This past weekend I finally had a chance to start officially working on perch/recall flight with Mojo. He has had all of his flight feathers for a little while now but I haven't had a chance to really work with him yet. Up until now I have simply encouraged him to fly to his perch to start getting his strength and confidence in flying up.
This is by far my favorite thing to train so far! It took quite a lot of patience and repetitions before he finally realized what he was supposed to do but the work was definitely worth it! I used Mona's youtube video as an example to start http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOeUXMqk9K0 and Michael's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSwWNGJ_0Jk. Thanks for the videos Mona and Michael!
This video makes it look extremely simple, but Mojo just couldn't figure out that he was supposed to hop/fly to the next chair. As soon as the chairs were too far apart that he couldn't reach the next one with his beak he would refuse to try and I'd eventually move the chairs back together so he wouldn't get completely frustrated. The first time he flapped his wings going between chairs looked like an accident but I gave him a lot of praise for it. Once that first time was out of the way he was happily hopping between chairs after he realized what I was looking for. Then I moved the chairs about a foot apart and he eagerly flew to the next chair. Of course he isn't used to flying so he got winded fairly quickly so it was a short session. Later that day we tried again and he was doing so well that I called him to my hand instead of the chair. He hesitated a bit but then he finally flew to me! By the end of the weekend he was flying to me from his perch and flying to his perch when cued.
I feel a bit like a parent gushing about their toddler taking their first step, but I'm just so proud of my little boy!
What was your first experience with flight training like? What method did you use to encourage the first few flights?
Mojo was severely clipped when he came from the breeder (if he fell off of his perch he would fall like a stone) so I think this caused a severe lack of confidence and held him back a bit. Has anybody had experience flight training previously clipped birds and fully fledged birds? Does it make much of a difference when flight training?