It's hard to believe, but she's coming to me like it's no big deal. It's so nice to see her in a happier and more friendly place. It's basically since I rearranged the living room.

Congrats! Somethings rearranging the environment with cage bound birds will make them feel overwhelmed with the new setting and try to go to something that they have known before the change and bond to it.

Emma is still doing surprisingly well. Even having her clipped last week didn't faze her! Right now, she is sitting on my knee, where she has been for about five minutes, and where she came on her volition. It is such a pleasure to see her apparently enjoying spending time with me.

She will come onto my hand if I hold it out to her, palm down, without any individual fingers extended toward her. I don't know if she will ever accept a finger as a perch, but it's okay. It doesn't really matter. Just now, as an experiment, I extended my forefinger to her, and she immediately jumped onto my forearm and up to my shoulder.

About a week and a half ago she laid 3 eggs. She stopped after I took her in to be clipped.

I am liking having the flour sack towel on the bottom of the cage. She doesn't chew it, and it's easy to clean. I change it every other day. When I have three or four dirty ones, I throw them into the washing machine, and they clean up nicely.

You might be able to get her to accept a single finger if you start offering your hand to her with the index finger just a little bit separated from the other fingers. Then work on gradually separating it more and more.

This is not uncommon at all! Many birds that are starting to trust hands will start with a full hand. They probably had bad experiences with one finger. I agree with Carolyn. That seems like good solid advice.

One thing you can probably do to get her used to a finger perch is gradually remove the fingers. Get her on to 3 fingers, then 2, and eventually, you can probably get her onto one finger.

Will she get on your hand if it's sideways? In that case, you can probably go from all fingers to one finger after she's on your hand. You can probably do this if she only accepts the hand while flat, and you slowly start to turn it sideways.

All good suggestions. Thanks!

I suspect that the reason so many birds are hand shy is because our hands move around so fast compared to the rest of us. Most of our body is relatively slow and stodgy, but our hands flutter around a lot and it's harder for the bird to predict what we're going to do with them. Holding the hand flat with all the fingers together probably makes it seem more blocky, like our other body parts.

Emma is so funny. She's happy to hop onto the back of my hand when she finds herself on the floor. But, when I get close to the cage, she is suddenly attempting to fly to the cage the second she thinks she can make it.

I don't think she's afraid of my hand. I think she's kind of like a little kid saying, "I'll do it MYSELF!"

She beak grinds and closes her eyes when I go over and talk to her, so she does enjoy attention.

I guess I would say that the relationship is mostly what she wants it to be, rather than what I want it to be. And, she's pretty happy that way. There is a limit in that I do have her clipped.

It's good that she's interacting with you, even though it's on her terms not yours.