New to Parakeets

Question
My wife and I fell in love with parakeets in general (never having owned any birds) but couldn't agree on the one we liked best.  So we got two - a muted blue/indigo bird and a yellow (with a few hints of green) one.  Not sure the sexes.  The blue one has three times made dives for the cage opening and successfully escaped the cage.... The first two she flew into everything, panicked and scared.  The last one she just found two or three perches and started watching us from up high.  She is, in the cage, much more skittish and untamed than the other one.  I've started with trying to tame the two (from Petsmart, not breeders), and the yellow seemed very calm and not very jumpy.  The blue has always edged away from us, lowered her head and eventually (if we at all persisted) flew to another perch, or out of the cage.  Since the most recent outbreak, blue has been calmer, but it seems that the yellow is suddenly very skittish and actually has been hiding.  It seems when one calms down, the other has trouble!

To summarize, we're very new to birds (I love lizards, and that's my area of comfort) and we're finding it hard to tame these two.  My wife and I both work during the day, and so we only have early mornings and then the evenings and weekends.  We are thinking of not clipping their wings at this point, only because we don't know that the stress of getting them out of their cage and to the vet would be good - I'd assume that would destroy what little trust we have already.  

Now we're just trying to slowly win them over, but our birds seem very different from the playful and curious birds described across the web.  They are very nervous, skittish and untrusting birds... are we going about this wrong, or is the process just a bit slow at first; are most pet-store bought birds this skittish to start?  Will they eventually turn into trusting and happy birds?  Thanks for your help!

Mike

Answer
Dear Michael,
thank you for your question.
Taming parakeets takes time, patience and millet spray. Store-bought birds are very often afraid of humans, many had bad experiences and panic when someone reaches into the cage.
Do the birds return to their cage? If so, let them fly and ofthem millet spray on your hand outside the cage. If you'd rather keep them inside the cage for know, offer the millet on your hand inside the cage, on the far side from the birds. But I recommend letting them fly at leat one the weekends, they enjoy flying very much.

Even very shy budgies will eventually come and eat from your hand, although it may take a while. Do this every evening or as often as you can manage and they will get used to you. Clicker traning is a great way of taming birds. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend joining the Bird Click list
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bird-Click/

I'm very much against clipping wings because I feel that birds are meant to fly. Clipping their wings is similar to putting a dog on a really short leash and then taking it for short walks sometimes, in my opinion. It's definitely possible to make a room safe for the budgies and if you offer them a budgie tree next to the cage, they will return to it and make it their "second home" instead of sitting somewhere you don't want them (book shelves ect.). Here's a picture of my trees, made from beech, oak and hazel branches
http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/alben/80/94180/1024_6366366161646635.jpg

I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer