IndianRingNeck.com

Hello, I am really new to this site but would love some help please. My IRN is 4 months old. I have had him two days. He doesn't seem to have been hand held and is very frightened of me. If I am one side of the cage he will move to the other. The first day he arrived he accidentally got out of his cage and spent 3 hours flying around my living room. I think it was quite traumatic for him and this may have made him worse. The cage the breeder sold me is too small and so I have a much larger cage coming tomorrow. My questions are, how do I build trust in my bird? Should I still let him out whilst he is so frightened? (He hasn't been clipped yet- the vet said I needed to build trust first) and how do I get him from one cage to the other without making him hate me even more? Thanks for any help yor advise x

Please Don't have him clipped!, I bet he Loved the freedom of flying around. Place the small cage in front of the large one with the large cage door open, then drop a sheet so your bird can only fly forward, open the small cage door, and he/she should flit straight in, it worked for Sanjay, when we bought the palace he has now, he went straight into it anyway, but was much older. It's taken a long time, but you should be able to get your little 'un to accept treats through the bars fairly quickly.

It sounds like you have a very sensible vet! Clipped doesn't equal tame, it just limits the birds ability to flee, which is not nice for a nervous bird.

I used the method sanjaysmummy described to transfer my girl before we made friends and it worked well.

I recommend reading this http://learningparrots.com/blog/trainin ... l-parrots/
that's what I followed and Sapphire responded very well to it.