While we’re in Coney Island, New York for the summer (until September 6th) we are having an “Animal Open House” an hour and a half before the show begins. This is a half hour before the All Access Preshow starts, so there’s plenty of time to catch the action of both!

The Animal Open House showcases the animal compound where the animals (and their trainers) live, work and play. This one features our four beautiful horses, three stunning Asian elephants, seven extraordinary lions and our eight exotic parrots. If you come right on time, you will get to see all eight of our parrots… if you’re a bit late, you will probably miss any “show birds” that end up getting moved backstage so they’re ready for showtime. But there’s still plenty outside to see!

Here are the birds you have the chance to meet at our Animal Open House…

Jinx “Blue Throated Macaw”

Jinx is our 3 year old blue throated macaw. Blue throats come from Boliva and are extremely endangered in the wild with only between 150-300 left. However, in captivity they are a thriving species. Often I will be walking around with Jinx, and you can sometimes catch him for a bit in the All Access Preshow where you have the chance to hold him and get your picture taken. He also makes an appearance and flight in the main show of Illuscination.

Comet “Camelot Macaw”

Comet is a yellow/gold dominant Camelot Macaw (two part Scarlet Macaw, one part Blue and Gold). Hybrids like this are not normally found in the wild, Comet was bred in a freeflight facility in Florida by Mirror Lake Exotics where the birds there are free to choose their mates and fly freely outdoors.

He proudly opens the show of Illuscination by appearing with the Illuscinator and flying to me in the very beginning during the great line of, “The Greatest Show on Earth!” you may also notice him with his brother (below) during the finale.

Tusa “Camelot Macaw”

Tusa is Comet’s younger brother by about 3 days, they are from the same clutch and each baby (there were 3) came out with different dominant coloring. Tusa inhibits more blues and greens, while Comet is gold and yellow and their other brother is dominant red.

Tusa does a beautiful lighted flight in the finale of Illuscination to his brother, Comet. He flies over the performers in the ring and lands on Dave’s hand on the ring curb.

Cash “Military Macaw”

Cash was in our show in Saipan, Mariana Islands but is a back up for Illuscination, not currently in the show. However, he will be out every day for the open house for you to enjoy and talk to! Let him show off some of his words and phrases he learned from living with Tiko, his blue and gold macaw friend.

Bandit, Bondi & Ace “Galahs”

We have three galahs/rose breasted cockatoos that you will see in the Animal Open House. They’re very playful and talkative and they love to show off for the crowds so be sure not to miss them!

Keep your ears open to hear them say phrases like, “Come here”, “Thank you”, “I love you”, “Hey Cutie!” and more.

Cressi “Congo African Grey”

Cressi is the “Where’s Waldo?” part of the Animal Open House. Normally the kids point out there’s a “grey one in there” and the parents say, “No, no, they’re all pink…” but there is actually an all grey one in there with those crazy pink ones! It’s Cressi, and she and Bondi are the best of friends. Cressi likes to make whistling noises she learns from you visiting and kissing noises. But most of the time you will find her upside down yelling about how great life is.

So hopefully you come out and enjoy meeting our flock of feathered friends, as they LOVE meeting new people and showing off for the cameras (so bring yours!)

Check out the show schedule for more information on when you can come see the Animal Open House featuring our parrots.

Interested in freeflight and recall training for your parrot? I know there’s always interest sparked when we show photos of us flying our birds outside and make videos of how much fun we’re having doing so.

If you want to learn more about recall training and freeflight training for outdoors with your parrot, here are some links you can explore…

1. Freeflight parrot photos. Join us on Flickr where we continue to keep our photostream updated with the newest photos of our flock. We even have an entire set dedicated to our freestyle flyers.
2. Freeflight training webisodes and videos. Check us out on YouTube where we constantly put up new freeflight videos and webisodes of the places we’re flying and who we’re flying with. You can watch the newest freestyle flyer students in action!
3. Our most used training technique. A small website on Random Rewarding, what we use with our flock.
4. Freeflight blog articles. Read a bit about what we do on our freeflight trips and how you can get started.
5. Sign up for the Freestyle Flyer’s Club and teach your bird outdoor freeflight recall today! Contact us and let us know that you’re interested and we’ll sign you up and personally coach you how to train your bird to enjoy life as a Freestyle Flyer!

Take a good look at your parrot. You will notice he has wings. You will see that they, and most of the rest of his body, is covered with feathers of varying length and size. If you were to look inside his body, you would find hollow bones and a unique respiratory system and muscular structure.  All of these things contribute to a single outstanding ability: FLIGHT!
Birds are meant to fly, and I encourage you to let them do that. Flight is what differentiates birds from all other creatures on this earth. It’s what they were born to do and I believe they feel handicapped when it is denied them or when they are scolded for this most natural activity.
I am adamant that it is imperative to a baby bird’s overall and ongoing mental health to be allowed to fledge. Even if the prospective new owner never intends the bird to remain flighted, learning to fly is a necessary exercise in discovery and confidence building. The bird that never brings itself to take that first step off of a solid surface will never reap those benefits of trial and error learning and never experience the joy of that accomplishment. It might go on to be a bird that is insecure and unwilling to explore new things. That first flight is a leap of faith that follows weeks of flapping and testing out its wings with the expectation that they will carry him safely to the ground. Imagine not being allowed to learn that you do have the courage and the skill to make that come to fruition. Imagine having wings and never getting to experience flight.

