JT is teaching (or they now know) Bean to turn around. I will have to check on that progress this weekend.

Nate:

The first and BEST trick, as far as I am concerned, is the "bring it to me". Once you teach that trick....you can build off of that and the sky is absolutely the limit. I think you still have Tani Robar's third tape.....(I loaned it to you)...so, take some time and watch that a bit. She has some great ideas and I bet Darwin learns the "bring it to me" a lot faster than Phinney did....since he is a cockatoo....after all. I taught Phinney the "bring it to me" with the tape in the background....and I did a lot of stopping and rewinding as I watched it.....you can incorporate a clicker in if you want....

I have heard some real, old time bird trainers (Movie - Bill and Coo (which you can order off of Amazon.com and I recommend), Baretta's citron) say that Tani is the best bird trainer of all time. She has the patience and persistence, and she probably is.....She doesn't have flighted birds but it is easy to use her teachings as a base and from there, go to working with flight....I'm doing it......

Thx

Mona

I started working on shaping Darwin's "grab and toss" behavior into something resembling "bring it to me" on Sunday with zero progress. I need to watch that Tani tape you loaned to me so long ago, Mona. I feel like I've just stolen it. :-)

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA

i've noticed with my older birds that they seem to want to think new concepts over, if that makes any sense. Often them i'll show them something new and they'll respond just as Darwin did with the quarters; if i back off for a few hours or a day sometimes the next session they'll have made some sort of huge leap, whether of understanding or willingness i'm not sure which. The attitude seems, "oh yeah, THAT, i can do that no problem."

Thanks for the reminder, I need to go back to the quater-in-a-cup thing again and see how he does.

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA