My bird took his first outdoor flight today!

[frnchjeep]

You're brave. My amazons don't go outside unless they're clipped. Mine seem freaked out when outside, almost like they are insecure without anything over their head.

Big-g, I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm. Kinda like a car without a steering wheel.

 

[Red Devil]

i would not make a habit of doing this.. they don't always come back.. there are no quarentees and it would be a death sentence if he didn't return... flying around in your house is one thing but this to me is a big gamble.. i would not gamble.

 

[Piscine]

i would not make a habit of doing this.. they don't always come back.. there are no quarentees and it would be a death sentence if he didn't return... flying around in your house is one thing but this to me is a big gamble.. i would not gamble.

I agree....

 

[lungfishlover]

i think its great you macaw can fly but id be worried it wouldnt return...

 

[Neervana]

When i first got my bird, he didn't know how to fly. I've taken him outside plenty of times, no desire to fly. I've even tried to get him to fly, and he didn't.


Well, today him and I were outside, and we were selling a bird cage to a woman. Houdini was being a showoff as usual, and the woman wanted to see his wings spread wide. I held him up in the air on my wrist, he spreads his wings... and takes off!

I was pretty freaked out. He went up into the air, acted a little freaked out at first... he circled around the house and me, and I said, "Houdini, get back here!" I held out my arm and he landed on it. a lot of my neighbors were out, and they all thought it was amazing.


It would be fun to do free flying things with him. If he is going to fly, i want him to be as good at it as possible, and know to always come to me.

lol thats so cute! congrats!

 

[Carefree_Dude]

there are lots of areas around me that are big open fields with no trees. if i take him to those places, i don't have to worry about losing him. my bird can't fly around my house. his wingspan is too big for the narrow corridors.

 

[VLDesign]

Well ok then.. When your bird takes off and doesn't come back.. Please dont come here and expect us to not say we told you so.

 

[Red Devil]

Here is a interesting read expressing both sides of the issue...I FREE FLY my parrots outside. Why? Because I believe it is healthier for them, both physically and mentally, and because I thoroughly enjoy seeing them grow and live to their fullest potential.
I also believe that I can offer them this important aspect of their lives with minimal risks. I truly believe that I can train my birds to fly in a way that is as safe or safer than the life they would live with clipped wings.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif]Flash, a two-year-old flying mitred conure belonging to bird trainer Chris Biro, fetches a whiffle ball.[/FONT]
Flying Janis
I trained my first fully flighted parrot, a green-winged macaw named Janis, in 1993. My training techniques at the time were crude - I essentially flew her from a perch to me and back again. But they worked anyway because Janis was so young. She was only 12 weeks old when I got her from a breeder friend.
Even though I was making my living doing educational parrot shows, I had little contact with the world of aviculture back then. I had no idea where to find information about training birds to fly outdoors (as it turned out, there wasn't much).
So I made it up as best I could, learning by trial and error. With each mistake, I learned not only valuable lessons about training, but I also learned an awful lot about recovering loose birds.
When I began asking around on the Internet about keeping flighted parrots, it quickly became clear that anyone who claimed to know anything about caring for parrots adamantly opposed the idea.
Many told me, "I love my parrot too much to risk losing it," implying that I did not love my birds since I was willing to risk losing them. After one such Internet confrontation that resulted in my being unsubscribed from a prominent e-mail list, someone suggested I start my own list.
In 1999 I launched the Freeflight list at Yahoogroups.com. It has become a valuable source of information and support for people who wish to live with and train fully flighted birds.
Today I have nine parrots that I regularly fly outdoors at home and at fairgrounds across the country. After logging thousands of hours of successful freeflight time, last summer I lost my first bird. While performing in northern California, my very precious Senegal, Beamer, died when he flew into a window of a building off the fairgrounds.
What parrots need
So why would someone take such risks with their parrots? To get to the answer we must first answer some questions about parrots' needs.
Picture for a moment two species of animals, a slug and a hummingbird, say. The slug moves so slowly it spends its entire life inside a 50-foot area. The hummingbird travels so far and so fast that during its lifetime it sees several continents.
Now ponder how nature has provided these two animals with a different set of mental abilities and requirements. Even if they could switch lifestyles, would they be mentally comfortable living as the other? Could the slug adjust to making high-speed maneuvers or navigating across oceans? Could the hummingbird adjust to traveling at a snail's pace or living two dimensionally at ground level?
Nature has shaped parrots into creatures of incredible intelligence on par with monkeys, dolphins and whales. Wouldn't this high level of intelligence require adequate environmental stimulus to keep functional or from developing severe mental disorders, such as feather plucking?
Let's start with the sense of mobility that flying gives a bird. Can we simply turn this element off without causing serious side effects? The average parrot owner has never seen just how active and mobile a fully flighted parrot really is. My flyers are on the go all day long! They fly from this tree to that one and chase each other in circles around the house and orchard.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif]Cosmo, a four-year-old blue-and-gold macaw, flies to Biro's outstretched hand.
My free flyers are like finely tuned Olympic athletes who seem to relish the physical act of flying. As they dodge and weave between branches and over fences and around trees and buildings, it is as if they are going to the gym for a routine workout. The longer they have been caged, the more vigorously they fly when let loose the next time.
Scientific research has shown that a bird's respiratory system is so specifically designed for flying that it does not function at capacity until engaged in flight. If their bodies are so attuned to flying, is it not possible that their minds are equally attuned? We know that a high level of physical and mental fitness is important to the wild parrot’s survival. I suspect being physically fit would also keep a pet parrot mentally fit.
How important is fun to bird? It is immediately obvious to anyone who observes flighted parrots in action that they are extremely playful creatures. My birds get such apparent joy from playful flying that the first comments from visitors usually refer to how much fun the birds are having. It usually takes people a few minutes to regain control of their wide-open mouths as they watch the birds dodging and darting, twisting and falling, racing and gliding about the property.
How completely serious and serene the average clipped parrot seems by comparison. How does such a dramatic change affect their well-being and mental fitness?

