Then he gets real quiet, as if he thinks I'll forget he's there, and tries to go to sleep. I ask a couple of times, and sure enough I hear a little bird giggling somewhere around my appendix. I bring him out and pop him into his cage, turn off the light, and close the cage door. He glubs me. And it's all worth it.
Birds love repetition.
So the trick is to set up good habits from the time they are babies. Not to say you can't get them into good habits at any age, it just takes longer. That's understandable when you consider you are asking them to break an existing habit. Birds tend to look at situations after the fact and determine if all went well. If Yes , they are more apt to let you repeat it again.