ShadowGhost

Of course, after saying all that, I took Topaz to the bathroom this morning, and now he hops on my finger when I sit it in front of him! He even started preening himself while on my finger... go figure! I have him in a small cage at the moment next to my laptop while I'm working, he even came to the closest corner and sat in his food to look at me through the bars, so I opened the door and he hopped out and went for a fly, but I had no trouble catching him 10 mins later and put him back in without a peep. He seems quite the tame bird today. On the other hand though, I took Ghost to the bathroom. I may rename Ghost to Bitey or Nipper. That one seems to be going backwards the fastest, and is probably the cause of the other two reverting a lot each day.

I've been spending a lot of time with them, giving them the millet rewards (which they actually just stare at, which says to me they're still frozen scared). It also seems they revert very quickly once back in the cage together. I resorted to catching Topaz inside the cage, and after a minute or so he was happy to sit on my finger, but a few minutes after that, the panicky behaviour of the others must have rubbed off on him again.

Thanks It is a great feeling to have them voluntarily stay on your finger, even if you have to prod them a little to get them on there!

Well, it's been tough... my birds have been getting more scared of me every time I go near them, so I tried a slightly more drastic move, and put my hand in there and caught them one by one and took them to the bathroom. I would have liked to get their wings clipped before doing this, but there is nowhere near here to get that done, so I just had to put up with the possibility of scaring them a little more before showing them I wasn't going to hurt them. After a minute or so of fluttering around the room and banging into the odd wall, each one landed in almost the same spot every time (top of the shower tiles) in a bit of a panicked state, where I was able to catch them gently fairly easily. I then let them fly away again and just repeated the process for a while, then started putting them down on the towel and talking to them. They often flew away and I would casually walk up to them and catch them again. The good news is that it took a maximum of about two minutes until I was able to get them sitting on my finger, sometimes for 5 minutes at a time. I know they're still scared, but obviously not as much as I thought they were. Even Ghost, who gave me some severe nips on the way to the bathroom behaved well, and in some cases appeared to be the most tame of the three. I repeated this process again on sunday (I first did it friday), and today I am working from home so I have had Topaz in the office with me all morning. I left his cage door open and some millet seed on a towel in front of the cage. It took a good 3 hours or so before he finally decided he was comfortable and hopped down then out to the millet. Prior to this I did put my hand in their and got him to hop on my finger with a little nudging, but if I moved my hand toward the door he hopped off. So, after a bit of a flutter around the room, I was able to get him to hop on my finger without catching him first, and he sat on my finger for quite a while. This happened a couple of times. He also sat still for his portrait of this occasion :hap: He really seems a lot less scared of me after all of this... still cautious when I put my finger in front of him, but its only one or two sidesteps at most. Hopefully a few more of these sessions might see him not scared of me, so now its off to repeat the process on Shadow and Ghost

Thanks Birluv. I guess the other thing that I need to work out is if keeping them outside all day is going to make it that bit harder. Even just now I ate breakfast with them, they were fine one minute then panicked the next, I realise it's because there are flocks of lorikeets and other birds flying past, possibly in panic because there are a lot of cockies here, and they love chasing the crows around the big gum across the road, in plain sight of my birds. I guess I could bring the cage inside with me while I work from home, but that seems unfair because its so beautiful outside.

okay thanks Elly. I have 3 birds in the cage, and I have been spending a fair bit of time next to their cage talking to them, eating my lunch and just relaxing, but of course it's hard to do that all day because I have to work. My partner also spends a lot of time talking to her finches (in the cage under the budgies) and she also talks to the budgies a bit. I did actually end up getting one of them to eat millet spray while I was holding it, but for now I'm refraining from puting my hands in the cage except to change water and toys. Is there anything else I should be doing? I will nip off and look at these journals shortly too. I want to tame all three but I think I might have got myself into something a little too advanced for my experience.

