I haven't even said yes!"

So I'm stuck. I keep thinking that I don't want to give them away because I feel guilty...but what if I keep them and regret it later?

My brother got the idea in his head because I got a call from someone saying that they took in a young quaker (the bird I wanted!) that had its tail feathers pulled out by a child and they were wanting to know if I was still interested in a quaker. I told them that I didn't think I could take it and when I got off the phone I was pretty depressed and said something about being upset that I was stuck with the tiels. Which made me feel awful as soon as I said it because I do like them, I was just upset. My brother jumped at the chance to tell me he would happily take them and then I felt guilty and backtracked.

I just don't know what to do!

 

[Anansi]

Hey, Leah. I say you should take a look at the title of this thread to help you make this decision. You're asking for help to love your cockatiels, but your brother already does... and apparently without reservation.

And, judging from your initial reaction when you had to turn down the quaker, you would likely resent your cockatiels for getting in the way of what you truly want.

So it sounds like giving the cockatiels to your brother, if you truly are confident that he'd take good care of them, would be in everyone's best interest. Yours, Joe's, and the birds as well. A win-win if ever I've heard one.

 

[MikeyTN]

If the tiels gets along with your brother so well then it was love and first sight then let him have them and you take the quaker. At least you'll still get to see them since they're with your brother.

 

[Leah00]

Yeah.... I really feel like the right decision is to let my brother take them, especially since my mom is apparently 100% on board with the idea too.

I just can't shake the feeling that I'm a terrible person. I DO like the cockatiels and I feel like I probably could love them in time.

I feel really awful for letting that negative, resentful comment slip out.... It was just that I had been making inquiries about Quakers and couldn't find any and then suddenly someone calls me and says they've found a perfect match (he's young, hand tame, sweet, talking, he was even hatched on my birthday!!). So when I had to say no to that, it kind of hurt. It's not the poor tiels fault though.

I'll tell my brother the good news when he wakes up.

 

[Leah00]

And I'll call about the quaker later today too. I don't want to get my hopes up though.

 

[Terry57]

I think you are definitely making the right decision

 

[Leah00]

Well things have progressed very, very fast! My brother took the tiels homes with him this morning. He was supposed to stay at my house until later this evening but as soon as I told him that he could take them all he could think about was getting them to his house and set up.

After he left I was feeling kind of down so I called the person with the Quaker to see if he was still available......and they said yes and I could pick him up anytime!!

So...........go to the Quaker forum!

 

[MonicaMc]

For future reference, what a few of the other members said is exactly what you should do! Don't use a towel! But *DO* allow them to come to you, with some encouragement!


I once had five adult, flighted budgies that were not tame. As an experiment, I wanted to see if I could get the budgies accustomed to me enough that they'd come to me without being terrified. I started this by feeding them every single morning by hand just inside the cage door. Once all the food was gone, I'd refill their food dishes for the day and repeat the next day.


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUx81WHTUwk"]1 Bird in hand Leads to Many - YouTube[/ame]




After a couple of weeks of that, I had started to feed them with my hand on the outside of the cage door but still near it. If they wanted to eat from my hand, they had to climb out! I repeated this for a couple of weeks, then I tried about four feet away from the cage. You can clearly see how well it worked out!


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlSm4uFZzVU"]More Budgies!!!! - YouTube[/ame]





I also had a small flock of cockatiels (5 cockatiels, 1 tame, 2 not afraid of me, 1 kind of scared of me and 1 absolutely freakin terrified of me!). Well, one of the tiels (previously hand raised but not handled in a while) started following me around the room. She even landed on me twice, a behavior she had never done before. I was extremely baffled by this new behavior, until I realized what she wanted. She wanted me to feed her by hand! I had no intentions of feeding the tiels by hand but I figured why not? Sunshine was quite happy that I was finally "paying" attention to her and giving her what she wanted. At first she was very shy and hesitant. She kept looking up for danger, prepared to fly at a moments notice. Still, she demanding this kind of interaction between us, so I kept it up. Sure enough, over time, her confidence grew and her skittishness disappeared to the point that she was then flying to my hand to be fed.