When not racing, my flighted birds are hanging by a toe playing "king of the twig" or playing with me. Several of my conures and macaws love the elastic tie I use to keep my long hair in a pony tail.
My clipped birds, on the other hand, must wait until I let them out of their cages. It's obvious who gets to play with me more. We know how children react to one child getting more attention than another. Do my clipped birds feel like they are second string? I often feel sad for my birds I have not yet been able to grant the freedom of flight.
Better communicators
Flying also gives birds the chance to vocalize appropriately. For the flighted parrot, keeping in contact with the other members of the flock is crucial to survival. Contact calls serve as homing beacons to keep the group oriented and together, less susceptible to predators.
I cannot help but wonder if this is also a part of how birds locate mates in the wild. Yell loudly enough and someone of the right interest might come investigate you as a potential mate option, who knows? How frustrating would it be to spend your life alone in a cage yelling in hopes of attracting a mate, but never getting a response?
By comparison, my flighted parrots seem to have more advanced communication skills than my grounded birds. My flyers use their voices and calls in a completely different way, reserving their loudest calls for specific purposes, such as signaling immediate danger. Could this difference also have an effect on the mental fitness of a clipped parrot?
Managing the hawk threat
In fact, I wonder if the ability to fly well would ease another psychological problem pet parrots may have: fear of physical harm. Parrots have an instinctive fear of objects that slowly circle or fly across the sky. I have watched way too many domestically raised and clipped birds react to the slow circling hawk or airplane visible off in the distance through a nearby window.
What effect does it have on the pet parrot to have these fears but not be able to respond appropriately? Is it possible that each time they see such a threat they feel fear and helplessness?
The free-flying parrot, on the other hand, knows it can effectively deal with such threats as long as it stays in top physical fitness, practices evasive maneuvers, and remains mentally alert. I have watched my flyers successfully out-fly hawk attacks on almost a dozen occasions. Today when they see a hawk, they often take off screaming wildly and circle in the direction of the hawk, many times causing it to leave the area.
Can these fears be eliminated in the pet parrot's life? I suspect not. To lose the means of building confidence over these fears could be difficult to live with at minimum and could ultimately create serious mental disorders.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif]Janis the green-wing macaw was the first bird Chris Biro taught how to free fly. [/FONT]
Fear of falling
In a less dramatic example, it is obvious to me that none of my free-flyers have the slightest fear of falling. They know that they can just thrust open their wings and fly to safety.
My clipped birds are very meticulous and careful climbers. They often take great effort to climb where other parrots would simply hop, suggesting they have in fact developed a strong sense of the fear of falling.
How many times have we seen a clipped parrot startle and leap from a perch only to fall like a rock? Injuries to the keel, legs or feet must hurt. Yet instinctive responses to fear often cause birds to leap anyway. What kind of psychological conflicts does this create for them?
But most people don't think about these issues. Usually, when debating whether to fly or not, people talk about the dangers of hawks, cars, neighbors, toilets, windows, open doors, hot stoves and flying into walls. Hawks are probably the only item on the list that have any real significance.
For instance, I have never seen my guys even come close to a car - but I have watched them successfully maneuver right through the spokes of a moving Ferris Wheel. It's certainly possible for a flighted parrot to fall into an open toilet or crash into wall or closed window, but not probable for a truly skilled flyer. Usually it's a problem only for novice flyers, and they are flying so slowly they are not seriously injured.
If a flight-trained parrot escapes out an open door or window, it will be far easier to recover than any partially clipped parrot. In fact, the latter is the hardest to recover. It is not as good at controlling its direction and speed and is in poor physical condition compared to regular flyers. It has no idea what "Come here Polly" means, whereas the flight-trained parrot understands the meaning of a recall signal, at least to some degree.
I wonder how many accidents have happened specifically because a bird could not fly. The only other bird that I have lost doing my bird show was also a Senegal parrot, named Bandit. Bandit was killed in front of a live audience when a stray dog ran up to his perch. Bandit tried to fly to safety but he was clipped. Instead I had to pry poor Bandit out of the mouth of this Boston terrier. He died in my hands a few moments later. Had Bandit been able to fly, he would have survived that experience.
The reality is that clipping a bird's wings has its own set of risks. All parrot owners must evaluate their conditions and skill levels and decide what is best for their birds.
Train - or clip
So how easy is it to teach a parrot free fly? It varies with the individual bird and owner. I do know one thing: Training is not an option; it's required. Just letting the bird's feathers grow out is not enough. In fact, a bird with full wings and no training will likely eventually become a lost bird. I believe that every bird owner should either train or clip. Even indoor flyers, in my opinion, should be trained as if they are expected to be flown outdoors someday - because you never know when they might escape.
I also believe that, even though I think free flight is the ultimate in the pet parrot experience, not every pet parrot nor every parrot owner is a candidate for training.
For one thing, I generally discourage people from attempting to train adult birds for flying outside. I train only babies, just before they are weaned, and I choose my students carefully. Many adult birds can learn to fly, but they learn much more slowly, which exposes them to more risks. It can take an adult bird months to learn what a fledgling picks up in a matter of minutes.
For most pet parrots, I would much rather see their owners build large outdoor flights or encourage their birds to fly indoors, especially the smaller birds, which can actually gain some benefit. It's tough for larger birds such as macaws to accomplish much flying indoors. By going unclipped, they might actually lose more of their freedom than they gain.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of freeflight is how it forces one to become a better bird trainer. One cannot live with a flighted parrot by the same rules that one lives with a clipped parrot. It is all too easy to force a clipped parrot to endure all manner of injustices that the flighted bird would simply fly away from to avoid.
Suddenly, the owner must be more mindful of how interactions will affect the attitude of the parrot. No longer are the human's needs or interests necessarily paramount. Instead, cohabitation becomes a game played by equals. In truth, the clipped pet parrot would benefit greatly from such improved relations, too.
I see better training as the greatest gift that freeflight proponents, as a group, have to offer aviculture today. When you free fly, you simply have no choice but to learn better handling methods, such as clicker training (a whole other article) - or you lose your bird. Just as in the dog community, we only have to learn to apply what science has already discovered about positive reinforcement.
No going back
Most people who have successfully trained a flighted parrot say there is no going back. The freeflight experience is truly one of those "must do to really understand" experiences.
In the end, I believe that owners of freeflighted parrots will have more to offer than an improved life for their own birds or themselves. I believe that freeflight trainers can eventually raise the standards of how all parrots are trained and kept.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif]About the author[/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chis Biro lives in Amboy, Wash., where he currently is raising and training thick-billed parrots to free fly with the goal of reintroduction into their native Arizona. Biro has been doing The Pirate's Parrot Show since 1990. He also is owner and founder of Nature's Choice Essentials bird foods, including Foundation Formula Pellets and Dynamo Sprouts.[/FONT]

