**Attention** The information on these free flight pages are purely our experiences we've had with free flight and in no way instructional. Please do not attempt to free fly your bird unless you are with a trained professional. Doing so can result in the loss of your bird!

Congo African Grey Free Flight-

Cressi's Free Flight Training Part 2

Part Four - Descending

This was a much more difficult behavior to teach her. She wasn't very comfortable with flying down, which is (from my experience) one of the more difficult behaviors to train in indoor flight training. This is such a critical skill to teach your parrot; most parrots that escape on accident find themselves circling higher and higher because they don't know how to descend, then they eventually get tired and fall.

I started this training on the eight foot high railing, and called her until she came. The first flight was a bit scary for her, so I made sure to give a jackpot reward of many seeds to her. After that, she was very anxious to come back to me again, and again. Of course, I refrained from always giving her jackpots for descending, however I do still give her a treat every time she recalls, with the occasional jackpot for added suspense.

Pretty soon I was able to throw her like a football, and she go up to the top railing. Then, all it would take is a call or a whistle and she'd return.

Part Five - Hide & Seek

Next, we played hide and seek. At this point, she was about 2 months and 3 weeks old. I'd put her somewhere, and recall her while out of sight.

It was an interesting behavior to watch, because she'd know where I was, but would be afraid to fly there without seeing me first. So I got into a rhythm of tossing her to the railing, then poking my head out from inside the kitchen.

She'd start to fly to me, and I'd duck back into the kitchen out of sight. Pretty soon she realized where I was and would come as soon as I invited her. Of course, this was all highly rewarded with lots of praise and treats.

Part Six - Outdoor Free Flight Day 1 - February 26, 2008

Now that she was responding so well to hide and seek inside, I decided it was time to free fly her outside. I was back in Las Vegas for a gig, and took Cressi with me. We found a big open field and went for a hike. I was very mindful to not just go find hundreds of vacant acres, as that would leave her nowhere to land if she spooked. Instead, I decided to find a large outdoor area, with trees pretty close to where we were. That way, if something happened, hopefully she'd land in a tree where I could retrieve her, instead of miles away in the middle of the desert.

I set her cage there on a rock for about 15 minutes so that she could experience her current surroundings from a safe location, then we took her out and flew her. As you may have guessed, her first flight was successful!

This first outdoor flight was like starting over at a solid previous training session from inside the house; "the person to person flight" (see part two - the early flights).

Jamieleigh took Cressi out of the cage, allowed her to perch on her hand, and I called her to fly to me; she came straight to me at a distance of about eight feet. There was a new challenge introduced at this moment, and that challenge was wind.

Up to this point she had never flown in wind. It was only a slight breeze, but it made her first flight a bit rocky, and her landing a bit rough.

The second flight was about the same distance, but this time she flew from me to Jamieleigh. I wanted to make sure that she didn't only return to me outside, thus the reason for the game of catch with her. Again, the slight breeze played a bit with her landing abilities.

Part Seven - Outdoor Freeflight Day 2 - Feb 29, 2008

I returned home from Vegas late the night before, fed Cressi a small dinner (still hand feeding), and went to bed. About 10AM the following morning I went to an empty school yard as I prepared for a second day of flight. The day started with back and forth flights between me and Jamieleigh, which continued for about 15 minutes.

We then moved on to flights from her travel cage, to me, then repeat that again so she'd fly to Jamieleigh

In Florida, as well as many other parts of the world, I had to be very mindful of predators such as hawks. While preparing for these flights, many hawks came and went. It's good to get into the habit of constantly checking the sky prior to each flight, to make sure there are no hawks in sight.

I understand that there's always a risk when you're flying birds in an area where there are hawks, but I make sure to do everything I can to help avoid them.

One tip that I believe in very strongly, is to not fly my parrots outdoors just after a rain storm, as the hawks and other predators will be anxiously searching for their next meal.

Until you have experienced it, it's hard to relate to, but there's something so magical about freeflight. It's almost as if you are at total piece with nature. The bird has the choice to fly away if it chooses to, but the fact that it comes back to you time and time again is just an amazing feeling.

If you get the opportunity to raise a baby bird in the near future, I highly suggest training it to be a freeflight bird!

The following video footage is an entertaining montage of Cressi's second day of freeflight outdoors. There's a pretty funny section in the video of where Cressi gets blown away by and wind gust.

2nd Flight Outdoors...Both You and Cressi will be Blown Away!

More Congo African Grey Free Flight with Cressi