Question for those that DON'T clip (and everyone else can chime in too :)

[Kalidasa]

I found out (on here) that hanging out on top of a tv that's on is also harmful.

 

[natv]

By the way I called the bird store I purchased Kiwi at to find out if he every flew. I was told they allow the birds to fly once, and then they clip their wings.

Only once, so sounds like he'll have a lot of learning to do soon (he still has a few more feathers left to grow in)

 

[MonicaMc]

That's pretty typical of many places, unfortunately. It's as if that one flight was all that they needed to know... but it's not.

It can take several weeks, if not months, for birds to master the art of flying. Flying is instinctual, but knowing how to fly (turn, bank, slow, speed, land, etc) is all learned. They can't learn all that within one flight, and may not even learn it within one to two weeks time.


I'm hoping my girl isn't done molting, but haven't found any new clipped flights yet. Still finding other feathers, but I'm more interested in her flights!

 

[Jesseandme]

I have all my birds fully flighted. And yes you have to watch the doors closely. I live alone so I keep my doors locked. That way i can control when they are opened and closed. When I was very young I was running through our house and closed the door behind me. Our beloved parakeet Corky was caught and killed. I was devastated. He was playing ---- trying to catch me. I would never trim my birds wings. My macaw cannot fly due to a previous wing muscle strain but he does hang on his cage bars and beat his wings. I am hoping to see him fly some day. If you choose as most of the members have to leave your bird wings untrimmed just be vigilante. My Macaw does wear an Avian Fashion flight suit when we go outside.

 

[kc_y0]

I live in a small unit, and I have my eccy flighted. She LOVES it. She has learnt her way around the house and the thin halls, etc. She zooms around now. I have always clipped, because of safety reasons, and I have lost birds in the past. But a few of Audrey's flight feathers grew in at once and she was able to fly with ease, with just those few feathers. I noticed a huge change in her personality. She was more involved in everything we did, and she seems much happier, so I let all of her other feathers grow in. I just have to be super careful with keeping doors closed, so that she doesn't fly out. She is like a different bird!

 

[kc_y0]

Also, Audrey is two now, and she has never flown as a baby, same as your bird, once they can fly, they clip. It did take her a while to learn, and she was mostly only confident to fly to me, if I was in her sight. Now she zooms all around the house with ease.

 

[Mike17]

When Georgie was young and still relatively untrained, she was "bat crazy" when she could fly. But as she aged and matured and was trained, she was pretty good and trustworthy.
Gilbert is good most of the time. At meal time he will fly right to his eating perch and will stay there and eat as long as i have food in the bowl. IF i'm 'bad' and take too long preparing food and have him on the eating perch, he will fly to the kitchen counter and run around and look for something yummy. Occasionally if i am busy and ignoring him too much (usually if i'm on the laptop and trying to write an email or something) he will fly over and land on it. Nothing major though. I like having a flighted bird, except for the rare occasion that i put the ceiling fan on downstairs. (I may just replace that fixture and get a different type of safe fan because i cage him when it is on.)

I've lived in the Australian tropics and ceiling fans are a common fitting there and elsewhere. I fitted seven into my own place myself when I lived in Sydney, years ago). I haven't had birds AND ceiling fans, thankfully. I have knocked the tips of a couple of fishing rods with ceiling fans though, and as a tall person, skinned my knuckles removing clothes. Later Australian houses have quite low ceilings (I can reach them with fingertips). I doubt I'd have ceiling fans again if they weren't already fitted, thankfully I'm moving to Tasmania eventually where fans won't be required

 

[Betrisher]

We have wall-mounted fans now. They're covered with safety grates, but I still turn them off when the Beaks are out. This will be my first hot summer with birds aloft in the house and I'm nervous about everyone being as vigilant as I am about turning the fans off and keeping the doors shut. Yesterday, Madge completely unexpectedly bashed into an insect screen in a room where she doesn't usually go. It nearly fell out with the impact!!! Dear Lord, my life passed before my eyes! So now dear Hubby has the job of triple securing all the insect screens before an accident happens.

PS. Had a *great* day with the Phloque today! Madge is learning to wave, Barney is learning to turn upside-down and Dommie is learning to fetch. AND, everyone was more than ready to go back to the cages when we were done. Oh, AND Dominic didn't bite me, even once!

 

[Nailztim]

Welcome to The Parrot University at Hartman Aviary

Anything and everything you need to know about flighted birds. This is the place created by Steve Hartman who is the inventor of the well known aviator flight harness. I had the opportunity to meet him this last weekend and wow! what a wealth of information! I whole heartedly believe and agree with him that no bird should EVER have their wings clipped! They learn almost everything about flight before their first molt, and never will be able to learn as much after their first molt. (not to say that they won't learn anything, just not as much as before their first molt). So if your birds wings are already clipped, i would allow the flight feathers to grow back. Steve can actually do a process where he attaches new flight feather to clipped flight feathers to help get your bird flighted! Take a look around the site, i have spent five days looking over the site and still have not ready everything!

 

[SoCalWendy]

I am really enjoying this thread and all the links and such. Kiwi is now fully flighted. Rio hasn't molted out her clipped flight feathers yet, but I feel it will be soon. I can't wait to see what she is like when she realizes "hey! I can flly!"

 

[natv]

So although he still has what looks like 4-5 feathers on his wing that still need to grow in, he's starting taking little flights.

He impressed me the other day by flying from the top of his cage to a stool half-way across the room. Not sure if that's what he was aiming for or just landed there but it was pretty cool. He was bouncing up and down for a good 10 minutes thinking about how he'd jump off I guess.

