panda-skye said: You trained a budgie? How do you do that? Is it a shop one or from a breeder??? This is adorable!! ˚₊*(ˊॢo̶̶̷̤◡ुo̴̶̷̤ˋॢ)*₊˚⁎
i know right? *__* Cedric is from a pet shop. in order to tame a budgie you need to have A LOT of patience. they're naturally afraid of us because we're predators to them and being flight animals, they're very jumpy by nature.
I accustomed my budgies to my hand by feeding them millet, first from as far away as possible and getting closer over time. if they got scared, i backed off for the time and repeated at a later time or the next day. mirroring their actions (backing off when they do, getting closer when they do, answering their chirping, etc) and talking with them helps gaining their trust.
as soon as they were comfortable with my hand right next to them, i started putting my finger between them and the millet, so it was like an obstacle they had to climb.
Around that time I noticed that Cedric started getting more attached (he was generally more trusting than Daisy, his partner, and was the first to actually climb my finger/hand), for example he would often sit somewhere nearby and 'babble' while looking at me and fly around my head. So I tried getting him to fly on my hand using millet as a bait again while calling his name (always using the same pitch). when he was sitting on my hand, i would sometimes get him to walk up and down my arm and shoulder (so he would see that there was nothing to fear) by moving the millet around.
After a lot of practice, he started to react when I wasn't holding any treat yet (although I always rewarded him afterwards) or sometimes even without me calling him (I rewarded that as well).
so yeah, it can take a lot of time of patience! but i was definitely worth it ^_^ keep in mind that there is no guarantee that any of this will work (neither his recently deceased nor his current lady friend trust(ed) me) and that keeping a single budgie in order to tame it isn't an option!