Hi guys, Some of you might have seen that I just bought some budgies just out of the nest. They're reasonably okay with me being close by (I can see them getting wary, but they usually don't fly off). I have already made the most basic of taming mistakes (thats why I came looking for help on the interperch) such as putting my hand in the cage day 1 and mistaking the bird staying still for it accepting my pattings, and seperating one of the birds out of cage thinking it would be better for taming, then sitting there watching it panic and calling out to its siblings (which were still in earshot), so I ended up putting him straight back in the big cage. Now they're all more frightened of me than they were to start with, and it doesn't help that I am a huge guy and my partner says I look and sound predatory, even when I'm trying to be reassuring! Now, is it mean to seperate one of these birds, or is it just a matter of waiting a few weeks while they get used to me before I try it? Would sooner be better than later, or not at all? Or, would I be better off trying to tame all three, even though I have no taming experience? Currently the large cage is sitting on the balcony up stairs on the north side of the house but protected from sunlight (except between 6am and 7am, and for half of that their cover is down). If I take one down stairs it wont get to see me during the day (except for when I work from home), but it will probably still be able to hear its bird buddies up stairs. Or, should I just give up on finger taming them all together and just hope that one day they're not scared of me any more and leave it at that, and then go and buy one single bird and keep it down stairs and try to finger tame that one? Lots of questions, lots of info, hopefully it's somewhat comprehensible. Suggestions appreciated.

Thanks I've never seen such pure white budgies before, my partner thought they might be rare, but the fact that I was able to not only buy two of them, but very cheaply, suggests that's not the case. I was unfortunate not to get a second skyblue and have two pairs. I originally took one of each, then had to go get money, and decided I'd by the other two as well, but came back and someone else had just bought the other skyblue, so I grabbed the remaining white. The breeder tells me she has a nice deep blue that she will bring to the market next month, where I will be waiting before the birds wake up to purchase it I got them this saturday just gone, 3 days ago. They are just out of the nest, not quite sure how old that actually makes them, I didn't ask for an actual week number. All I can say is it's less than 4 months! The breeder said she didn't bring the deep blue one because it was still cuddling up to it's daddy too much. Oh, do I get a complementary piece of cake for being new???

Thanks Elly So I have a Skyblue Spangle named Topaz (who I'm yet convinced is a boy, though maybe Ghost is the girl, or maybe my birds are just gay (not that there is anything wrong with that, I want to tame them at the moment not breed them!)), and what did the white ones end up being? Oh, and what chance do I have of taming at least one of the 3 while they're all in a cage together?

Thanks Don't take those pics too seriously, they are reduced from a 2mega pixel image... the full size images are here The eyes don't look plum to me irl. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough though.

okay, I took some photos with my 2mp camera, and photobucket reduced them to an acceptable size, though now I'll just post a link to my album because that will be simpler. My buddies Hopefully those pics are clear enough, if not I can provide links to the larger originals, and if not then I can rip out the 5mp camera...

Wow, thanks for the fast replies, I wasn't expecting that! I'll try to get some photos going soon, its more the actual taking of the photos that is the issue at the moment. I might have a looksee through those pics to see if I can find any similar ones as suggested!

Hi, I haven't had any birds since I was a kid (about 15 years ago), but after my partner bought some gouldians she spied some budgies she thought were extremely pretty, and knowing I like them, she told me about them, so I bought them. Now, when I was a teenager I didn't even know there were different types of budgies, there were all just different colours to me! So now I have some and I wanted to try and finger tame one, so I did a lot of internet searching over the weekend, and have ended up here Of course, I have discovered that flighted budgies that are kept in a cage with other budgies are going to be hard to tame, thankfully the breeder had handled them a little and been around them, so in a group they are no that frightened of me. They will now eat a little millet spray from my hand but they tend to be wary and side step a little and climb the ladder to get away. But the part I'm most interested in figuring out this moment is what kind of budgies they are. Right now I don't have a photo but I will try and take one later on today. Two of them are 99% white. They have the slightest hint of blue on either side of their necks, no age stripes, no black on the wing feathers, but they have black eyes so I'm pretty sure they're not albino. The other looks pretty much like a normal, except very pale. Very pale grey on the wings and pastely sky blue chest. I know that nobody will be able to tell me much right now, but until I get photos, any guesses?