Trust Building with your Parrot

Baby Merlin macaw. 36 years old and still acting like a baby blue and gold! He trusts me a lot due to our training and mutual respect. He wasn’t the biggest fan of me when I first got him, but we were able to build trust, even at an advanced age.

Trust can be built, or rebuilt, at anytime in a birds life. Just like with humans, we meet strangers and build trust and become friends all throughout our lives. It is the same with birds. Just because they are a different species doesn’t mean they are incapable of trusting similar to us.

There are a bunch of ways for us to build trust with our birds. One of my favorite ways is of course through training. Not only does it teach our birds new skills, it also helps boost our confidence handling and working with the bird while building trust. Us respecting the birds body language cues, working at their pace, and keeping things positive (all apart of a proper training plan) will help increases trust and understanding.

Training doesn’t have to be these big plans, complicated behaviors, or time consuming. A 5 minute training session once a day on little things will make a huge impact! Target training, easy trick training like a spin, wave, or “big wings,” or simply reinforcing the behaviors the bird already knows like stepping up or if they know tricks already.

If you do have complicated undesirable behaviors, or you want to learn how to teach some of these tricks or target training, you can always contact me, and we can get a customized training plan and online consultation session going so you can start working with your bird!