What Kind of Whistle?

[charmedbyekkie]

What whistles do you recommend? Any specific brand or line?
Even more generically, is there any pitch or decibel range you recommend?


Context:

Cairo grew up free-flight trained. Now, because he got lost from his previous family a couple of times while free-flying, I’m reluctant to free-fly him. Initially it was a hard no, but when I see others free-fly their birds in groups and when I see how he acts when we have him on the Aviator extension, I start to waver in my resolve. We still haven't yet decided, and it definitely won't happen if he doesn't respond to recall 100% of the time (so I suspect we won't be free-flying for the next year or so at least).

That aside, he is a clever boy and a bit of an escape artist. Long story, but he got lost for 22 hrs last week (I’ll post about it separately); and we had to be within 30ft to the tree for him to hear us calling his name. More importantly, since we fly him on the Aviator extension in parks every weekend (yay, city-state living), we have been thinking of changing his recall training cue from “Cairo, come here” to a whistle instead as our voices can’t carry the distance needed.

So we need a whistle that can go some distance, cuts through the noise of city life, preferably doesn’t blast out our ears, and is audible to Cairo.

 

[ChristaNL]

Your boy sure loves to fly ...


hmmmpf, if you want to teach him to whistle to you (that will probably the effect of you whistling to him anyway) I would still go for those whistles they use in avalanche-situations.
Yup...still earsplitting but effective!


All emergency-whistles are designed to be used with minimal effort and maximum output (very important if you know you'll be blowing that thingy for hours!) so I would look into those first.
(being almost indestructable and/or easy replaced also helps, they will not stop when wet of half-frozen)



(I am lucky- the greys have this earsplitting contactcall almost built into them, so I am confident they'll use that)

 

[charmedbyekkie]

Your boy sure loves to fly ...


hmmmpf, if you want to teach him to whistle to you (that will probably the effect of you whistling to him anyway) I would still go for those whistles they use in avalanche-situations.
Yup...still earsplitting but effective!


All emergency-whistles are designed to be used with minimal effort and maximum output (very important if you know you'll be blowing that thingy for hours!) so I would look into those first.
(being almost indestructable and/or easy replaced also helps, they will not stop when wet of half-frozen)



(I am lucky- the greys have this earsplitting contactcall almost built into them, so I am confident they'll use that)

Yeah, I thought about the fact that he might pick up the whistle sound Right now, he responds with the loud ekkie squawk, which he does a very quiet version of whenever I return home after a day of work (I adore how he does his 'inside voice' squawk). In fact because his imitation skills are progressing so fast (he's practicing in front of us now and within a week added 2 more phrases to his vocabulary when it had previously taken a couple of months for him to be comfortable to use a new vocab in front of us), I actually thought of getting a bosun's call instead. At least, my ears would appreciate a more melodic bosun's call than a tritone or semitone sports whistle

I put pealess whistles on our list since I've caused almost every whistle with a pea to stop working since I was kid, though I would like to blame the weather hahah. I think we'll look into emergency whistles then and try to find something that sounds ok there.

 

[ChristaNL]

Oh a bosuns whistle would be great (I am also not a fan of the uni-tone shrill ones) - but you have to be consistent (they have options afaik). Would be great to hear you both practice though