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Article by Chris Biro, all rights reserved.

QUESTION FROM A LIST >I have a question for you and you don't have to answer however I would love to know.  Can you describe how you got started in training your birds to fly?  And how you housed them in order to encourage this natural instinct?

I had a about ten birds at this point and was starting to do more and more free appearances at schools, day cares, nursing homes, etc. and I was just getting my foot into the door of the entertainment end of the fair industry as a paid entertainer. 

I built a 16x24x8 foot chain link cage with attached indoor 8x8 shed. I housed several B&G's, Scarlet, M2's,and U2's in this cage - some of which were more wild than tame and I let their wings grow out.  The M2's were just crazy about flying back and forth and swinging and of course yelling like crazy - but obviously having so much fun that is was a real joy just standing and watching them, even in this small space.  Then one day while I was still building and expanding this "big cage", my U2, Joy figured out how to get out of the cage and spent the day flying around from tree to tree. She came down that evening but she did several low flybys over me since she seemed to have no idea about losing speed and altitude at the same time.  I fixed what I thought was where she got out and found her again out flying the next day and again she spent the day out flying from tree to tree and only coming down as evening approached, low flybys included.  It took me about a week to finally figure out that there were no holes in the cage and that she was pushing the wire away from the frame and where and getting out that way but in the mean time I became fairly comfortable with her flying about like this during the day and so I continued to let her out every once in a while.

At this time I had already had a couple encounters with recovering frightened loose birds and so I was not so keen on letting just any bird loose like this.  But this did get me very interested in flying some of my more tame birds and I set out to find a way to "train" a bird to fly.  I began experimenting with tethers and built a collapsing perch that I could cause to fall if they did not come when I called them.  This method sort of worked but it also had certain disadvantages I would rather avoid today.  Today I
use other methods that do not create a fear of flying or of me sending them away from me and I don't use a tether anymore either.

I tried all kinds of approaches - whatever came to mind - since there were no publications that I had seen that discussed training flight, I was pretty much on my own.  I worked with several macaws and my U2 and my only real success from these early efforts came when I used these methods with a very young GW (Janis) who has now been flying with me for about 6 years. The adults that I tried to train all seemed very reluctant and disinterested in flying and most actually seemed to dislike flying - it is lots of work if the wings are not used to it, probably like trying to walk to town walking on your hands instead of your feet.  Joy later became spooked at a nursing home program we did and we had to resort to trimming her wings due to the self multiplying effect of her panic flights - only after several years of no more "panic and chase" routines did we seem to get this panic thing under control again.

From this I concluded that training an unweaned baby was likely to be the best approach for flight training since after all this is when they learn in the wild.  One day when discussing with John and Martha Scudder (some breeder friends of ours) how I would like to train some more freeflighted parrots but needed babies to do so but could not afford to buy any, Martha said "Chris you need a flighted Patagonian  in your show so I'll give you a baby from the next clutch".  I said "cool" and thought that would be nice now wouldn't it and then forgot about it.  A few months later Martha says to me on the phone "When are you coming to get your patty, he's almost ready now."  I have thanked her over and over but again I say "Thank you John and Martha because Obee is just the sweetest and most wonderful little bird and I have never had so much fun  as with training him to fly."  And I learned a great deal from training him also.  I applied what I learned from Obee to Red Claw (Mitred) our first baby to hatch who is now my best flyer.

Soon after this Jim Murphy (also a breeder friend who liver 45 min from me and flies a Goffin and BE's) sent me a link to the bird click list and I discovered/became immersed in an email quest for info about other peoples knowledge of freeflight training.  It did not take long though to figure out that on some lists free flight was a very volatile subject and I was spending most of my time defending myself rather than gaining any info.. Someone from the an email list suggested that I start my own list so I could take the discussion elsewhere (a rather polite "go elsewhere with this") which I thought was a pretty good idea and set up the Freeflight list here on ONElist.  The list has been very helpful to me in shaping my thoughts on what I do and also in raising many aspects of flight training that I had not really thought about - but still the politics is sort of tough to deal with.  I am now anxiously awaiting my next flight student which is a 35 day old B&G (our first B&G and our 4th chick so far). It should be interesting to see how his training goes as I apply the new things that I think I have learned.

So there you have it, my freeflight from A - J (there is still more to come so we are not yet at Z LOL).