Hello (616 views)

[redqueen]

Hi,
My name is Daria,
I own one cockatiel named Galileo. Galileo is likely a girl, although the breeder had told us she's a boy, lol. She's about 6 months old. Nice to meet all of you.

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[Casey]

hi and welcome to our forum!
galileo is adorable! and at 6 months old, i'd bet female as well based on how many pearls she has. how is her behaviour?

[redqueen]

She's a smart cookie We've taught her how to drop a plastic ball into a shot glass, and how to spin for us.





She's also a cuddle bug (when she's in the mood)

[Casey]

wow is she ever smart! mine dont want to do tricks like that, only trick tsuka does is give kisses on command. i wish mine would lol
how did you teach her?
she is also split pied--she has pied patches on the back of her head

[cinnamonbits]

Welcome to the forum!!! She's lovely!

[injood]

Hi and welcome, ur tiel is so adorable

[redqueen]

Thanks for the welcomes
DallyTsuka, how can you tell she has pied patches? I don't see them, I'm not very good at identifying subtle color mutations... could you please explain what they look like on her?

Teaching the tricks wasn't too hard. The key is rewarding for even the smallest attempts that may only slightly resemble what you want in the end, and taking it by small steps. For example, for the trick with the ball, first we just noticed that she likes to fling the ball around, so she would pick it up sometimes herself, just to play. So every time she picked it up she would get a reward. So then she would pick it up and drop it repeatedly to get treats. The next step was to get her to hold it longer, so then the treats came only when she held the ball slightly longer than usually, that eventually taught her to pick it up and hold the ball for ~5 seconds. Then I would bring the glass right under the ball when she held it, and if she let go of it and it dropped in the glass, I would give a reward. Eventually she got the idea But it can get frustrating for her if she doesn't get it and isn't getting rewarded, so sometimes you have to give a reward even when she didn't do exactly as you want (eg. dropped the ball beside the glass, she had trouble coordinating the movements of the ball in her beak at first). Otherwise if she isn't getting it and not getting any reward she just gets cranky and nippy. The spinning trick was much easier and faster, first I target trained her with a drinking straw, so she knew to follow it around, then using the straw I would lead her in circles, then it turned into me holding the straw above her head and she would spin around on her own.

Now.. I'm not sure how to teach her to give kisses on command, lol, maybe you could tell us how you taught Tsuka to do it? Galileo doesn't really give "kisses" but only kind of preens our faces sometimes. She likes to gently (or sometimes not too gently) pick and lick at anything on the skin, like birthmarks, and my bf's facial stubble lol I think she sometimes decides my lips are a foreign object on my face and tries to "pick" them off lol (ouch!)

[Casey]

for tsuka's kisses he learned on his own. i would say kisses and kiss his beak. eventually he'd touch his beak to my lip when i said kisses. then he started making kissy noises when he kissed. now he says kisses then makes kissy noises and tells himself hes a good boy lol he will give dally kisses too lol
but hes a boy so he says things a lot lol all he accepts as a reward is scritches lol he just did it himself.
i may try something with tsuka when he is in a good mood.
to teach galileo, she has interest in touching skin. perhaps target training would work with her since she responds well to it

[Casey]

its a bit hard to tell but it looks like she has solid yellow patches on the back of her head. in the videos. can you take a clear photo of her beak (side view) and back of her head?

[redqueen]

Here is the side of his beak

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