My First Week with a Sun Conure Parrot

Hey, Michael the Parrot Wizard here with a Sun Conure and I'd like to recap and let you know what we've been doing in the first week. The first week I've mainly focused on leaving the bird alone, not trying to handle the bird, but instead settling the conure in. I want to make sure that the conure learns and discovers the location of its food bowls in the cage, where's the food and water. I want to make sure that the Sun Conure knows how to get around the cage, find the toys, and so that the Sun Conure would not feel afraid when I come into the room and leave. Establishing a routine and familiar habits is the most important thing that I'm working on during the first week. That said, being a really friendly bird I started giving some treats through the cage bars and the Sun Conure was quite bold and not very skittish so it did a great job at taking those treats from my hand from inside the cage. Before long I was able to open the cage door and insert my hand into the cage and give a treat inside of the cage and the Sun Conure would take it. However, the Sun Conure was not yet ready to step onto my finger. It was a bit hand shy so instead I directed it to step up onto a handheld perch similar to the perches that the conure has in its cage. So this is just an extension of the perches that the conure already walks around on inside of the cage but instead I happen to be holding this one. When the conure was on it I was able to take the conure out of the cage briefly, give a treat and put it right back inside the cage. I don't want to immediately take the conure out and have it start flying all about the room and getting into all kinds of trouble and then I'm not able to put it away. So instead we needed a fun exercise. Come on the handheld perch, receive a treat, go back in. We did this exercise repeatedly and finally the last thing we worked on is coming onto this training perch. I use my handheld perch to transport the Sun Conure onto the training perch and we're not ready quite yet to do any training. I'm just giving some treats and letting the conure get used to the training area. This will be a great help and preparation for the training will be ready to start very soon. The first week with a new bird is very important. It's when you make your impression on that bird and it's actually a lot easier to make a bad first impression than it is to make a good one. We can work on the good stuff over the next few weeks. There's no rush. We can patiently work on building a relationship but forcing a bird that's scared and not yet ready can set you off on a bad start and set a bad first impression that will be more difficult to overcome. This conure came to me from Parrot Stars and I'm helping prepare it for the Parrot Stars Summer Festival this July 19th, 2021. I'm doing some preparation with this Sun Conure as if I adopted it and had it as a pet but in reality I'm just helping prepare it for the show where we are going to be educating parrot owners about how to take care of a parrot in the first month. I will share with you what we were working on in the first week, second week and throughout the first month. If you feel that your relationship could be better you can also follow these steps to build a better bonded relationship with your existing bird. So be sure to subscribe to the All Parrots YouTube channel. Check out allparrots.com and enjoy as I share this journey of working with a Sun Conure with you.