Stupid Terrible Mistake

[Pajarita]

YAAAYYYY!!! Now, please, please, please, allow his wings to grow so he can learn recall and come back to you when you call him! As you have seen, clipping does not really provide any safety at all!

[seagoatdeb]

YAY you got your baby back. If he was flighted he may have been able to make it back on his own.

I am so happy he got his parrot back, but around here any flighted escaped parrot uusually gets picked up by hawks or eagles. There is just too many of them. The baby wild quails who vary rarely fly here get picked off by dometic cats, very rarely by hawks or eagles.

[seagoatdeb]

YAAAYYYY!!! Now, please, please, please, allow his wings to grow so he can learn recall and come back to you when you call him! As you have seen, clipping does not really provide any safety at all!

Please do not listen to what Pajarita says untill you figure out your own area and what is the safest if escaped and what is best for your home. Make your own descision based on your own circumstances. you know the best.

[seagoatdeb]

I was right and the camera definitely worked. The little bugger had gone in the opposite direction and was found in someone's garden this morning.

I have decided that I hate long grass and my hubby can spend the weekend trying to mow it.

So happy you found him!!

[liz]

YAAAYYYY!!! Now, please, please, please, allow his wings to grow so he can learn recall and come back to you when you call him! As you have seen, clipping does not really provide any safety at all!

Please do not listen to what Pajarita says untill you figure out your own area and what is the safest if escaped and what is best for your home. Make your own descision based on your own circumstances. you know the best.

When my Myrtle got sucked out the front door by a big wind she was thrown around all over the yard. She was able to grab a twig on the top of my neighbors tree only because she was able to fly and fought the wind. Without flight she would probably have blown into another neighborhood and I would not have found her.
My heart was crushed watching my baby being flipped around all over the yard. Now if she wants to look out the door she gets behind my neck and holds on tight just to peak around. More often than not she hangs on the curtains to look out the window.

[Wolf]

So seagoatdeb, what are you saying? That it is better to be killed and eaten by a domestic cat than by a hawk or eagle? I have plenty of feral domestic cats where I live, mostly from the people who live in town driving out and dropping them off when they no longer want them and I have so many hawks and eagles that it is very normal for me to watch them land in my yard while I an sitting outside to eat their latest kill.

My birds do not go outside without protection, but they still have a better chance of surviving until I can get to them if they are flighted.

[seagoatdeb]

So seagoatdeb, what are you saying? That it is better to be killed and eaten by a domestic cat than by a hawk or eagle? I have plenty of feral domestic cats where I live, mostly from the people who live in town driving out and dropping them off when they no longer want them and I have so many hawks and eagles that it is very normal for me to watch them land in my yard while I an sitting outside to eat their latest kill.

My birds do not go outside without protection, but they still have a better chance of surviving until I can get to them if they are flighted.

Nope i am not saying that the quails are babys and the slowest are the ones that get picked off. The quails have become city dwellers and so the cats learn the patterns of the quails. The strongest survive. On the ground hiding, is safer in this little part of the world.

I always have a hand over my parrot if on my shoulder when I answer the door just in case of something startling . But anyone can have a day where they either forget or something unexpected scares your parrot, or you could even trip. Because his parrot did not go far, he was able to reclaim it. So the clipping may have been in fact what saved the parrots life.

I watched a hawk swoop up a cockatiel male who was high in a tree while my friend and i watched and tried to coax him down.....It is a horror I wont ever forget. My friend sobbed for weeks for her parrot. I also saw a post in a facebook group in my area about someone who saw a Senegal in a tree and got a ladder and tried to coax it down and they saw it picked up by a hawk, That post was followed by a chain of people condeming people who do not protect their parrots by clipping them. In that group I said that there are benefits to not clipping too and everyone should have their own choice. I lost my own sweet Lutino fully flighted female when she was startled and hit the wall when startled so hard and broke her neck. I still miss her so much.

This group tends to tell everyone that not clipping is better, and I have seen posts in this group condeming people who clip. When I was a new member, eveyone piled up on me condeming me for saying that clipping should be a choice. I am saying the same thing here, I said then, there can be benefits to modest clipping and everyone should have their own choice. Even when you have recall training a scared parrot may not come back. There are many more fully flighted parots lost in the wild. I believe in the right for everyone to make their own choice.

I have see very few posts about moderate clips and it seems that vast mjority of people arguing on both sides of the clipping issue are either talking about severe clips or no clips. There are very few middle of the road people. People are so back and white on this issue. Until there is finally a forum who will look at modest clipping as an option instead of being so black and white about it, people will never feel free to talk in a group where most will go against what they believe so they dont post and they dont get help.

I am very happy to see this parrot back in a loving home, and I am not going to tell him to clip or not clip his parrot. Its his choice.

There is no one who can tell anyone the best way to have their parrot because they do not live in that situation. Both flighted and unflighted parrots can get injured if they get out. I either dont clip or do a very modest clip but that is my choice and it is based on the conditions of the time. We all get to have our own choice dont we?

[liz]

We can't tell another what to do. In this forum we do tell others what we think about things and hope that it works out for the other's kid.

Years ago I found a cage door open with yellow feathers everywhere. I really thought that Tammy had been eaten by one of the cats. She had been attacked and transported outside. I found her holding onto the top of the chicken coop. Because she could fly she was able to get off the ground and survive the night. (The coop was the closest thing she could find to a cage and was trying to get in it.)

[Wolf]

I am very much into freedom of choice in just about everything. I myself do not believe that most clipping is done in the parrots best interests and my guide line is that unless there is a valid medical reason for clipping a parrots wings that one should probably not do it. But you clip your birds and because you are giving your information with the intent of helping the owner come to terms with their bird, I would never tell anyone to not listen to you, even though I don't always agree with you. I do believe that the person needs to look at their circumstances and make up their own mind and not just follow by rote and if they are going to make any kind of informed choice then they must listen to all sides of the topic.

Many of the parrots that get snatched by cats are the result that they do not see cats as a threat and this is partly because many of them live with cats in their homes and also partly due to the fact that for most of them there are no cats in their natural habitat. Of the ones that get grabbed by hawks, I would think that it is once again because they don't know that the hawk is a predator since most of them have never even seen one in their role as birds in our homes, if they did know that the hawk would eat them the would be more alert to them and would not perch in such an open place in the tree. I really think that the only real factor that the ability to fly or not plays in most of these deaths is that the bird that can't fly is slow and awkward when on the ground and is not fast enough to escape. So not clipping the bird would help the bird with predators of this nature, but it does not address what to do about the hawk who is also a fast and superb flier. But being able to move faster would still be more of a benefit than not, and I say this last, not as someone who has birds but as a very experienced hunter.

[Pajarita]

Seagoatdeb, if the bird had been flighted and trained to recall, it would have flown to a higher perch thus the owner would have been able to see it (as it was, it fell to ground because of the clip and was covered by the high grass) but, even if it hadn't, it would have, most likely, come back to its owner when called. A bird that was not trained to come to its owner is very difficult to 'coax' out of a high perch but you have a much better chance with a trained one.

Predators are always a danger, of course, but that's precisely why it's better for the bird if it can fly and knows recall - because a grounded bird is a sitting duck for both ground and air predators.