I FIND CHOOSING to allow a bird to fly outdoors to be tremendously problematic. Allowing birds to fly free in a non-native environment is dangerous both for the birds and for birds native to the locale.
Native raptors are especially adept at picking off cockatoos and cockatiels. John Vincent, an experienced and accomplished trainer who was practicing controlled outdoor flight last year in Colorado lost a beloved cockatoo in the blink of an eye.
I nearly lost an umbrella cockatoo right in front of my face to a Swainson's hawk when trying to recapture a cockatoo on the grounds of St. Thomas Seminary in Colorado in 1993. (I wrote about it in Guide to Companion Parrot Behavior, The Slightly Un-Saintly Bernadette, pages 212-216). In mid-dive, the hawk apparently changed its mind about snatching up the large male umbrella cockatoo, which I was using to try to lure the escaped bird.
It was a good thing, as I was huffing and puffing trying to outrun the dive (it was something like the scene from Gorillas in the Mist, when Dian Fossey didn't have the wind to get to Digit in time).
Consequently, I have never again used a bird outside the protection of a cage when trying to lure down a lost bird.
Bernadette, the bird we had been hired by the Catholic Church to rescue, fared much worse from a hawk encounter. According to the seminarians, she had been caught at least once by a raptor, and one of her legs had been pulled so far out of socket that when it was released, it snapped inside her body and grew adhered to the inside of the pelvis bone.
As a result, Bernadette required a femoral resection, a very invasive surgery. In her case, it required amputating the head of the femor and attempting to construct a pocket of muscle to hold the leg in place. It sort of worked. Bernadette can almost walk. Fortunately, she was placed in a home that could safely accommodate a flighted bird.
Flying parrots and the law
Additionally, it is illegal to introduce non-native species into the wild in the U.S. In California, you need a permit to free fly a parrot. While most other Wildlife Department agents take a hands-off approach to those who allow their birds to fly outdoors temporarily and then return to live indoors, intentionally not recovering a non-native species is considered similar to abandoning a dog.
The animal must learn to find food, water, and shelter, and in some habitats they do, especially Quaker parrots which have naturalized in quite a few parts of the U.S., to the chagrin of power companies in Texas, Florida, New York, and other states.
It is because Quakers are so good at adapting to the wild that ten states now make even possession of a Quaker parrot in their states illegal. The reason is some authorities still fear that nonnative species will drive out native birds. Biologists have debunked this theory concerning the Quaker - like pigeons, Quakers prefer living near people and nesting on manmade objects, so they do not seem to have an effect on native birds.
However, fear of disease is another reason authorities dislike nonnative birds, and this concern may have more merit. For instance, Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease appeared in wild populations of African parrots after the release of infected captive birds.
At any rate, our authorities officially do not appreciate free-flying parrots, and if we parrot owners flaunt the law, who knows whether other species would also be banned. Currently, it can be very problematic trying to transport a Quaker parrot from one part of the country to another if you're trying to respect the laws (and the individual bird's life, since they can be seized and killed if found in a state where they are not allowed).

