Notice the post title isn’t “skateboarding parrot”… that’s because we haven’t gotten to the part where he actually steps onto the board, BUT… he is beaking it, so at least he isn’t afraid anymore.

What’s going on? Well, I bought Stewie a little skateboard prop and I’m frickin excited! (Sorry for the poor quality pic, I’ll be replacing it as soon as I get a better shot of him.)

I’ve wanted a little Stewie-sized skateboard ever since I saw those adorable videos of skateboarding budiges – I just never could figure out where to find the prop.

Now that we have one we’re going to work on getting him to stand near it. The problem won’t be getting him used to the prop — he seems to be fine with it — the issue is that Stewie doesn’t like standing on flat surfaces (other than his cage top, which has bars).

So far we’ve been able to do all his tricks (retrieve, rings on peg, ball in cup, turn, wings up, etc) from a perch, but a skateboard is definitely going to require getting onto a table. This is where target training comes in. I’ve been asking him to step onto the table to touch the stick. Next I’ll be getting him to stay on the table longer and longer, as well as asking him to approach the skateboard and put his foot on it.

Stay tuned about our progress turning Stewie into a little feathered Tony Hawk.

I couldn’t find any photos under Creative Commons to include here, but there are some cute photos of skateboarding budgies/parakeets you can browse on Flickr , including a bunch by user Trieste Visier. Updated: Trieste Visier deleted the Flickr account, but photos of Trieste’s skateboarding budgies can now be found here: http://skateboardingbudgies.wordpress.com/

But you too can have a skateboarding parrot… err, parrot skateboard. Apparently they are pretty trendy toys. I saw a TON of them at Target, where I got Stewie’s, and they’ve got multipacks of the same Tech Deck miniature skateboards on Amazon. Buy one of these props for each of your small birds! 🙂