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88bN30qOjo"]Sunshine in the Morning - YouTube[/ame]



After doing this behavior with Sunshine for maybe a couple of months or so, I was given another cockatiel. Sure enough, Faye was watching Sunshine! And next thing I knew, I had two birds begging to be fed! Only, Sunshine was confident in this behavior and Faye was scared! She was more so on the alert than Sunshine ever was, and far more hesitant about eating from my hand, but she still wanted to. You can tell by her behavior in the video. If you think I was starving them, well right behind Faye was dishes of food that the other tiels were eating out of! She didn't *HAVE* to eat from my hands, but she *CHOSE* to.


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9w9w8nMRmw"]Hesitant Faye - YouTube[/ame]



So I continued feeding Faye by hand in the mornings. Faye came to enjoy this interaction between us so much that if I didn't feed her by hand she would demand it by following me around the room until I fed her! In fact, she didn't care what I fed her, as long as she was willing to eat it! This next video she's eating pellets! (I never had to convert her to eating healthier, she simply did on her own!) You can also tell that her behavior is completely different! She's not on alert and quite confident!

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH9ZWxhCSAE"]Not So Hesitant Faye - YouTube[/ame]





Although I had had no plans to feed all the tiels by hand, I decided to give it a go? Why not? I had one very extremely skittish cockatiel that would fly off the moment I got too close to him. There was no way he'd come to me and no way I could get close to him without him freaking out. So I started feeding the rest of the tiel flock by hand. And something amazing happened!

Pistachio was on high alert. If I moved even the slightest bit the wrong way, off he'd go! He'd walk over, take a bite or two, then move away. Sometimes he'd walk over, peck my hands, then walk away. Eventually he started eating from my hands. He wouldn't touch my hands, but he'd eat from them. Touching was a big "NO NO"! If he found himself accidentally touching me, he'd freak out! (heck, he wasn't the only one! LOL I got scolded for their mistakes!) But soon, Pistachio started touching my hands with his toes and he didn't instantly burn up, nor did I chomp his head off! Then it was ok to put a foot on my hand. Again, no instant death or anything but still kind of scary! And one day he got the courage to get up with both feet! Sure, it took some encouragement, but he did it! And once he got comfortable eating from my hand, I was able to get him to fly to my hand to eat rather than having him step up.

The amazing part however occurred first while he was on the ground looking for scraps that had fallen and when he didn't find much, he flew from the ground to my hand. By about that time I had ran out of food, so I *VERY SLOWLY* walked over to the food containers with him on my hand, not budging. I slowly got some more food for him and allowed him to eat. Wait.... what?!?!?! He flew to my hand when all it had was seed hulls in it and waited patiently for me to get more?!?!?? OMG!!!!!!! And then it happened again, another time, except he flew to my shoulder and waited for me to get food for him when I had none. I never expected that of him, especially since he is an older bird at least in his teens, but here he was, doing it!

I have a video of Casey (tame cockatiel), Tomi Girl (kind of tame) and Pistachio (plucked head, skittish bird) eating from my hand.


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjKmHswgiHs"]Cockatiel Feeding - April 24th - YouTube[/ame]













I think the most amazing thing is is that I was only interacting with them for 5-15 minutes a day, max 20 minutes? And it was a once a day thing, yet had spectacular results! In fact, the birds far exceeded my expectations! And it wasn't difficult or frustrating to do! I didn't have to use a towel. I didn't have to force the birds to do something they didn't want to. I gave them the choice to CHOOSE.



Oh, and since the cockatiels? I was given a hands off red throated conure that would bite the bloody snot out of anyone who got close enough to her! Unless of course you were giving her scritches and she was in a good mood, you wouldn't get the bloody snot bitten out of you for maybe a moment or two longer? I didn't use the same technique with her as I did the budgies and tiels, but she's pretty demanding, too! And she loves strangers! Still bites (I haven't had her for very long) but I no longer have blood to donate! She's pretty amazing, even though she didn't come to me tame!