Hi,
I am new to this forum and nice to see this post. I thought of sharing my experience and would like to take some help.
I adopted a male grey cockatiel in October 06 when he was 1 month old. As soon as I brought him home, I took him to the vet. They performed all required examinations and declared that he is a very healthy bird.
1. He is named as 'Abhi', which he likes very much.
2. I didn't like to have his wings clipped - so he is full flight.
3. We let him stay at least couple of hours in a day outside his cage. He flies around the living room couple of times and then would sit on our shoulders as long as he can. Or he jumps on the dining table or coffee table, when we eat and likes to eat what we eat(we're vegetarian).
4. We give him seeds and veggies. He loves seeds; but eats very little veggies
5. He always knows when my car enters the garage and starts calling me non-stop until I go to him and respond - which is so cute. When nobody is around in the living room, he will start calling until one of us turn to him - but this is not the case always, as he sits quietly as well and preens - In other words, he's NOT annoying anyone.
6. He jumps on our fingers instantly every time when we open the cage door and runs to our shoulders without issues.
The only problem is - we haven't tried to pick him / hold him in our hands even once so far. Now we would like to pick him gently, so that we can trim his long nails - but If I take my hand near his back, he flies away from me and comes back and sits on my shoulders. Once he sits on the soulder, it's impossible to get him back on my fingers as he refuses. If I try again, he tries to bite me (very gently - not a hard bite - just to disagree).
We want to pick him in our hands, so we an trim his long nails periodically. I searched several websites - most of them suggest clipping the wings - which we don't want to do.
Any advise is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Sundar.
