Taming a budgie

Question
I have a budgie named Ernie who is almost a year old and he is tamed but you have to grab him to get out of his cage.How do I teach him to come out on my finger?

Answer
How big is the door on his cage? Some budgie cages have very small doors, so birds get frightened about coming out of the small door on a hand... so they will jump off.

Other times, birds don't know their step up command well enough.   Make sure that Ernie knows the "step up" command VERY well outside of the cage. Then you can work with him to step up to come out of the cage... when you put your hand in the cage, say "step up" (or "up" or the command you use to tell Ernie to step up onto your finger).

If you don't have much luck with this, I would recommend working with Ernie to go back inside his cage on your hand. Although this might not seem like much... having your hand in his cage and steping off of your hand inside his cage will help him learn to step up in the cage as well.

If Ernie is still really frightened of hands in his cage (keep in mind it can take weeks for a birds to completely tame down)... teach Ernie to step up onto a hand-held perch and then have him step up onto the perch to come out of the cage.

I hope this helps.

-Maggie