However, last night he had a bit of an accident. Luckly he's ok. He was on his playstand and my dog barked suddenly (the dog does this a few times a day and usually it doesn't spook Kiwi but once in a blue moon it does).

So the dog barked and Kiwi suddenly took off across the room and straight into the sliding glass patio doors I don't think he hit too hard as he wasn't going very fast (I'm sure once the rest of his feathers grow in that will change), and he wasn't high off the ground. He was OK, I watched him for a bit to make sure his beak wouldn't start bleeding.

I don't think he was trying to fly out the window, it was pitch dark outside so not like you can see out. I think when he got spooked that's just the direction he flew and didn't stop flying...

I've been showing him those are glass doors by taking him over there and letting his beak touch the glass. But I think this was just instinct that kicked in.

This morning I stuck a strip of blue painter's tape diagnolly across each sliding glass door. And I'll try to keep the blinds closed when he's out of his cage until he gets used to flying better. At least if he hits the vertical blinds it's a bit more of a soft landing.

But from what I heard, when a bird is spooked instinct causes them to instantly fly and it takes a few seconds for them to think about things. By that time he'd already be at one of the 4 walls or windows since my living room is kind of small. So even if he knows it's a glass door I don't know if that will make any difference in this kind of situation.

 

[MonicaMc]

Cockatiels are well known for panic flights and for night frights. My tiels can have panic flights in a rather small room (IMO) and not hit the walls or the window. If they land on anything, it's a cage.

Having panic flights and learning not to hit anything takes some practice.

 

[natv]

That's relieving to know thanks, I thought that might always be a problem but I'm glad to hear he will be able to control his flight eventually even when spooked.

At least with only 4 flight feathers he can't build up a lot of speed right now. I still feel so bad watching him crash into the patio door though lol.

 

[MonicaMc]

Clipping their wings removes their ability to control where they fly. It can always be an issue that a bird could fly too hard into something, but at the same time, if they become an experienced flyer, then their chances of flying into something too hard is greatly lessened.

I've read that a good way to slow a bird down without preventing flight is to trim the secondary flights, not the primaries. These are the longest flight feathers closest to the body. I've never done it myself so can't speak from experience.

 

[natv]

Thanks everyone for all the help and advice. Great news....

[ame=http://youtu.be/dfPiPQ0BrVw]Kiwi - First Controlled Flight - YouTube[/ame]


He's flyyyyying


He can fly further I was just having him practice from a chair back to his play stand. I keep the sliding glass door shades closed for now because he's flown into them a few times (happens when he gets spooked by something).

He still has a few more flight feathers that need to grow in too.

 

[MonicaMc]

Well done!!!!

 

[rbreck]

What about windows? Not opened windows, but hitting the windows. Maui broke most of his baby feathers off, because he was clipped - poor guy drops off his cage like a rock. Finally has 3 tail feathers and flight feather are slowly coming in. He doesn't hit the ground as hard any more. I don't want to clip feather but our house is a fish bowl house, all windows.

 

[maillet]

Allow him to master flight whatever you decide. If he was clipped when you got than he may have never been fledged properly so if you clip him before he learns this time than he may never gain that aerial confidence.

I have my Echo flight trained. In homes they will still walk most places and only use flight if startled (coping so positive) or to move between rooms in quick manner (e.g. when I come home flies right to my shoulder for night).

If you do not have hazards within your home (they can be quite agile) I believe in allowing them to keep wings as it is only natural. If this will be source of problem than he would choose no flight & you to flight & alone.

My two cents,

 

[strudel]

poor guy drops off his cage like a rock.

My galah is newly adopted and her wings are clipped quite short. I don't really understand what that means for her ability to glide or not fall and hurt herself. When I pick her up, she mostly just sits there, a couple of times she's had a fright and jumped off and there does seem to be an element of "splat" rather than a graceful gliding descent to the ground, so I gather that her abilities are significantly affected. She climbs around her cage.

When I carry her about, am I meant to be holding onto her foot or anything to prevent her jumping off? When we go past something I think might make her jump, I put my hand on her back, but I recently read that you shouldn't touch them on their back because they'll look at you as a mating partner.

Can she hurt herself if she jumps off a high perch/stand? I have a couple of stands and would like to have her inside "hanging out" on one/them, but this will be a problem if she's likely to try to get down and come across to me. At the moment, I'm only having her with me inside when she has my full attention and she's on my lap or right with me/next to me, but if we can adapt to where she can sit/play on her stand while I can do other things in the same room that would be good, but not if she could get hurt. Suggestions as to how to achieve this? How high can a stand be so a clipped bird doesn't fall down and hurt herself? Maybe I can put it low until she gets some flying feathers back. Does she know she can't fly so she won't try unless startled? I've got a lot to learn about everything, but especially about flying.

 

[maillet]

If a parrot is clipped properly than no they should not be able to hurt themselves if they fall or jump. A proper clipping is designed to make gaining altitude impossible (at least 3-Primaries) and maintaining altitude quite difficult. This allows them to glide to ground then walk the rest of the way (provided they learned to use their wings when they were young and fledging).

It may sound paradoxical, but having stand higher is actually better. Birds like to be in high places so if you want her to be more independent than ensure perch is higher than she would be on your shoulder (but not too high to get dominance idea). It also allows them more time to "flap" wings a couple of times to cushion landing rather than simply hit ground before they can begin to glide. I usually say shoulder height, or eye level (so roughly 6") with plenty of toys or other things to do or watch from a perch.