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

Lovely, what a great feeling!! Keep it up, you are doing a fantastic job! :hap:

Lovely, what a great feeling!! Keep it up, you are doing a fantastic job! :hap:

 

 

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!

congrats, don't forget to reward them with millet or a nice snack after they have done a great job of taming for the day

Well done

 

Sometimes you do need to prove to them you will not hurt them. Great progress. Keep us posted

 

that is great, just keep on doing what you are doing

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.

 

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.