When I first got Theo, my goffins cockatoo, she was a timid, perch bound little thing who had barbered her wing feathers down to the skin. To my knowledge, she had never taken a single flight in her, then, 22 years. Within a year or so, she had regrown most of her flight feathers and months later took her first leap into the air.  She flew about 6 feet, and landed softly on the floor. The expression on her face was nearly human with her surprise, joy and pride. I will never forget it. Something special happened to her that day and it changed the way she looked at her world. From that point on, she was into everything, sometimes flying there, sometimes climbing.  She developed a keen interest in everything around her, and began acting like a goffins is supposed to.

I am not anti-clipping in cases where where a bird needs to be clipped. My cockatiel, Tinky, was my first bird.  He reached a point in his accident prone life where I felt the need to clip him. Sometime after knocking himself silly by flying into a mirror, he received a nasty concussion when my young daughter accidentally closed his head in the bedroom door as he made an attempt to follow her out of the room.  He recovered, with the help of his vet, but I was still uncomfortable with the idea of clipping his wings and they remained intact.
In the not too distant future were two more separate events that involved him being stepped on and sat on. We decided he needed to be more stationary and out came the scissors. To our great surprise, and dismay, he was still quite capable of flight, just to a lesser extent.
Of course, I know now that Tinky was neither accident prone nor misbehaved.  It was our allowing him free reign of the house that led him to places where injury occured. It is impossible to keep track of every movement they make under those circumstances, and until we learned that lesson well, Tinky would remain at risk or stay clipped.  The arrival of our second cockatiel, DeeDee, helped to keep Tinky in one spot a bit more often with other activities. We adjusted our lifestyle with the birds, imposed more limitations and both are now fully flighted.

Before you clip, think carefully about the emotional impact of grounding your bird. Knowing that they can escape a dangerous or frightening situation if the need arises, or even an interaction that they simply wish not to participate in, gives a bird the room to make choices that bring about trust. You’ve heard the expression Fight or Flight. When the option of flight is removed, sometimes it leaves a wary bird only the option of fighting when it feels insecure.  A bird might be quicker to bite when there are no other options to explore. Trust is gained when you respect and accept their decision to move away.
Sometimes, when a previously flighted bird is suddenly grounded, it can change it’s personality. Aside from feeling insecure, it can become depressed, sometimes lethargic, as if it has lost its zeal for life.  I know some of you are thinking that this may not be such a bad thing for your over-active or nippy birds. It is not a good thing.  Please consider addressing the behavior with training and restrictions before resorting to a clip.

If you do decide to clip, be certain is is done in a humane fashion. The wings should not be so severely trimmed that the bird is unable to glide gracefully to the ground, which will be his first stop following a clipping.  Poorly clipped wings can result in injury to your bird, so let your vet or professional bird groomer handle it until you feel confident in what you are doing.  Start with a light clip.  You can always trim more later if necessary.
NEVER trim a single wing.  A bird’s wings provide overall balance whether it be on the ground or in the air.  This is why they molt and regrow their flight feathers evenly on each side.  Trimming a single wing can cause a bird to perch unevenly, causing pressure sores on its feet which can then develop into skin and bone infections.
Also avoid what is referred to as a “show cut”.  This is when the wings are trimmed leaving the first two feathers on each side intact. Because they now jut out awkwardly, they are easily caught on toys and perches and can cause injury.Your birds appearance is not important. Its safety is.  Most people don’t even notice that a bird is clipped if it is done properly.
There is only one reason to clip your bird’s wings: if the safety of the bird/s or the people in the home are at risk.  If your bird does not seem to get the message after repeatedly flying into windows or mirrors, then a clipping is a good idea.  If your bird is trying to injure a member of the household or another bird, then sometimes clipping is necessary while you assess and gain control of the situation.  It should be done as part of an multi-tiered plan to correct your bird’s behavior and make changes to your own lifestyle. Sometimes a light trim with take the edge off an ill tempered bird by limiting its abilities, while still allowing him flight. This bird will sometimes get the message, but often there are better alternatives to clipping.

5 reasons NOT to clip:

• 1.  Flight gives a bird confidence and keeps it mentally and emotionally balanced. Aside from knowing it can get itself out of harm’s way in a pinch, it is how a bird naturally gets around.  Sure, they can walk and climb, but they are built to fly. Anyone in wheelchair understands what I am saying about the loss of an ability.
• 2.  Given the muscular structure of a bird, flying is the best form of exercise they can get. This is why they flap their wings in their cages.  It probably feels good, but it isn’t enough to keep those muscle toned.
• 3.  A flighted bird can escape to safety in the home, if he finds himself in trouble.  If you have other pets, this is a consideration.
• 4.  If lost outside, an uflighted bird will not have the ability to outfly a predator.  A determined clipped bird certainly CAN fly, and they go up, but seem to be unable or unwilling to come down.
• 5. Your bird will always have the option to choose to avoid an altercation with you by flying away instead of biting.

