Free Flight Locations

Free Flight Locations

          The location where you first start flying your parrot outdoors is very important. This article is mostly written for working with older birds, our birds started as 4 and 5 year olds, but same basics apply to fledglings. Generally it is understood that big open fields are the best for initial first flights outdoors. Most people call this a Level 1 location. I have a different idea on this. I believe it depends on your bird and the age of your bird. My 2 Macaws Molly and Kaja are as different as night and day and the same goes for their flight. They fly differently, they fly for different reason and their flight path is way different. 

          With Molly I feel the most confident in the yard (I do not recommend city back yards) with trees and house around and with Kaja I feel the best in a big field. Molly has strong recall and is much more eager to fly, she flies because she is super hyper and just never can sit still, she is also a nervy bird as I would put it, she is very quick to react to everything and very easy to spook and react fast first and then think second. In reality this means when anything spooks her, her first response is to fly away and in a straight line, by the time she calms down she can be a mile away if there is no safe place for her to land on, lets say a medium size tree or a hay stack. Therefore now she is at a point where she is comfortable outside and is used to it, I feel much safer to fly her in places with landing sites available for her. From my experience when she spooks at something and has safe place to land on, she doesn't fly much further then lets say 100 feet, maybe a bit more and usually after about 3 minutes I have no problem recalling her at all. I do give her those couple or 3 minutes to calm down and look around to see that nothing is actually hurting her. She doesn't look to me for safety, for her safety is in getting away and unfortunately that over writes her having fun with me if something happens (this can be largely eliminated if you start you bird as a baby). On the other hand with consistent training outdoors and getting her used to and exposed to everything outside more and more she is getting a baby step better every time. So here again I choose to work with the bird instead of against it, I dont set her up for failure at locations where I expect trouble if I don't have to, I choose to gradually work on it step by step even if it might take years, after all we are out all the time and she can fly anywhere she wants, more or less.

          Kaja, our Greenwing Macaw on the other hand is much more calm and solid with his nerves. Not much bothers him and he tends to fly for a reason. That means he will fly to get his food, he will fly when called or when he wants to get somewhere, but other than that he is quite content to sit and talk and bug the cat or me :) He started flying as a 4 year old and it was very difficult to teach him, but right from the very beginning I knew he would be different then Molly, just from observing him in daily life. I started flying him from me to me, or from perch to me mostly and he always showed interest in coming back to land on me, so I only nurtured that more and more and didn't push him to land on a perch or anywhere else very much, now I am very happy I did that, instead of following suggestions. Because of this conditioning he always returned back to me, even tho he missed his landing on my arm or got blown away in a strong wind, he was/is always able to cool down and turn around within few seconds and land back on my arm. Because of this I felt better starting him in wide open spaces with limited landing sites, perhaps only our truck, again because I wanted to build on the fact that he already had the intentions of returning back to me, which is my most important goal at the end. 

Therefore I think you need to evaluate your bird and his or her character and make your decision based on YOUR bird. 

You might like my related articles:

Recall Training and Recall Training Philosophy