Building Blocks
At this point, work on building stamina, flexibility and confidence. Think of this as sending your bird out on the beginning slopes at the ski resort. Your bird is not necessarily going to be a proficient flier at this stage – and you would not want it skiing on the experienced slopes. You and your bird are just beginning this adventure, but in the meantime, your bird is getting good exercise and learning that actively working with you can be fun and rewarding. The bottom line is practice, practice, practice – and have fun.
Vary this exercise by increasing flight distance and trying different perches. As your bird becomes more and more proficient, begin to use smaller perches to increase the challenge. Anything that helps build landing skills and requires the bird to “think on the wing” is good.
Another good motivator for flight is another flying bird in the house. In my experience, a bird that watches another bird fly learns these skills exponentially faster than a bird being “coached” from the ground.
Proficient Fliers
How can I teach my bird to fly to perches that I target? This exercise is easy to teach if your bird already understands a recall and is an eager and confident flier. The bird also should have some practice with simple trick training – targeting objects. In other words, the bird should know to follow and touch a target on cue. There are many different methods to teach this exercise, but I have success with this one:
I place two kitchen chairs about 3 feet apart. I stand between them and perch the bird comfortably on the back of the kitchen chair to my left. I place a treat in my closed fist, and then I position my fist under the back of the chair on the right. I say to the bird, “Fly to the right.” The first time, my Senegal parrot did not understand this cue, so I lured her a little bit with my hand. The minute she flew to my hand, I placed her on the back of the chair, said “Good,” and gave her the treat.
I placed another treat in my closed fist and held the fist under the top of the chair that was on my left. I cued her, “Fly to the left.” Once she understood that treats were in my hand, she flew to my hand, which was just under the back of the chair. Because of the position of my hand, she had to land and perch on the chair – the target. I praised and rewarded her.
I repeated this exercise many times until she was fluent in it and I no longer needed to place my hand under the back of the chair. At that point, I stood halfway between the chairs but without blocking the flight pattern and changed the cue from a closed fist on the chair to pointing my finger at the chair and saying, “Fly to the left (or right).” If she did not seem to understand the cue, I went back to the beginning. Once she understood the cue and was comfortable with this exercise, I gradually placed the chairs farther apart.
When Babylon understood that I wanted her to “fly to perch” when I pointed to the perch, I was able to generalize this to other perches in the house. The key to getting good at this behavior is practice, practice, practice.
Older Birds
The process of learning to fly can take years for an older bird. If your bird was previously severely wing-feather trimmed, it was taught not to fly. If the bird did try to fly, it often fell to the floor, and that hard landing was punishment for attempting to fly. Your task can be very difficult if your bird has a history of such punishing attempts. Flight training a bird with this background is not an impossible task and he never may be a really proficient flier, but that is okay. Any exercise is good for the bird, and even if all this bird learns to do is fly to its cage on cue, bravo!
My timneh African grey parrot Phinney was wing-feather trimmed for the first five years of her life. It took me about three years of daily flight training in many different environments for her to get to the point where she could “think on the wing” and control long, startle flights. She does not fly as well as my Senegal parrot, who was fully flighted for most of her four years, but I am more than proud of Phinney’s hard-earned progress.
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