Apparently, non-native species are more commonly tolerated outdoors in Europe and the UK, but not without tragic consequences.
For example, in England only a few years ago one particular cockatoo kept getting out so much and causing so much havoc in the town where it lived that the authorities required the owner to trim its wings. Unfortunately, further measures to contain the bird were unsuccessful. The bird was so accustomed to getting out and so focused on running around town that it was run over by a car!
Should birds fly indoors?
What about flight for the indoor bird? I think it endangers, rather than improves, a companion bird's ability to survive.
Why? First, a little historical perspective, again based on our European friends' experiences. When I first began working in companion parrot behavior management in the late 1970's, many of the available books showed a preference for allowing pet birds to remain flighted.
However, they were written by Europeans and reflected the way birds were and, to a certain extent, still are, kept in some parts of Europe. British and European aviculturists have a history of bird breeding by landed classes, who traditionally kept groups of birds in outdoor aviaries.
Custom-designed outdoor aviaries can safely accommodate flight. But we in the U.S. have two problems. One is that most of us don't have a piece of property large enough for a roomy flight. Nor do most of us live in a setting in which neighbors would not be bothered by the noise generated by outdoor birds (which are often louder than indoor pets).
Another problem is that since 1998, the U.S. has been affected by the mosquito-born illness West Nile virus, which is expected to appear in all 48 of the contiguous United States in the summer of 2003. Bird owners are being encouraged to keep our birds indoors to protect them from mosquitoes.
All of this combines to mean that parrots in the United States are more likely to occupy human living spaces rather than custom-designed outdoor aviaries. And a flying bird inside the typical American home is not safe.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif]Pet birds should be clipped, says bird behavior expert Mattie Sue Athan.[/FONT]
When birds live as companions in the home, they are more intimately involved in human lifestyles. There are often multiple individuals in the home with differing amounts of involvement with the bird. Spouses, teenagers, children, and other pets come and go.
Ceiling fans, a frequent source of injury or death to flying indoor birds, are common in the U.S. Cooking and living areas often adjoin, leading to many accidents in which free flying birds are horribly burned. Kitchen fumes more easily waft into living areas, making polytetrafluorethylene fume deaths common in the U.S.
Drowning in toilets, fountains, aquariums, and even glasses of water are common causes of death among flighted indoor birds in the U.S.
As companion parrot ownership by ordinary people grew in the United States during the 1980's, the "new" American ways grew in acceptance. One of those points of view was that in the United States, with our American lifestyle, trimming wing feathers is a safer, more humane way to ensure a companion parrot's survival.
I respectfully suggest that in human homes, flight is not only unnecessary, it is unsafe and undesirable from both an ecological and a behavioral point of view.
The purpose of flight
There is no argument that a little flying at the beginning of life helps a young parrot to gain coordination and confidence, but once a companion parrot matures, is flight helpful or detrimental to safe and happy adjustment as a companion?
Unfortunately, one of the most compelling uses of flight involves the fight-or-flight response, an instinctual reaction in which a bird quickly leaves a situation of danger. A flighted bird cannot help but fly when startled. This is unsafe in contained areas and fraught with dangers in a typical human home.
When fear kicks in, birds fly in a panicked state, and even birds that are well-acclimated in a long-time home can suffer accidents that would not have occurred if they did not fly. In human homes, allowing a bird to fly increases the probability that it will be injured or killed, the opposite of what a survival mechanism is "supposed" to do.
Those who have not provided veterinary care for birds injured in in-home accidents may be unfamiliar with the many horrible tragedies that can occur to flying birds indoors. Avian veterinarians, who see devastating injuries on a daily basis, are extremely vocal in pushing companion parrot caretakers not to allow flight in the home, as even older birds that are very familiar with their indoor environment can be killed or maimed when stimulated to fly.

