Being me, I'm going to focus on "he would eat from my hand if he were on the perch and didn't find a place to fly away". If he would eat from your hand in any situation, that pleases me (settle down Claire) because it tells me he understands eating from your hand. Nice!
I'm sure Claire already told you this, but I haven't been paying *closest* attention, and this is my customization of the idea:
Let the bird out to that perch he likes so much so you can mess around in the cage without upsetting him.
Open the door and place a perch in a spot that would make it easy for the bird to sit there and reach to your hand if you just put it slightly in through the open door. Make the perch as high as you can and still allow enough room for a bird to go from the perch to your hand to out of the cage (and the same in reverse) comfortably. I found that situation to be very useful, and you won't have to change things when (if) you start bringing the bird in and out of the cage on your hand.
Now place a food cup where the perch mounts to the cage in such a way you can drop a treat into it through the bars or by reaching just slightly into the cage.
With your food cup and perch set this way, you can start dropping the treat in the cup and walking away as Claire surely suggested. You can also, when the time is right, stand by the cage eating treats yourself and dropping them into the cup as well. Don't stand close until the bird will tolerate it, but eventually you will be able to stand there and share a meal of treats, and that is a wonderful thing on it's own, but it will help build that acceptance from your bird. I've been placing treats for my shy bird, Sinbad, and he comes to take them as I stand near. Sometimes he is too eager and takes them from my fingers before I let them go if I move slowly. It should be noted that Sinbad has recently got some extra incentive to hurry up and take the treat because his friend Rocky is very quick to hustle over and steal that treat. I think that helps just the tiniest bit. Sinbad is not yet able to tolerate my hand going towards him if my hand is also inside the cage, but my next goal is for him to approach the treat cup before my hand completely leaves the cage. Life is busy, so this will take a long time for me, but for someone more attentive, would likely not take so long, especially in a previously tame bird.
Claire, note this - when I hear the bird used to lie on his back and accept head pets, and accepts head pets now when "stranded" on the hand, I am wondering do you think he was previously trained with flooding and learned helplessness? And when I think that, I wonder if there are any danger areas where he might not react as expected to how we might train a "normal" bird. On the one hand, I feel all living things respond to operant conditioning, but on the other hand, I feel thinking creatures many times interpret stimuli under the influence of what is already learned. SO, is there any thinking that there should be a special approach to training the bird that previously learned helplessness? (Let me just drop that complicated note and go sip my coffee........)
![Big Grin :D](./images/smilies/4.gif)