Parrots Fly at the Gym

[Michael]

Parrots Fly at the Gym

Kili & Truman flew in a large high school gym for the first time. Check out the story and video of the birds flying free and on command.

[marie83]

Thats awesome seeing them fly like that. Bet they were quiet once you got them home though

[Michael]

Yes! That was the best part. They still had an hour till bedtime when we got back and they were both dead silent. I wanted to make a recording of it so I could listen to it and enjoy it every night instead of Truman's usual screaming! They were absolutely spent!

[Mona]

Hi Michael:

I just got a chance to see your video although I couldn't have the sound on here. That does look like a great fly space! It should be alot of fun. How often do you get to use of it?

The only caveat that I would consider IF you ever have others join you...I'm not worried about your birds because they look very window savvy, but other birds might hit those large windows. We had a pionus that used to fly with us that was an incredible flyer. She would fly dozens of flyabouts around the building but she just didn't seem able to learn windows. She always tried to fly through windows. We had one very frightening and close call but fortunately, she was in such good physical shape she recovered fine. A bird that is in good physical shape is much more likely to survive a collision than one that is not....still not something you ever want to go through.

Other than that, it's a great space for big flyabouts. Higher ceilings can be inconvenient if a bird flies up there, but like you wrote, it can be worked around. If we had a bird that wouldn't come down in the time we needed to have them down (some we used to let just hang until they decided to come down) we would resort to using helium balloons (we didn't have a long perch like you described) We would use the balloons as an aversive. Not recommended but sometimes, you have to be creative and resourceful. It didn't happen often in the 10 years we flew. Most of the time, they were new birds that weren't as well socialized and just preferred to sit high up and watch what was going on. Greys were particularly prone to that. They aren't very "touchy, feely" birds.

As you know, we did this for 10 years, in early years three times a week and later years, twice a month. It is definitely worthwhile and wholly recommended. It is after all, what the birds were born to do.

Very exciting and have fun!

Mona

[friend2parrots]

it was delightful to watch Kili and Truman flying around everywhere like that. They looked like they were having so much fun.

[purringparrot]

That looks like so much fun for them. I noticed that Truman does some zigzaging like Jupiter does too. Kili looks like a little green missle!

[Michael]

Have you ever flown Jupiter outside or in a large space?

[rebcart]

Wonderful video!

Got any plans for writing up a training guide for boomerang and at-will flights? I've got my GCC flying to me and to a stand on cue easily, but she doesn't seem take flight on her own unless she gets a fright, would love to get some suggestions for how to teach those.

[Michael]

I talked a bit about how I taught Boomerang to each of my parrots on my Parrot Wizard Seminar DVDs. I'm gonna leave it at that cause I think it's a tougher trick that out of the right context will make people create problems with their parrot.

As for "freeflight" it's something the birds choose to engage in. I would say the best thing you can do is to teach your parrot to recall and boomerang to you. Then in a large enough of a space, instinct and curiosity might take over and the bird goes and flies around. The first time it happens your heart will sink and you will panic. But then you'll realize your bird has it under control, is doing it on purpose, and is even enjoying it. I realized this for the first time when I was flying Kili in the school theater. There are numerous articles and videos about that. If you go through those (I highly recommend seeing all of them to see the progress), I think there is footage of her just flying around. As long as that "flying around" culminates with coming to me, it's all good!

My birds are so well trained that they stay on their perches until called and wouldn't just go freefly on their own. However, if I give them permission, they go and fly around and come back to me when I call or they feel like it. Basically I just toss them off my hand into the abyss saying "go fly" and they go enjoy themselves for a bit.