Consider the case of the yellow-headed Amazon who was startled by roofers in his long time home. Although he had safely flown around the open, two-and-a-half story living area for more than a dozen years, when a new roof was installed on his house, he was startled and flew quickly up to the skylight - a place where he had never flown before - with such force that he was knocked unconscious. He fell into a hot tub where he drowned. The consequences of flying outdoors
When you don't clip your indoor bird's wings, you leave him vulnerable to escape outdoors. This is especially problematic when flighted companion parrots share quarters with families including children. Some people can be trained to be careful about the door, others are easily distracted.
Many, probably most, companion birds can be recovered from accidental introduction into the outdoors. However, flown away companions are in danger from predators and can pick up diseases outdoors. In addition, simply being without a regular food and water source can be fatal to a bird that is unaccustomed to foraging, as it nearly was to my own scarlet macaw, whom I rescued.
By the time I was hired by a homeowner's association to capture her, she had been flying free for several weeks. She was severely dehydrated and had "forgotten" how to eat. In spite of being more than five years old (per her band date), I had to hand feed her for two weeks.
Flight can be left behind, and happily
I asked Dave Flom, who has trained his birds to free-fly indoors at various bird events, whether he thinks flighted birds are happier.
Dave, who owns and trains Samson, the flying hyacinth macaw on the cover of my book, Guide to a Well-Behaved Parrot told me, "I work with both flighted and nonflighted birds and both appear equally happy. It has been my experience that birds with restricted flight or no flight ability adjust more readily as companion birds."
I agree with Dave. Adapted or learned behaviors are a major component of avian existence. As flocking animals, each generation of birds must learn appropriate behaviors in order to survive. But in addition to learning many behaviors, birds discontinue and "forget" unnecessary ones. Flight is one of them.
Like any other behavior that is unnecessary for survival, flight can become obsolete or extinct in a species. The ancestors of the penguin, ostrich, emu - to name but a few species - found survival easier without flight.
Whether birds retain flight as part of their repertory of behaviors depends upon how and where they live. This is one of the lessons we learned by studying birds in New Zealand, an island ecosystem that developed no mammals until it was invaded by humans. As we can read in David Attenborough's The Life of Birds, when there were no predators to avoid, many of the birds simply stopped flying.
I believe that a properly accommodated non-flighted companion bird no more misses flight than a penguin or an ostrich misses flight. Presuming that a companion parrot misses flight is sort of like presuming a teenager missed something by not experiencing promiscuous sex.
Some things are better missed. The teenager might have missed unwanted pregnancy, Hepatitis C, and HIV. The companion bird might have missed drowning in the toilet, burned off feet, a broken neck, or a lifetime deformity from flying into a ceiling fan.
Some flighted birds pay a gruesome price. Flying is a trade-off, with the bird in grave danger and unable to make an informed decision on its own behalf.
I believe that most companion parrots have a better chance for a long, happy life when we make the decision for them - and decide not to allow flight indoors, and certainly not train them to fly outside. Flight, in these instances, is an unnecessary, obsolete, and dangerous skill.

[/FONT]

 

[Red Devil]

after reading all about houdini and your experience with him i am sad to say that i do not believe it to be factoral ... i have had birds for a long time.. and one of them actually got out on me because i had him leashed so i could take him around on a nice day when i cared for my garden.. some how the leash came off his leg.. and he flew to the tallest tree not knowing what to do next.. we had to get a ladder and whisk him down.. until he finally landed in the grass near by and i was able to grab him to safety.. i just cannot believe you would take your untrained bird freely outside among neighbors etc and take this chance..next time you decide to do this i would like to see some pics of him in flight... then i will believe it... and then some pics of him sitting there outside on your shoulder free would be awesome..It takes years of practice to have a bird come back... AND then even then you could lose them if a storm popped up or even a brisk wind... nah.. i think you got us all excited about Houdini's safety for nothing.. but i would rather see this as a made up story then Houdini actually free... so thats okay ...