Is height an incentive for our birds to fly?

Backstory for my question. Perjo (CAG) is 18 weeks now, and I've had her at home for a month. She doesn't fly off my hand, shoulder, or limited perches outside of cage often, but she has. I'm sure in part to getting nervous and also just getting more daring, confident and comfortable in her permanent environment.

What I have noticed is when I allow her on top of her King Cage (which stands 72" IIRC) she has taken flight more often then when perched lower in the room. She also gives me the impression she's thinking of flying from up there even when she doesn't make the jump.

My rookie parrot owner intuition tells me it's b/c she is higher than anything else in the room.

Is that a common incentive for them to fly, when they are above the rest of their normal environment?

DRB said:

Backstory for my question. Perjo (CAG) is 18 weeks now, and I've had her at home for a month. She doesn't fly off my hand, shoulder, or limited perches outside of cage often, but she has. I'm sure in part to getting nervous and also just getting more daring, confident and comfortable in her permanent environment.

What I have noticed is when I allow her on top of her King Cage (which stands 72" IIRC) she has taken flight more often then when perched lower in the room. She also gives me the impression she's thinking of flying from up there even when she doesn't make the jump.

My rookie parrot owner intuition tells me it's b/c she is higher than anything else in the room.

Is that a common incentive for them to fly, when they are above the rest of their normal environment?

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Not sure, but remembering watching pigeons leaping off the roof to catch an up draft and then gliding for some distance - it is possibly the closest (unless they free fly) that they can get to this IMO. Plum likes to go onto the top of a door, which is about as high as he can get.

Just my $0.02 Birds like to be higher. One of my cockatiels likes to make a game out of it, drops from the highest point and then come swooping down and fly as close to me as it can.
sometimes he even fly's between my face and the computer monitor.
texsize

Depends on how high.

My Red Front got stuck on top of a three story roof one day. It took her almost two hours to work up the courage to fly down to me.

Sally usually climbs down to a lower branch before coming down to me from the tree in the yard.

(Most) Birds like to climb up high because it's easier for them to see the surrounding area, to overlook everything at once.

Flying straight across the room from a certain height is easy, flying 'up' is also still easy, but flying down requires more skills.

JerseyWendy said:

(Most) Birds like to climb up high because it's easier for them to see the surrounding area, to overlook everything at once.

Flying straight across the room from a certain height is easy, flying 'up' is also still easy, but flying down requires more skills.

Click to expand...

That's why Plum will fly up the stairs but never down! Ah got it.