Advice on recently fully flighted amazon

[yann]

Well i thought i was never gonna see my 'zon fly even though she is nearly fully flighted. but seems like life is full of surprises:54:

they all get their out of cage time outdoors when i'm prepping brekkie for them, i went back into the house to get food for about 10mins or so came back out and she was GONE!!! just disappeared~ at first i thought she walked off or something and started searching within the house but nope nothing. started searching & yelling for her outside the house and for about half hr and nope nothing also. by then i was beginning to suspect that she was stolen or picked up by someone

i went back home printed some flyers for a lost parrot and prepared to go out and search again. this time i walked to the park to paste the poster and decided why not yell a bit to see if i got a reaction. this time whewww i got a rather distinct response from a house opposite the park!! so i sped off to the location the sound came from. i rang the doorbell and asked if i could search the neighbour's garden for pickles! and wow thank god we found her sitting in a fir tree in the garden! but oh my she was so so so so high up…tried to use a stick to hit the tree and get her to fly down but instead she flew off again!

this time we couldn't locate her immediately and spent another half hr in that area combing bushes. then there was this person that said 'theres a green bird up there in someone's house' and gooood grief we rushed off to that place to find her…and yeah we found her walking around in someone's yard. quickly picked her up and cuddled her lots! so thankful that we eventually found her again.

we decided to pop by the other neighbour's house to say thank you for helping! but oh myyy luck really isn't on our side…the neighbour had a doggie and it started barking and that sent pickles flying off AGAINNNN!!!!

but this time we could see where she was flying to. but boy i wished i couldn't see…we saw her fly straight into a 2nd level wall and drop down to the 1st level we immediately ran to that house but urrrghhh the neighbour was not at home!!!! we waited for a bit but no signs of anyone coming home, called the police to ask if we could climb in & get her and have them as our witness that we did not steal…but no they wouldn't help!! all this while pickles was just lying motionless on the floor>< so in the end we couldn't take it anymore and just went to get a ladder, climbed in & got her out.

after that we went straight to the av to get her checked out…vet concluded that it was probably a bruised spine(her legs couldn't grip properly) and some slight bleeding inside(poop was a bit brown). but she recovered well and is mighty fine now

oh my sorry for that really long post! but felt that her adventure should be shared

the vet tech strongly recommended to CLIP!!! and he was pretty strong in the way he expressed his thoughts…but then i could not do it to her. it was purely due to my negligence that she flew off, none of it was her fault.

i have since gotten 2 harnesses for her, the aviator and the fred bird harness. she hates both of em, well i guess gotta continue trying….

my question(finally reaching it) is for all the zon owners out there, how do you cope with a flying amazon? or rather how do you guys get em to fly?? mine has not even rose a cm of the ground after her 'big adventure' i wish i could start with recall flight training so that i would not be so worried about her taking off again. but whenever i call her she walks to me, never flys! i think she forgets that she has wings all the time lol

i 'heard'/read that they don't tend to be good flyers? All the zon owners i know with the exception of one have theirs clipped…and also, has anyone here have any experience with free flying an amazon?

 

[torrap]

My both zons are flying only inside. I have no heart yet to clip them.
I take them outside in cages only, but not nearly as often as I should. I Abm planing to build an aviary for them next Spring.
They are very good flyers and I would not feel safe to take them outside without a cage even if they are clipped.

 

[henpecked]

Yes, that will happen if you take "clipped" birds outside without a harness. Happened to
Jake and myself several times over the years. Jake doesn't fly, but she can. I don't clip her hard, only a few feathers. I've struggled with recall training her in the house. I think she's too old and set in her ways to fly around on a regular basis. Occasionally she'll fly to me if she hears me with another zon in a another part of the house, Miss VERY jealous.I guess my point is, if you want a flighted zon start early. I've also noticed most folks free flying parrots do so in wild open areas, few trees, pedators (like a dog,cars,etc) and few distractions. I think urban areas aren't the place for free flighted parrots. The same with the harness, start as early as possible. The only zons i've been able to harness train were babies and i started before they fledged.

 

[ImmunoGoblin]

Clipping is a very controversial subject, but what works best for us with our DYH is a "gentle" clip - the first 5 primary flight feathers only. He can still fly around the house, but he can't be quite as aggressive/prone to "divebomb" people as before, and he can't as easily reach some of the problem areas we wanted him to avoid. I would never take him outside without a harness or without being in a smaller cage, though. Even if a bird is clipped, flying outside is totally different than flying inside for them. Inside they go max 8 feet off the ground. Outside, the wind can get them, and they can inadvertently go higher than they meant to and not understand how to descend.
My Orange Wing came to me with an extremely drastic clip, so that he had absolutely no flight at all. I've been letting his feathers regrow, and what I will probably end up doing is the same thing as our DYH - being "semi-flighted." It's a good compromise between birds that are frustrated because they can't get around the way they want to, and terrible flying pterodactyls dive-bombing your kids.

 

[yann]

there's good news to update!!today we finally managed to get a harness on her just had to share the happiness hahaha

 

[thekarens]

Congrats! She looks pretty happy!

 

[Dopey]

Congrats! She look so cute.

 

[Christinenc2000]

Very proud looking.

 

[Birdman666]

the vet tech strongly recommended to CLIP!!! and he was pretty strong in the way he expressed his thoughts…but then i could not do it to her. it was purely due to my negligence that she flew off, none of it was her fault.

i have since gotten 2 harnesses for her, the aviator and the fred bird harness. she hates both of em, well i guess gotta continue trying….

my question(finally reaching it) is for all the zon owners out there, how do you cope with a flying amazon? or rather how do you guys get em to fly?? mine has not even rose a cm of the ground after her 'big adventure' i wish i could start with recall flight training so that i would not be so worried about her taking off again. but whenever i call her she walks to me, never flys! i think she forgets that she has wings all the time lol

i 'heard'/read that they don't tend to be good flyers? All the zon owners i know with the exception of one have theirs clipped…and also, has anyone here have any experience with free flying an amazon?

My zons are both rocket powered fliers, and I used to free fly my amazon.

Recall is the only way I know of, and that is not guaranteed.

Otherwise, I would clip, but you can long clip and still give them flight capability.

My Sally (RLA) can still fly from one end of the house to the other in the air. (Outside she'd make it about a block or two, so she'd be close enough by to find her... if she spooked and flew off unless it was an unusually windy day.

 

[henpecked]

Congrats. Good job. Now you can take him with you.