When Storm the blue front Amazon parrot came to us he was too unhealthy to even dream about flying – weighing a whopping 580 grams! He has now been weighing at a steady 440 grams for the past week and continues to stay around 440 grams and a little above. Today, for instance, he was 445 grams. And in that week he has been experimenting with flying in his new aviary environment!

His aviary is 6′ diameter and I swear every time I look outside at him he is on a different perch. I placed his food and water as far away as possible, and even put some pellets on the ground so he’d have to move around the cage as much as possible and get the most amount of exercise.

However, he has been exercising plenty on his own! He sleeps at the highest perch he can find and plays all over the cage! He flies from side to side every so often and sometimes runs around on the ground. He doesn’t quite have the muscle mass to fly up from the bottom, and I think he knows that… but he can go from one side to the other, even though he loses a little bit of altitude in the process.

This has really made Storm a lot healthier and better looking in general.

I actually offered him nuts as well as a taste of his old diet and instead, he disregarded the nuts and seeds and reached out for the piece of broccoli I was holding!

Talk about a complete 180! We couldn’t be more proud of Storm for his new exercise plan, weight loss and healthy new diet. He has even been nicer to Dave since he’s been out there which is great. And he only screams if the macaws scream, but it doesn’t last more than a minute or two (or however long the macaws last) maybe he’s yelling at them to stop yelling!

Get involved, get educated and stay in the know with Hr-669. To listen in (live audio) or watch (live video) go to the following website located here for the live webcast.

This bill would not allow the transportation, breeding, buying or selling of any non-native exotic animal in the U.S. and for anyone who broke the rule, their exotic pet would be killed. View the video and write your represenitive by going here.

Recently, a parrot that I had never met, but had heard countless stories about was lost to the emissions from non-stick coated cookware. The loss hit hard. He had just found a new home.

The morning following bringing home their new bird, a couple brought him into the kitchen while they prepared breakfast. They knew about the dangers of cooking with a teflon coated pan, but they were under the impression that it was the food cooked in these pans that was toxic to parrots. This turned out to be a tragic mistake. Within minutes, their bird went into respiratory arrest. The lungs quickly filled with fluid. The bird, gasping for air, collapsed and died. The necropsy showed lungs that were black and filled with blood after blood vessels had burst. This was a horrible, and preventable death. It took only moments. His new caregivers were distraught and overwhelmed by guilt.

Teflon, which was invented by Dupont in 1946, was supposed to revolutionize modern cooking, but it was found that the surfaces coated with this product were brittle and easily damaged resulting in flaking. The flakes wound up in our food. The upgraded and more durable version was Silverstone. Including Analon and Circulon, there are several non-stick cookware coatings still on the market. One thing they all have in common is the emission of PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) gasses. Their names may be different but their components are the same, and the off-gassed chemicals are just as deadly.

A big misconception is that in order to cause the off-gassing, you need to leave an empty pan on the stove over a very high temperature. This is true, and your room will quickly fill with PFTE gasses. BUT, recent studies have shown that the gasses are emitted at much lower temperatures than previously thought, and with food present in the cookware. Another myth is that only damaged or old nonstick coating will off-gas. This is just not true. Some enamel cookware also uses an outer non stick coating.

In humans, PTFE poisoning will cause flu-like symptoms. Your parrots fragile respiratory system will be quickly overcome by these undetectable fumes and there will be nothing you can do to stop the process once it has begun. Very few parrots survive this, usually because they weren’t in close proximity to the toxin.  Those that do have suffered severe damage to their lungs that requires ongoing medical assistance throughout the remainder of their lives. It is a wise idea to just keep your parrots out of the kitchen altogether while you are cooking. Aside from the many burn related accidents that can happen, burning foods produce smoke.

On the market today is Thermalon, a product made from silica and oxygen, basically glass, which does not off-gas and is safe. A couple of choices are GreenPans and Martha Stewart’s green pans.  I use Martha’s frying pans (mostly because I love that she has a Moluccan cockatoo!) and stainless steel in my kitchen. This new technology is affordable and it works. There is no good reason to use anything else.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in Moab over the weekend to watch us free fly our birds outside! It was a pleasure to meet all of you as well as have you share in the beauty of what it’s like to have free flight trained parrots!

Saturday we spent at Fisher Towers nearby a canyon. Sunday was spent at the back side of Castle Rock. Very few people attended?both days, but those who did sure got some serious diversity.

It was a lively, yet laid back group that was fun and relaxed! We can’t wait to do it again and will let you all know when the next adventure will be!

Oh, and don’t forget to flaunt your bird owner apparel!

See you next time and happy flying!

If you’re interested in learning how to free fly and would like to join the freestyle flyer’s club, where we plan a trip every 3-6 months to exotic locations please email info@birdtricks.com to find out more about membership and training costs.

For more pictures and video from our trip in April in Moab, check us out on Flickr and You Tube!

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Dave and I spent the day cleaning out the aviaries (so excuse the still mess in the background of the video sometimes)… we raked them all out and changed out toys from all the aviaries. And in the moment, since we moved our three smaller parrots inside for the cleaning… I decided, why not try Storm outside now?

We hadn’t planned on moving him out there that early but decided it couldn’t hurt so we packed him in his travel cage and I opened it inside the aviary. He climbed out and walked across the grass as Dave video-taped and I got the travel cage out of there.

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Here’s the exciting part…!

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Storm made no attempts to attack Dave (which he had done in the past with both previous cages) and when I left and went inside, Storm actually made his purring noise of contentment to Dave! When Dave came in the house and shared that with me I couldn’t be more excited about it!

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I went out to see how Storm was doing as I spent the first few minutes with him and he NEVER SCREAMED! I thought for sure he would scream as we left him out there the first time but not an unhappy?noise at all. He made only happy noises, preened and found a comfy high perch he liked. He slept out there for the night as we put him out there around 6pm or 7pm and an hour or so later it got dark out.

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Who knew the transition could be so easy and cause such a difference?! We’re thrilled… if we can end on that note while every day he builds stamina, gets in better physical shape and continues to eat a healthy diet, I think we will be returning a healthy bird with YEARS added onto his life span!

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And in case some of you lost track, this is day 22 for Storm! What progress in those 22 days!

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Note to take home: If your bird is in bad physical shape, simply work on providing your bird with the opportunities to climb, fly and expand his normal routine. This will help him work himself out and lose?fat?the healthy way!

Although we had the set back of the Spring season kick into gear for Storm, we are still making progress with him! Dave and I left for 3 days while Storm and the rest of the flock stayed home.

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When we got back, I saw little red wood chips all over the bottom of Storm’s cage and realized he was picking at his wood parrot toys while we were away! I think a little “alone time” was good for him because it encouraged him to self-entertain rather than keep waiting for me to enter the room to do it for him!

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Not only that, but he really dove into eating his organic pellets! Check it out…

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Storm was already eating his organic pellets, but I usually gave him fresh foods along with them and he tends to always prefer the fresh stuff over the pellets. I think being away was great for him as he really got to just dive into the pellets without distraction of other foods.

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And although he had sort of manipulated a few toys in the past, he hadn’t actually destroyed them in any way before so this toy shredding thing was definitely a first and a huge step of progress!

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Tip to take home: Giving your parrot some alone time can be a good thing once in a while, as long as you give him all the neccessary tools it takes to self-entertain while you aren’t around.