I read that article when I first discovered this website, and actually began using it's tactics, though Lucy doesn't seem to be willing to go past the feeding from hand part.

I'm using the target training because it will help more in the long run when I get to the point when I can train her indoor flight recall. The flight recall can be made easier when the bird learns to target. Also, it's good mental stimulation. With luring, all the bird is thinking about is "catching" the food, which doesn't do much for mental stimulation. With a target though, they're working to "earn" the treat. Cockatiels don't have the greatest motivation in training, but I might as well try.

Plus, Dudley can't just simply be "lured", because no matter what or where the food is, when he's outside of his cage, he will not take it. And since he has a tendency to bite hands whenever they're near him, and he's not always willing to accept treats, trying to lure him is basically setting me up for failure in the long run, especially because he is a smart bird that needs mental stimulation in training, more so than cockatiels. It may seem tedious, but like I said, it will help in the long run.

Carolyn, I'm not really sure if it's horomones. He's like this year-round. I can't really say for sure what caused him to start being aggressive, since it happened long before I was born. I assume something frightened him, (I heard pionuses are prone to night terrors), and my parents didn't act upon it correctly. Also, the pet store they got him from gave them a lot of false information, as they called him a "white-fronted amazon" and said that they just "get like that" when he gets older, so my parents are convinced that "his species is like that".

I understand. You guys are up to feeding from your palm. Does she seem afraid when she eats from your palm? Do you see her preparing to go into fight or flight mode? If so, that means your bird still hasn't got the eating from your palm down yet. Remove her food for 2 hours before taming. This will be VERY helpful for you. I highly recommend using spray millet for treats if your bird likes it.

The next step you should work on is feeding her millet with your hand, not your palm. Do this until your bird is confident. Then, put your other hand in a perch position and put it from a distance while feeding her treads. Gradually move your finger closer and closer to her. You would want to put it close enough until your finger is behind the treats. Then you slowly move your treats back and back until your bird has to step up to get treats.

If you have any questions that need more detailed explanation then feel free to ask. I'll help you every step of the way. Your bird is very young. It's 100% possible to tame her. I have tamed flea market birds with these same steps. Just try to work at her pace.

She's not afraid. I actually feed her from my palm on her lower perch, and when I go near her cage, she goes down there, expecting to get something. However, he is a little weird with it.

Even when she knows she's getting food, she won't eat from my hand right away. I have to hold one treat in between my fingers, or rest it on my tips or something. She'll take it, immediately drop it, and then eagerly eat the rest from my palm. I wonder if it's not just a personality thing.

I actually closely followed your steps up to the palm feeding. Carolyn trained her to step up already, but she doesn't seem to have any interest in stepping up onto my hand, and when she does, she'll hop back to her perch after I bring her two inches away from it. So I'm going to try and retrain her, using the target, so she'd learn it's use when I train her some more advanced stuff.

Maybe she just likes her cage a lot. My sun conure wants to be on top of his cage when I let him out so I bring him to another room and he is very interested to be with me. Maybe you can try that and see if it works?

Thing is, I have tried. The last attempts, she was more interested in getting away from me. That was back when I still had the mirrors in her cage, though. I might try getting her out again, and see if the lack of mirrors in her cage might change anything.

Lucy is catching on quickly with clicker conditioning. She seems to know already that it means treat.

I've discovered that she seems to be the playfully destructive kind, after she knocked both the cuttlebone, and her pinecone toy this morning. This could probably be used to my advantage in the future.

When I was conditioning her to the clicker, she made a noise, that sounded almost like a word of some sort. A one syllable word at that, like "hey" or something. She has been quite vocal lately. Not much of a whistler, but still a bit chatty for a female. Doesn't necessarily sound like she's practicing anything. They're just the simple cockatiel chirps. If she does end up talking, I'll have to be careful about what I say around her.

Cockatiels in general are playfully destructive lol. A lot of bird toys are wasted on them since they're not very toy driven, but if you give them something that they can shred or turn into toothpicks they are VERY happy.

Craft stores like JoAnn and Michaels sell craft sticks aka popsicle sticks, mostly for kids' craft projects. These are great for making destructible and easily replaceable cockatiel toys. You drill a little hole in them, string them on a wire or something, and let the splintering begin.

I used to have cockatiels who would go to the bottom of their cage and shred the newspaper. lol it's nothing new except for the use of the foot to hold it.

She seems to like chewing on everything. Even with the target stick, she doesn't just bite it, but she wants to chew it. Thankfully, my skin isn't a part of the mix.

Birds tend to do a lot of weird things to the target stick in the beginning, but once they get used to it they start focusing more on the reward than on the stick. A bird that's just started target training will often gnaw on the stick or try to "kill" it, biting it much harder than they need to. But once they figure out that a softer touch will bring the same reward, they stop putting so much effort into it.

I've once heard from a couple of bird trainers, that while training a budgie, the budgie grabbed the target stick with it's foot, rather than it's beak.

Well Lucy already understands that clicker means treat, so I decided to try bringing her out again. Since she's conditioned to the clicker while inside the cage, I decided to condition herself to be outside of the cage, by using the clicker and treats.

With the clicker, she was more willing to accept treats than she was in the past, while out of her cage. I also managed to pet her head (without holding her to my chest), a few times for very brief seconds. I clicked and gave her a treat to let her know that it's good to let me pet her. I also managed to get her to touch the target stick a couple times.

I got the spare pinecone (which is bigger than the one in her cage) out for her to chew on. She didn't show too much interest, because she kept looking up at something on the ceiling. What it was, I have absolutely no idea. Could've been something in the light, because sometimes bugs can manage to actually crawl into them (One time I was looking up and I saw the silhouette of a scorpion moving around from the inside).

The only problem we had was that she wouldn't step up, even while outside of the cage. What was weird about it though, was that she never got off the table to get away from me. She just walked to the other side. She wasn't willing to try and jump or fly away from me. I eventually had to pick her up, in order to put her back in her cage. Could this be because she was actually starting to enjoy being out of the cage, or did she just wanted to stay away from me that much?