My grandfather(when I was a baby)used to whistle and his 2 birds would come to their cage, or they would come to him and land on him...how did he do that? My 4 birds freak out if I try to touch them outside of the cage, if I even get too close they all fly away. They are all finger trained, and are fine alone with me, but it is like when they are together, they all agree that I am enemy #1, and I am so afraid if one of them (god forbid) got outside, they'd never come down to me....so, do any of you know how he might have trained them to come to him? Anyone?

What kind of birds was it?

They were green parakeets..not sure if they were budgies exactly but parakeets, yes.

Thats pretty amazing that they would fly to him. Maybe he wistled one time and one flew over to investigate and he gave it a treat so the bird associated whistling and treats?

I'm sure that Caribbean mum used a whistle to get her boys back in the cage, I've not seen her on here for a while but you could PM her and see how she trained them!
Good luck

Here's the thread from Carribean mom. It has a movie clip with her whistling her boys to bed!! A must see

http://www.wineintro.com/forum/ubbthread...3685#Post333685

I've started training Levi to come to me when I do a certain whistle.First I worked with him perched on my finger and would hold my other hand just a few inches away and said Jump and did a 2 tone whistle(high note,low note). Whenever he did it I would sound all happy and Goood Boy! Gooood job!!! I guess by my tone he knew he did something cool and he caught on really fast.Then I did it when he was on top of his cage-just 5-6 inches away-whistle-and from there I just kept moving further away and holding my arm out. He knows what the whistle means and does it quite often..but of course he doesn't do it EVERY time on command. It's more like IF and WHEN HE wants to.
So anyway I guess as with anything you want to teach them you need patience, and repeat repeat repeat. And of course REWARD be it treats or just excited Good jobs and "pat on the backs" I think they really respond to words and your excitement/approval of a job well done even more than treats.
Funny little story-my son wanted to see if he would come to him the same way, but he can't whistle. So he said woohoo in the same tone I use-Levi proceeded to say woohoo and zoomed toward my son, did a quick turn right in front of his face, raced back to his cage again and said Woohoo again bobbing up and down. It was sooo funny. We all started laughing. I guess he pulled a good one on my son LOL

LMAO!! That's brilliant.

They seem very responsive to whistle training, Bernard whistles at me but I haven't tried using it in training.... maybe he thinks he's training me!! lol

Do you always let them all out of the cage at once?

To train them to step up when outside the cage, you probably will need to work with them one at a time, ideally in a separate room so the one you're working with can't see the other birds.