I've talked about this before, because it comes into play every single time we flight train a bird for outdoors. But the last time I really talked about it was years ago regarding an older Moluccan cockatoo, read the article here. I've never ever met a parrot owner that we haven't had to drill this lesson into. It's normal. It's hard for us, as...

Can you actually TRAIN a bird to let you pet him on the head? Yep. You can. Is it really so hard to believe when people train goldfish to swim through hoops and dolphins to do double back flips (on cue)?  It's important to look at this training in a certain way: You are simply communicating to your bird through the language of training, what yo...

Because jackpot rewards lead to things like properly shaping a behavior, and random rewarding (a broader version of the concept), I want to leave links to those related resources to expand on the idea. So here are more helpful resources: Shaping a behavior Random rewarding introduction  In the following video Patty improperly uses the ja...

The more times you let your bird say "no" with its body language and you respect that decision, the more often your bird will say YES! The more often you give your bird a choice, the more often it will choose you.  This is an incredibly important lesson in parrot ownership. If your bird doesn't want to go on the counter, don't make it. Ask your...

Because the end goal is outdoor freeflight with Morgan, every indoor situation needs to be looked at in that respect. Now what would this look like outdoors?  You don't turn your back on your bird, or stop watching your bird outdoors when free flying. So this behavior outside could lead to fly offs or losing track of the bird's flight pattern....