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🤝 Trust and step-up, days 1–14

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.

7 steps · paced over about 14 days

Training advice, not veterinary advice. A sudden change in behaviour can have a medical cause, and no protocol here addresses one — when in doubt, an avian vet. Why this matters more than it sounds.

The steps, in order

Work a step until the bird does it reliably — not until it works once.

  1. Days 1–3 · Be furniture

    Sit near the cage and do something that is not about the bird — read aloud, work, talk quietly. Hands go in for food and water and nothing else. You are proving that your presence predicts nothing bad, and that is a claim you can only make by making it repeatedly.

  2. Find the one food worth working for

    Offer four or five things separately and watch which one is taken first and eaten fastest — for many green-cheeks it is a piece of walnut, a sunflower seed or a millet sprig. That food now comes out of the daily bowl and is only paid for training. A reward the bird can eat all day is not a reward.

  3. Days 4–6 · Hand-feed through the bars

    Hold the reward at the bars and wait. Do not push it towards the beak and do not follow the bird if it moves away — let it close the distance, which is the only part of this that matters. If nothing happens in a minute, put it away and try later.

  4. Days 7–9 · Open door, flat hand, no reaching

    Open the door and rest your open hand inside with the reward on the palm. Do not reach, do not turn your hand towards the bird. The bird approaches your hand, on its own, or the session ends with nothing lost.

  5. Days 10–12 · Finger as a perch

    With the reward in your other hand, hold one finger horizontally against the belly just above the feet and say your word — "up" works as well as anything, provided it is always the same one. Light, steady pressure. When a foot lifts, mark it and pay it. Never pull the bird off balance to force the step.

  6. Days 13–14 · Up, down, and stop early

    Step up, then step down onto a perch, three times. Stop while the bird still wants another go: ending on a success is what makes tomorrow easy, and the last repetition is the one that is remembered.

  7. What a bad day looks like

    Some days go backwards — a new object in the room, a bad night, hormonal season. Repeat yesterday's step instead of pushing on, and never end a session on a refusal. This is not lost time; it is what stops the whole fortnight from having to be repeated.

You will know it worked when

Your bird steps onto your finger from the perch when asked, without leaning away first, on three separate days.

Sources used

Every claim in this module is supportable from these. Where they disagree, the module follows the more cautious one.

What this one opens up

The other modules

The same modules, with your place saved

The LunarKiri app carries these protocols with a tick against every step, saved per bird and shared with your family, and works with no network.

Open the app