Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

I was chatting with a friend this weekend about his son’s school, STAR Academy in Los Angeles, which is affiliated with the exotic animal rescue organization STAR Eco Station which I hope to visit sometime. Junior and senior high school students learn to interact and care for parrots and other species as they are rehabilitated for adoption. We got to talking about birds and music, so if anyone dares listen to Christmas tunes already, here’s Snowball the Sulfur-Crested Cockatoo dancing in some excerpts from his Christmas medley. (Good stuff really starts about half way in!)

Snowball is also a rescue bird, an 11 year old who was relinquished to the Bird Lover’s Only Sanctuary because of behavioral problems. He has bonded with the owner, and she is keeping him. He’s also turned into a great fund-raiser for the sanctuary. His commercial endorsement contracts include Soba water from Sweden:

Goes to show what a little knowledge and patience with training can do. I notice on the sanctuary web site, Barbara Heidenreich’s Good Bird training site is listed in her favorites. You can purchase the whole Snowball Christmas DVD for a $15 donation to the sanctuary.

(Carly is also fond of bouncing her head and making drum sounds to music, but her sense of rhythm is from another universe!)

Anyone considering a great gift for a parrot lover, please check out some of the wonderful conservation and rescue organizations to the left which offer memberships, sponsorships, and other gifts to help fund their work.

I’m upping Piper’s excursions. I take Carly by herself most often when I do errands, because she is easy and also seems to do well when we have some one-on-one time like that. But today we had a family outing to Home Depot, and then a little training time in the pine tree at the park. Carly has a great time in the hardware aisle — hundreds of little tiny bags of parrot toys! Piper was apprehensive with all the people and busy-ness, so he rode in a carrier in the cart and observed. I really think one of the reasons Carly is so unflappable (?) outside is because she had so much exposure before freeflying.

Piper adapts pretty well once he’s done something a few times. He’s a great little car rider now. And today in the park he was very relaxed walking around and doing a little fun work in the pine tree, even after his big adventure the other day. I think with Carly it finally got to the point where experiencing new things was just nothing new. That’s our goal.

Piper being puffy in the park, while Carly chills.

So, finally, a question: what is it about Home Depot and parrots? I have met workers there who have parrots, and today met two more. Both men in their 60’s, one with a 3-yr old Amazon, and one with a teenage Grey. The man with the Grey had one who recently died also, at the age of 75! He was his 3rd owner.

OK, so it’s always beach weather here, but we do have an apple season too!

Some recent pics.

Fall means… the beaches are ours again!



Carly and Piper meet the skinniest apples ever.



And, doing their part to help the economy, Carly and Piper work hard to remedy slumping numbers in new home construction.



more in galleries…

There have always been a few crows in the park. One or two would often sit in the sycamore tree and watch while I was training Carly under the canopy. She was briefly chased by one once during one of her first big outdoor flights, but she didn’t pay much attention to it. Otis and Gizmo were chased by a couple on their first outing to the park here too. They did their usual divide and confuse routine, and the crows gave up.

So Monday morning was Piper’s second outdoor recall training session. (Put on your shades — you might be blinded by the glaring errors!) Carly went with us again, and before I let Piper out of his carrier I unclipped her leash so she could go on a few big flights. After that she’s usually content to just hang out with me. She didn’t want to go however, so we did a few short recalls from the wall like we did yesterday with Piper. Then I got Piper out to join in. We normally alternate back and forth when we practice indoors, and that’s what we did today for 5 or 10 minutes. Then Carly was ready for a big flight. She took off on a big circle around the park, and of course Piper followed her. (He always wants to take off with her if he’s on a harness.) They did a couple very large loops above the treeline, then Carly landed in a eucalyptus. Piper landed in another tree behind it, but I didn’t see which one.

Carly and I did a full circuit of the park and surrounding townhomes calling, but not a peep out of him. Then a guy came running and said he’d seen Piper get chased quite aggressively by 4 crows out of a tree. We went off to search in that direction, but still nothing. Once I heard Piper do some of his calls, but it was a courtyard or two over and I could not find him. Once I thought I saw a grey-like body fly behind some trees. But mostly nothing. Just walking and calling and whistling our contact tune. One thing I did find: crows. Lots and lots of crows. Not in big flocks, but 2-4 in almost every tree. Then later in the day larger groups flying overhead. Another person told me they’d seen him being chased also. Just as it was almost dark I saw the silhouette of a bird landing in the top of a eucalyptus in the distance. It was landing in the same silly way a grey parrot does. I ran and called and it was indeed Piper. He flew to a tree near me, and did the stair-step descent approach, going to lower and lower trees, finally landing on a scrawny twig about 15 feet high. One final call and he was back!

