Budgie Novice, Help please!

[groovystarr2]

Hi guys
My name is Kira, i am 16 years old, and i have a 7 month old Budgie named Astro boy. Hes gorgeous, but both of us are still in training. I just a have a few problems with gaining his trust, as he is my first budgie (hopefully first of many). my parents have had budgies before, but Astro is my own, and i look after him by myself.

Astro Boy's wings are unclipped, when i let him out of his cage he sits ontop of his cage or he plays in his playground near his cage. I understand that his cage and his playground are his "safe places", but i want him to know that i am safe, if you know what i mean.
i would really love it if i could walk around with him on my shoulder, he does this occaisianaly, but often flys back to the playground or cage.

can anyone give me some tips to gaining my budgies trust

and he also plays alot....non stop, is this normal for a budgire, or is it just because he is young?

Thank you
Kind regards
Kira

[Berserka]

Welcome to Bird Crazy Kira and Astro Boy!

Him playing non stop is normal particularly if he's an "only" budgie, he's just entertaining himself.

Now the only suggestion I can give for gaining his trust (especially at his age) in the training process is something I personally do not like. That is to clip his wings. This will make him totally dependent on you to get around and this will help your bond grow.
I have only rarely had to clip a birds wings and it has without fail strenghtened our bond and made the bird tamer. When the feathers grew back I didn't need to clip again.

I hope I have helped you. Maybe someone will come along with a better idea.

[kiwi]

Hi Kira welcome to the forum

I agree with Karen - I am against wing clipping too, if it's done regularly and it's intention is to stop the bird flying. I'm for it though if it's a training aid, budgies can be difficult to tame as I'm sure some of the other members will tell you, having his wings clipped will, as Karen said, help him bond with you, make him see that you're just as fun as his playground to play with
The only thing you'll have to make sure of is that you seek a professional to clip his wings as we've all heard of the horror stories of the mess people make of our fids wings because they don't know what they're doing
You should only have to have his wings clipped the once, by the time he can fly again he should be pretty tame
You have any pictures of your beautiful budgie you could share? You should know that we're all picture addicts and I'm surprised Karen hasn't asked you already lol
Enjoy the forum Kiri