**NOTE:  Never attempt to fly your birds outside without extensive professional freeflight and recall training.

A lot of you have been asking on facebook about certain locations and why we fly at the places we do with our birds and our newest freeflight students.

I have to come out and admit, a lot of the places are random when it’s just me and Dave flying our flock. We travel A LOT and when we are, we are always looking at possible places to fly our birds.

The main reason we fly where we do it based on where our Freestyle Flyer students live. It’s always good for us to go where they live (most recently California) and find places near them. But it’s also nice to meet somewhere in the middle sometimes, too, especially if we’re on the road anyway and have to be somewhere.

Because we are on the east coast, settling for somewhere in the midwest seems to work out when our students are on the west coast. Our favorite places to fly (as of now) are Waynesboro, Virginia and Moab, Utah. Moab was the very first place we did a lot of freeflight. We began our freeflight journey in Las Vegas and Florida but Moab was where Cressi progressed the most and we had the most fun so it holds a special place in our hearts and is one of the best spots to fly birds.

Meet “Cash”. He is a 5 year old military macaw who was clipped before properly learning to fledge (fly at a young age). When we got him 4.5 years ago, he came to us at just 6 months old and we immediately let his wings grow out in the hopes to teach him to fly properly.

Letting wings grow out on a bird can take a long time, and usually takes almost an entire molt so that the feathers fall out naturally and re-grow back in. This can be anywhere from 6 months to a year long, and usually that time frame goes down the smaller the bird.

Cash stayed with a friend of ours who was interested in getting a military macaw herself. I offered to let her bird sit Cash for free instead – to see what a military macaw is really like. After 5 months, Cash came back to me from Missi’s house and Missi got over wanting a military macaw… hehe… however, he also came back clipped from Missi. She had clipped 5 primary feathers on each wing to make it so that Cash couldn’t get to her smaller birds faster than she could.

Although we joke that Cash “flies like a rock” because he can’t get any lift under his wings from lack of feathers being there, with a little help from some outside wind, Cash CAN fly!

Most people take their clipped birds outside because they THINK they can’t fly because they’re clipped. They may not be able to get very far inside the house, but outside with outside elements, they can go as far as the wind will take them.

It’s MUCH more dangerous to take a clipped bird outside (free of a harness or any restraint) than a fully flighted bird. The reason being, a clipped bird can’t maneuver as well and has an immediate handicap against predators in your area. A fully flighted bird can at least get away and have a better chance at using predator avoidance skills because it’s feathers are fully intact.

Most pet parrots have a problem going outside because they aren’t desensitized to outside things like noises, wind, people, cars, and everything else you encounter outside that could spook a bird unused to it. Once spooked, that pet bird will immediately ascend higher… and higher… and HIGHER. And because it never learned how to descend (the hardest skill to learn) and it knows nothing about flying in wind, it ends up far, far away from the owner which it probably never intended. It just didn’t know how to COME BACK TO YOU. It was never taught!

Check out this video of Zoey, a blue throated macaw, taking her very first exploratory flight and notice how high she goes!

Because Zoey was taught how to descend and all the other necessary skills for a good and solid recall, she was able to figure out the wind (it’s windier the higher you go up) and come back down to Jeanne, her owner. Think about the disadvantage an untrained, clipped bird is at in this situation.

If you want to take your bird outside untethered, you CAN, by joining the Freestyle Flyer’s Club and getting one on one personal coaching from professional bird trainer Dave Womach. To find out more about this elite club and how you can learn to train your own bird for freeflight, simply email info@birdtricks.com to find out more.

Now I do want to point out that Cash was trained at this location among others when he was fully flighted. Here is a picture of him flying at this exact location months ago with us:

You can see more of his freeflight photos here.

Our first day out here in Moab, Utah was super windy! We had guests Connie and Vic with their blue throated macaw, Tika (who is on a harness in this photo above) and the only bird that got to fly in the 35mph winds at Fisher Towers was our galah, Bandit.

He had a pretty good time but it was A LOT of work to fight against that wind! We stayed out a little while and showed Connie and Vic the sites, took some video time lapses of the area so the whole day didn’t go to waste since we chose not to fly any of the other birds. The gusts were up to 45 mph and it was just way too much for everyone’s first day out!

However, the rest of the week is supposed to be great and more friends will be joining us this Wednesday with their own freeflight birds as well, so many more birds in the air to see and anyone is still welcome to join us and watch the birds fly outside!

We will be spending our first few days at Fisher Towers so hopefully we see you there, and if we do, plan on seeing yourself possibly on the blog!