← Care reference

🎓 Training modules

Step-by-step protocols for the things that take weeks rather than an afternoon: trust, the target stick, biting, screaming, recall and the harness.

Each module is a sequence, not a list of tips. The order inside one matters, and where a module assumes another has already been worked through, it says so and links it.

• 🤝 Trust and step-up, days 1–14
  7 steps · paced over about 14 days

  The two weeks before the first trick. Most step-up problems are trust problems that were rushed, so this one is paced in days rather than in sessions — and repeating a day costs nothing.

• 🎯 Target training with a stick
  6 steps

  The one skill that makes every other one cheaper. A bird that follows a target can be moved onto a scale, into a carrier or off your shoulder without a hand ever touching it — which is also how most biting stops being necessary.

• 🛡️ Why they bite, and what to do
  7 steps

  A bite is the end of a sentence whose first words were missed. This module is about the first words — and about the two or three things owners do in response that reliably teach a bird to skip straight to biting.

• 🔊 Screaming: flock call or demand
  7 steps

  Two different noises with two opposite answers, which is why general advice about screaming so often fails. One of them is normal parrot behaviour that should not be trained away at all.

• 🕊️ Indoor recall
  8 steps

  Flying to you on cue, indoors. It is the most useful thing a companion parrot can know — and the module with the clearest boundary, because a reliable indoor recall is not permission to take a flighted bird outside.

• 🧷 Harness training
  8 steps

  Weeks of work, and the one module where the honest answer may be to stop. A harness is the only safe way to take a flighted bird outside — and forcing one onto a bird that is not ready damages the trust every other module is built on.

These are paced for the bird, not for you. Repeating a step costs nothing; skipping one costs the step after it.