[There's a nod, scratching under the blue bird's beak as it preens her hair. At least she'd been around before to be able to explain these things.]

You would be correct, yes. I presume you were given red and white balls, like all of us who arrive are given? Those balls, PokéBalls, are used to capture wild Pokémon so we can train them too. Your partner does the fighting, you do the catching by throwing those balls at the wild ones.