This subject was briefly touched upon in another thread and I wanted to bring it to light and have a discussion about the ways to go about taming and handling an untame or semi-tame bird who is brought into your home.

I've now dealt with 2 untame budgies and when I first got Jerry I had gotten a lot of advice to allow him to settle in from within his cage and not even attempt to try and handle him right away. This allows the bird to observe his new environment and begin to get to know you from a distance. I also began finger training him from within the cage as well. Doing simple things such as reading/singing/talking while sitting near the cage, in my opinion, is a great initial form of interaction during that "getting to know you" phase. Also playing the Blinking Game as pointed out in a previous thread.

Those methods of allowing Jerry to first become comfortable in his cage worked so well that I am also trying something similar with Winston. Every day when I invite him out I can feel that although he's hesitant about something, he still trusts me. For example, last night I moved his playgym across the room from his cage, previously I had his open cage next to his gym in case he got scared and wanted to seek comfort in his cage - so as he sat on the gym across the room he first gave me a cautious look and I began to play the Blinking Game and that's our signal to let him know that everything's ok.

I have read that some think that handling the bird right away is a better approach, to sort of push them into situation from the get-go and get them out of the cage ASAP - the territory is neutral and some birds I think are more caught off guard and are not completely themselves when in an unfamiliar place. I don't think that I agree with this approach, I view similar approaches of the tough-love method (toweling to tame) to be forceful bonding. I believe that the rewards of slowly gaining trust together will have a bigger payoff in the end, even though it may take weeks or even months of making tiny baby steps.

One might ask if not getting the bird out of the cage right away will lead to a cagebound bird - in my opinion, no it won't. I think that almost every bird should be kind of a case-by-case thing and no one approach is guaranteed to work across the board. But I feel that allowing both Jerry and Winston to settle in from within the cage has given them both a feeling of security of being in their new cages, their new homes. Jerry is always happy to return to the toys in his cage, and equally happy to come out and spend time with us. I can tell that Winston feels secure in his cage, but not so much that he won't come out (now that he's taken the big plunge of wanting to come out).

Once again, these are only my opinions based mainly on my experiences with Jerry and now with Winston. I'd love to hear of other stories of different species or different methods altogether.

Both my birds hadn't been handled at all and were cage bound when I first got them. I had a challenging scenario here because they both were in need of medical care. I didn’t have a choice as to how slow or fast we were going to proceed. Kady had to be handled immediately and had surgery the day I got him. Kita was very sick and needed treatments and medications daily.

Given my situation of having to handle them immediately I found I still had to go slow to win them over and to build trust and confidence. They would not come out of their cage on their own for a long time. Many hours were spent talking softly while sitting by their cages with their door open. I still remember the day like it was yesterday when they both got the confidence to come out of their cages on their own!

I am a Barbara Heidenreich fan and believe strongly in her positive methods of training. She often says, "Why take what they will willingly give with time, patience and training?"

While I don't buy into the pushing, flooding or tough love methods, I do think there are times a more active approach may have it's place, such as getting an aggressive bird out and away from their cage for training.

I think slow and steady wins every time. My aviary birds are becoming tame without me making any attempt to touch them. Just talking to them every day seems to be doing it.
Never pushing any animal also meets with success when taming wild horses or abused dogs. I ignore them and allow them to see me interacting with others. With horses especially there is never any need to resort to cowboy tactics to ride a wild one. A horse is a prey animal just like a bird and is very suspicious of new things. It does not take long before the horse will come to join in the fun his companions are having, soon after he will accept a saddle and rider in complete calmness.