What a Flighted Bird Can Tell You That a Clipped One Can’t

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Photo by Dave
Location: Orlando, FL
Freeflying: Camelot Macaw “Tusa”

Just recently we were performing in Nampa, Idaho and stayed at the Events Center that had a huge parking lot connected to a horse area. The place was huge, and the animal acts were separate with a giant parking lot to ourselves. Just by it were horse showers and across the way were barns, and the semi trucks were parked in the lot with us. We looked around and thought it was perfect for a little freeflight time!

 

Out came our flock mates of Jinx (blue throated macaw) followed by Bandit (rose breasted cockatoo) and Comet (camelot macaw) and then Tusa (camelot macaw) and later Bondi (rose breasted cockatoo)… for those of you Cressi (congo African grey) fans… she was too busy stuffing her face instead by choice…

 

Everyone was super excited to be freeflying on the beautiful, sunny day that Nampa had to offer…

 

Photo by Dave
Location: Nampa, ID
Pictured: Camelot macaw “Tusa”

 

That is, everyone… but Tusa. Tusa will fly more than the other birds with the exception of Bandit. But he’s more likely to want to freefly for the longest amount of time and take the longest flights. Not that day. He hardly flew at all and when encouraged to do so, he landed on a nearby television news van and chose not to fly anymore.

 

What a flighted bird can tell you that a clipped one can’t is through wanting or not wanting to fly. Whenever a bird does not want to fly… it can tell you that something is wrong. This can be something unrelated to the health of the bird like your bird spotting predators in the area before you can, or it can relate directly to how your bird is feeling and tell you the beginning signs that your bird could be sick or getting sick.

 

All too many times our birds will stop flying when they don’t feel well and it’s always one of the first signs of illness to us besides weight loss and loss of appetite which shortly follow or let us know what we’ve been missing to notice.

 

When Tusa flew, however, it was obvious what was wrong. He had one large flight feather that stuck straight up in the air above all the rest that was causing him serious pain. It wouldn’t fall out as much as he preened and pulled at it, and it was uncomfortable enough that he barely made his flight to Dave that night in the show. We immediately pulled him from the show, but still kept him backstage and kept his routine the same except for bringing him out for the flight.

 

Until the feather falls out, we’ve kept him out which so far has only meant one night. We’re waiting to discover that massive feather at the bottom of his cage and test to see how he is feeling before we return him to the show.

 

Photo by Dave
Location: Nampa, ID
Flying: Camelot macaw “Comet”

 

Flight is a huge sign that lets you know when something is right or something is wrong. For our birds to choose not fly tells us to pay more attention to something that’s wrong which is why we encourage our birds to fly, but try never to throw them or make them fly because there’s always a reason they’re choosing not to. A clipped bird can’t tell ya that.

 

Tossing your bird and things out of play time or fun is different; when we normally do this we’ve already established our birds are feeling well and the birds are always giving us signs that they want to play (something we’ve taught them as play) but this isn’t always done and is only done when the bird comes and gives us signs of wanting to do so. It can be hard to distinguish the two if you aren’t used to giving your birds different signs of communication they can use to tell you what they want or don’t want, or if you’re not used to being around flighted birds so I wanted to make sure to let you guys know the difference as I know you’ve all seen us launch Bandit into the air for play time and things of the sort.

 

A bird not wanting to fly at all can tell you something, just another reason to keep your bird fully flighted and teach recall/indoor flight training.