Clever bird!
Today I am working from home, and this morning I brought Kappa into my home office to sit with me. To my amazement, she flew off my shoulder and onto her playstand - this is a really good thing b/c just a couple weeks ago she started trying to mate with my hair, so the fact that she's progressed to knowing she shouldn't sit on my shoulder all the time already is really quick! My method for teaching her that was that every time we came into the office, I'd put her on her play stand, and if she flew to me I'd return her to it. If she flew to me three times, I'd take her back "home" (to her cage).
This morning though, after a pretty short time on her play stand, like 15 minutes, she started making her soft "I want to go home now" calls. As these are pretty soft, I often don't notice them, and when she flew back to my shoulder I realized I'd been tuning them out for a while. In retrospect her flying to my shoulder was probably trying to deliberately provoke me to bring her back home. Then I got distracted with work again and left her on my shoulder while I kept working. After a few minutes of more soft chirps, Kappa pooped on my shoulder! As she's mostly housebroken, I don't wear a towel or anything so this irritated me, and I promptly took her off my shoulder and got up to take her back to her cage... when I suddenly realized she had trained me to do exactly that! It cracked me up, but I put her back on the play stand for five minutes before finally taking her back home, just so she wouldn't try that trick again. :) Birds are so clever at times.
This morning though, after a pretty short time on her play stand, like 15 minutes, she started making her soft "I want to go home now" calls. As these are pretty soft, I often don't notice them, and when she flew back to my shoulder I realized I'd been tuning them out for a while. In retrospect her flying to my shoulder was probably trying to deliberately provoke me to bring her back home. Then I got distracted with work again and left her on my shoulder while I kept working. After a few minutes of more soft chirps, Kappa pooped on my shoulder! As she's mostly housebroken, I don't wear a towel or anything so this irritated me, and I promptly took her off my shoulder and got up to take her back to her cage... when I suddenly realized she had trained me to do exactly that! It cracked me up, but I put her back on the play stand for five minutes before finally taking her back home, just so she wouldn't try that trick again. :) Birds are so clever at times.