This was not the ideal 2nd day out for sure. I have never seen so many crows in the area. I have since seen flocks of them near the beach also, where there are usually only ravens. Unfortunately I didn’t personally see any of the chases with Piper, so I don’t know how aggressively they were behaving. But I do know it was very hard to find a landing place without crows already in possession. Piper has not been outside nearly as much as Carly when she first started either, so he has far less exposure to seeing large birds. It must have been pretty frightening for him.

In the picture above, our training spot is just to the right of where it says “found.” Pretty amazing after so many hours he was literally back within about 100 ft of where he started.

When we came in he ate a huge dinner, then went to his bedtime perch and fell asleep at 6:30 (about 5 hours earlier than normal!)

But back to the errors:

Carly went with us again, and before I let Piper out of his carrier I unclipped her leash so she could go on a few big flights. . . . She didn’t want to go however, so we did a few short recalls from the wall like we did yesterday with Piper. Then I got Piper out to join in. We normally alternate back and forth when we practice indoors, and that’s what we did today for 5 or 10 minutes. Then Carly was ready for a big flight. She took off on a big circle around the park, and of course Piper followed her. . . . They did a couple very large loops above the treeline, then Carly landed in a eucalyptus.

Totally preventable, dumb errors. Carly is just coming out of some re-training, so I should not have trusted her to stay focused on short recalls before she had done some longer flights. Dumb. This was Piper’s second day out, and I should not have been training him alongside her unless I was totally confident she would not fly off. I knew how he’d react. It worked the day before when she had already flown some, but even then it was more of a risk than I should have taken on his first day. It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal without the crows, but even so, not smart. I assume it was also distracting for Carly, still under intense observation and re-training, to have Piper flying with her for the first time.

What did go well:

1. I had my stack of 50 “Lost Parrot” flyers with pictures on them right at my home, so I got those out very soon. I also have business cards with Carly’s picture, my cell phone number, and web site address, normally for giving to people so they can access the training resources web page or photos. They are also perfect for handing out when searching for a bird.
2. Piper stayed very close, in the immediate vicinity of the park (even though I couldn’t spot him!) He must have really been hunkering down inside the trees most of the time. Since he is brand new at this I didn’t know what to expect, but I’m very happy his instinct was not to bolt in a straight line and fly off.
3. Once he felt safe retrieval was easy.
4. I could take the entire day off to search if I need to. I never fly outdoors when I have anything within the next 24 hrs that can’t be rescheduled.
5. This is a very animal-friendly and helpful neighborhood. Wonderful people, eager to help. (Two neighbor girls were so excited when I got Piper back home they even volunteered to go take down flyers. Wow!)

Piper is much more watchful of the sky when outside now, so I’m going to do spend some more time on the harness just walking around and doing recalls without big sis. He is a fearless flyer physically, but he also startles so much more easily than Carly ever did. It’s an odd combination. But it could also be that I notice it more with Piper because, being fledged properly, his instinct is to fly; Carly, unfledged and clipped, would usually just hunker down onto my chest. It’s easy to forget how much a baby hasn’t experienced yet.

One final note: I think this kind of experience highlights the risks inherent in freeflight training, especially as practiced with companion parrots, by non-professionals, in a relatively uncontrolled environment. I don’t consider myself an impatient trainer (quite the opposite usually) and I could have prevented this event with the knowledge I had. But it’s very easy to “go with the flow” even when you know what you’re doing is increasing the risk. In addition to the importance of learning and gaining experience, one of the lessons for me with this is that a very important aspect of experience is to always remember why the rules you have established are so critical.

Carly’s card:

(Photo by Hugh Choi)

Here are some pictures of Piper’s early outdoor training on a harness.
Piper Goes Out

I use a retractable leash set short at the beginning (5-6 feet), then work up to the full length eventually (15 ft). They need to be familiar with doing recall on a harness and leash inside before doing this, so they understand the concept and don’t try to fly off uncontrollably.

I personally like using a harness like this to acclimate a new bird to flying outdoors. Even when Carly had started flying on her own outside, I still used the harness for the first few minutes of our outdoor sessions at the beginning. It allowed me a way to double-check that her response was good that day, that she was not distracted or anxious about something in the environment, etc.

