The Australian birds ('tiels and budgies) are ground feeders in the
wild, and i've the following technique to help expand their diet to include 
pellets and other foods. 

I drop pellets/whatever on their clean, paper-towel covered floor, and make a
"model bird" by walking my hand around on its index and middle fingers.
Occasionally the model bird stops to eat some pellets off the
"ground" with its
"beak" (my thumb and index finger) and the subject bird usually
picks up the
motions and digs in.  I keep the new food available on the ground for a while to
give the birds ample opportunity to follow their natural foraging instinct.

This technique presumes that your bird is friendly with Mr. Hand, so keep
working on the step-up command with them too.  Good luck. 

In a previous post, "Lepidina"  said:

>Hi all,
>
>I've got a pair of very stubborn parakeets that won't eat anything but
>seed. The first two I had converted over to pellets pretty easily and
>would eat a variety of veggies. These two snub their noses at
>everything other than their junk seed and one is starting to show signs
>of vitamin A deficiency. They're both about a year old and I got them
>as a birthday present when they were about 4 months old so they were
>already on seed.
>
>Any help? Mixing the seed doesn't seem to work. If I take it all out
>and put in the pellets, they won't eat. They ignore any other food like
>cereal, cooked spaghetti (I used to have a 'keet that would beg for
>spaghetti), veggies, etc. I've tried the Nutraberries but I have to
>crumble them up for them to eat it. The Pretty Bird pellets weren't a
>big hit and they currently are trying the Roundybush crumbles. *sigh*
>
>And how long does it take to hand tame a parakeet? These guys are
>rather resistant to that as well, little buggers.
>Thanks in advance for the help!
>
>Deb

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