Hey everyone, I'm a new member and have a question.

Aussie, my green and yellow budgie, has been living with me for 2 months now. She came to me young, so I think she may be around 4 months old. She's finger trained and understands the 'up' command when she's in her cage and has been coming out of her cage on my finger every day for a couple of weeks. Today she decided to fly around instead of just staying on my finger, and I couldn't get her back in her cage. She wouldn't listen to 'up' and kind of gave me a "you talking to me?" look. Eventually she flew back on her own. I'm a little nervous to take her out again in case there is an emergency and I can't get her back. Is this normal? Any suggestions?

BTW, I really don't know if Aussie is a he or a she yet.

Parakeets have their mood swings in general, and also go through cranky 'teenage' times as they approach puberty. So it may be that your keet is becoming a teenager If it was just a one time thing I wouldn't worry too much. But if you take her out daily for say 2 weeks and every time it becomes a struggle of wills, I'd go back to the finger training part and help her remember that she needs to listen to you

Thanks Lisa, I thought that might be the case.

Most of the time Aussie is so sweet, but sometimes I think he's just being stubborn. This morning he was ok on my finger, but didn't let me get any where near the cage door to take him out. So maybe he was a little scared of his adventure in the wide wild world, a 10'x14' room, yesterday.

Yah it will just take time I guess! I am wondering why did you name her/him Aussie?

Well, Aussie is Austailian slang for Austrailian.

And since budgies originally came from Austrailia, and my bird is green and yellow, which is the color of the native budgies, I thought it would be cute.

I'm an Aussie too. But I've lived in the states for a long time.

Cool name mate!

Yup just take your time and let Aussie choose when to come out - parakeets are very smart and sometimes need time to feel comfortable with a given situation