When Junior (pictured above) is feeling especially friendly and sweet, he climbs onto my lap and starts making kissy noises. Why does he do that? Well, he makes the kissy noises because I kiss him when I cuddle him. But he climbs onto my lap because of one thing: he knows there's a 100% chance he'll be scratched and cuddled there.

The first challenge is to get your bird onto your lap at all. But it's not such a vain goal; once your bird has learned that he or she can't just climb onto your shoulder at any time, your bird will be more comfortable not being on the highest perch all the time.

1. Get your bird to sit on your arm, with your arm in your lap.
2. Get your bird to step down onto your leg, even if you have to do it by dumping your bird off of your arm
3. Always cuddle the bird on your lap!
4. Stop cuddling the bird on your arm.
5. Repeat

After a couple of weeks of this, any bird will know that the lap is a good place to sit, and go there voluntarily.