For those of you fellow Star Wars nerds, you’ll get this but everyone else should too. Anyone who is 40 and above will tell you that the main thing that separates the young and the old is the thing that Yoda and the rest of the Jedi always talk about in the greatest saga ever told… patience.
Any parent or parront knows that any life form incapable of completely understanding rudimentary verbal instructions can be quite aggravating. Birds are basically winged toddlers. They have incredible brain capacity especially for their small size but that doesn’t mean that they know that the flat screen TV is not a perch. Birds like to do bird things which many times is counterproductive to human things. They shred things like paper, so don’t leave any bills or important documents lying around when you have birds. The will find that with a quickness and before you realize what that “shpop shpop shpop shpop” sound is… they’re already halfway down the edge of your paycheck stub. They like to chew things like… everything. Wood, cloth, plastic, blinds, remote control buttons, keyboard keys, pretty much anything they can get they’re beak on. If you wouldn’t keep it out around a toddler, don’t keep it around your bird.
This will be mentioned again but DO NOT, under ANY circumstances flick your bird’s beak. Birds have unbelievably skinny necks and your flicky finger is like a sledge hammer to a bird who weighs less than a fork. Look up Rhea, the naked lovebird. She has PBFD so she has no feathers. Look at how scrawny her neck is and imagine flicking that beak that’s balancing atop that spindly little neck. So please, be patient with your bird. Birds can be taught to do all sorts of tricks and commands, all it takes is time, practice and the right teaching method and you can train your bird to do almost anything. Don’t expect them to know anything. We don’t turn 16 and know how to drive and what year the Magna Carta was signed, so don’t expect instant miracles from a creature with no hands.