I will take some pictures of the harness I use. It’s homemade, but similar to the aviator. I also have a version that doesn’t have to be put over the head since some birds don’t like that. The KEY with using a harness, in addition to sufficient indoor training first, is to make sure you have the leash securely attached on both ends. That means a secure fastener on the bird end that he won’t open up on his own (again — practice inside!) and a secure fastener on your end that you can’t accidentally lose hold of. That means a caribiner or some secure hook like those found at boat supply stores. I’ll include some pics of those too. Do not rely on holding the leash loop in your hand, or even looped around your wrist. If something startles your bird, and the bird tries to bolt, it may very well startle you too and you can accidentally let go of the leash. It’s also important to not have the line too long for what the bird is comfortable with doing recall, otherwise you can get tangled up.

An article about harness training by Barbara Heidenreich, featuring Stephanie Ernst’s African Grey is in Parrot Chronicles: Harness Training Your Bird .

Here’s a shot that show’s Piper’s harness better. I now use a screw-down pear clip to attach the leash to the harness because he learned how to unfasten the standard leash clip.

Complete Harness Training Series.

Piper did his first outdoor flights this afternoon. In the park, from the same bench where Carly learned, with big sis right next to him showing him how it’s done. (I actually thought she’d want to go sit up in a tree and goof off while we did this, but she wanted to join in. We’ve been practicing indoors a lot that way, alternating birds.) He’s 7 months old now, and we’ve been doing regular indoor practice sessions twice daily, before meals, for about 3-4 weeks, and also started taking walks in the park and other places on a harness several times per week. Indoors he’s been recalling all over the house, into different rooms. I’m feeding him as much as he wants, but in scheduled meals (he usually gets 3, one more than Carly).

He did great today, nice and relaxed and very attentive. We stuck with short recalls, probably 6-8 ft. I have not been able to do targeting with him in trees (to learn to crawl down from them, just in case) because he spends all his time chewing on the harness if he’s on a perch! We do have a high ceiling at home now and a high hanging gym at work, and we do target training swinging around the get-a-grip net or hanging gym. Before we do longer flights I’m going to let him do some crawling recalls in our pine tree off the harness now. I’m not all that worried about him being afraid to fly down. He’s a kamakazi in the house, totally fearless, and his recall is very strong — as is his desire to be wherever Carly and I are.

I’m really proud of Carly too — she was a champ in doing little bitty recalls with him outside; she usually finds that very boring.

People have asked me how I decided when was the right time to do the first outdoor flight. Besides all the standard criteria for recall and flight agility — which are the fundamental requirements — I must say I decided much the same way I decided to let Carly fly at the beach. I knew they were ready for a week or two, and was monitoring things very closely. On the day of however, it was really just a gut instinct. Probably because I felt relaxed, the bird was relaxed, we had time, good weather, etc. Everything felt in place.

During this dry spell of posting, Carly has been grounded for the last couple weeks or so.   She was flying much too far afield, exploring the neighborhood out of my sight range, and making friends “without supervision.”   I did not want a repeat of the Case of the Red-Headed Guy.   We’ve been very lucky that incidents like these have involved concerned and honest people.

We had many changes in the last couple months, including Hugh’s birds leaving and 3 new birds of mine arriving.   Her behavior didn’t change overnight, but after awhile it felt like she’d lost almost everything we’d worked for, in terms of having a good response and being able to fly outdoors in a way that is up to my safety standards.  I finally realized that if I looked objectively at her behavior, indoors and out, without knowing her history of freeflight, my training recommendation would be to work on indoor recall only, and get it into a very firm routine once again.  (When her recall was good, our flying routine had become walks/flies at the beach, not any kind of disciplined practice.   Bad idea.)   In other words, go almost back to square one.   As Cynthia pointed out, flying off down the beach was not setting her up for success; so we went back as far as necessary to ensure that sessions were both successful and fun.   It was surprisingly startling to come to this realization; I had to focus only on what she was presenting, not what I knew she could do.  (Hmm… does Sid or someone have a post on a similar subject somewhere?)

So we spent a few weeks doing re-training, while Piper has been learning the ropes.     I will write more details in subsequent posts, but today I just wanted to report that she is back in the air again!  A beach outing in which she stayed within a comfortable distance, juked and dove and hollered, but didn’t do any runners down the beach to check out the tourists.  Didn’t even gaze longingly. I seriously wondered if we could ever do that again.   It is really a shock to see things become “untrained.”

More details on what she, Piper, and especially I have been learning coming soon.

P.S. I am opening the blog up to comments, so feel free to post questions or remarks below. [UPDATE: and you can now do so without being subscribed and logged in.]