Taming an older lorikeet
Hi there, I recently adopted a rainbow lorikeet and immediately (sad as it sounds) came to livejournal to learn more. I hope this post is okay, if it's not mods feel free to remove it.
My boyfriend bought the bird for me as a birthday present, knowing I've always wanted something more than aviary birds (we have a bourke and a turk who are aviary birds).
In the past I've had very tame budgies - I used to take them to school with me up my sleeve (I was an odd child) but I'd raised them from when they were babies so they were easy to teach.
This lorikeet has been confined to a cage for the past 4 years or so. I'm wondering if it's a lost cause or if he can be hand-tamed with work. I'm not sure how birds mind's work and when I look back a lot of the adoption type stories and posts are for cockatiels or huge parrots. I don't expect the bird to go up my sleeve like the budgues did, haha, but I've seen so many videos of lorikeets sitting on hands and shoulders and playing games.
This bird, he wont bite if you poke your fingers through the bars and he'll let you put your hand in the cage to place food or toys etc but he goes nuts and tries to run away as soon as your hand goes anywhere near him. He's not completely wild - according to the previous owner he can say hello and goodnight and he's spent most of the day pretending to be a telephone whenever I leave the room his cage is in.
I tried to google but all the sites I could find were kind of assuming you'd hand-raised the bird from a baby etc. If anyone has any tips or hints for me it would be much appreciated or if anyone can point me towards sites that might help I'll be very grateful.
Thanks!
My boyfriend bought the bird for me as a birthday present, knowing I've always wanted something more than aviary birds (we have a bourke and a turk who are aviary birds).
In the past I've had very tame budgies - I used to take them to school with me up my sleeve (I was an odd child) but I'd raised them from when they were babies so they were easy to teach.
This lorikeet has been confined to a cage for the past 4 years or so. I'm wondering if it's a lost cause or if he can be hand-tamed with work. I'm not sure how birds mind's work and when I look back a lot of the adoption type stories and posts are for cockatiels or huge parrots. I don't expect the bird to go up my sleeve like the budgues did, haha, but I've seen so many videos of lorikeets sitting on hands and shoulders and playing games.
This bird, he wont bite if you poke your fingers through the bars and he'll let you put your hand in the cage to place food or toys etc but he goes nuts and tries to run away as soon as your hand goes anywhere near him. He's not completely wild - according to the previous owner he can say hello and goodnight and he's spent most of the day pretending to be a telephone whenever I leave the room his cage is in.
I tried to google but all the sites I could find were kind of assuming you'd hand-raised the bird from a baby etc. If anyone has any tips or hints for me it would be much appreciated or if anyone can point me towards sites that might help I'll be very grateful.
Thanks!