Flight Recall Training: It's going great!

Hi everyone!

Recently I began doing flight recall training with my YSGCC so he can have more exercise and maybe a few years in the future do free flight (I'm talking somewhere like 4-5 years down the line)

He's making absolutely fantastic progress and I just felt like I needed to share it with someone, I just get way too excited about this stuff and need to share it with someone! Just in the beginning he was only able to jump from his cage to my hand (about 15 cm) and now he can about 4-5 meters any angle to my hand! I'm super excited about this as most of the hesitating to take off has stopped and he jumps now without much hesitation. As most birds do he gets distracted in about 10-20 minutes but still makes great progress in that time.

Just wanted to ask though, I'm using pineapple to reward him instead of millet because I'm not sure if pineapple is healthier or not. Are there any sort of foods that you can suggest that are healthy and make a great reward? I know millet is good for them but I dont want to feed my bird millet too much because I don't want him to be chubby.

Thanks for reading my thread!

You probably already know what a hugely polarising topic free-flight is. There are just so many hazards out there to consider, predatory birds, cats, dogs, cars, dishonest people, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Even wild species not considered to be predatory can gang up and harass your pet bird to the point where it may panic and take off and never be seen again. You could always harness train if you still want Kiwi to enjoy the great outdoors but as for free-flying, I’ve just seen too many heartbreaking stories of loss to ever recommend it.

Wow good job !!

A quick question for you, because I'm going through similar training with Kermit. I started by target training her & am now trying to get her to flutter about 20 cm to the next perch. I'm wondering how long it's taken you to get 4-5 m flight distance? Because Kermit is seriously questioning the 20 cm, but I know she's not a confident flyer (yet).

Much thanks and keep up the good work.

Personally I first started with him not even jumping, just reaching as far as he could. Every time he successfully did it I just moved a little further every time, that eventually turned into hops and then into slow controlled flight into faster longer distance flight. When he was doing hopping was a few months ago but I only trained him for 2 days and kind of just dropped it for some reason, then I tried again a couple of months ago for a day then dropped it again for some reason I’m not sure, but kiwi just generally likes to be where I am so he’s been flying for a long time. If your bird isn’t confident yet it can take longer, it also depends how long your bird can stay focused and how quickly your bird catches onto things. Just remember every bird is different and will take different periods of time to catch onto things. It only took kiwi about a day to learn step up. Just take it slow and do research and your bird will be able to do flight recall, just remember to always keep saying the command or the trick won’t work at all. So when your arm is up and your bird is ready keep saying one phrase over and over (IN YOUR NORMAL VOICE) and your bird will understand that it means “fly to me” for kiwi I just say “kiwi come here” but you can literally say anything and it can be turned into a command. And why you use your normal voice? If you teach your bird the command in a cute squeaky voice you’ll always have to make that voice to do the command and when your throat is sore you won’t be able to call your bird over because you can’t make that voice. This happened to kiwi when I was teaching him to blow me a kiss, I taught him in a squeaky voice and now he only recognizes the squeaky voice.

Sorry, I went kind of off topic, but to put it simply:
-Slowly keep moving away each time your bird is successful
-if your bird seems uninterested in continuing don’t force them to, just try again later
-do research on how to do it
-and use your normal voice for the command

There’s not much to it, it’s mainly patience and understand your bird’s pace. Just do it consistently on a regular basis and your bird will eventually be able to do flight recall.

To answer your question first, we use almonds or dried bananas. We try to keep his flying treats unique from his other treats, but sometimes we've been lazy about that. For his treats, they're always tiny portions (small like a baby's fingernail size) so he enjoys it but doesn't get too much fatty food.

If you're interested, I do recommend looking at the Flightmasters Facebook page. They have several videos that breakdown the process.

Just be aware that flying in the house is very different from flying outside. Even birds who regularly for outside forget a lot of their training on new environments. So definitely keep up with training inside, but also start him with a harness in an outdoor setting. There are just too many distractions, and flying (recall and boomerang) takes a lot of focus.

It's also quite risky to fly solo outside. I recommend you find a group that flies together (birds are more likely to come back in a group setting) and a group also helps look out for predators together.

But you also must be careful with whom you fly with. Our local FF community passed around PBFD and some other diseases with wild birds.. Our vet confirmed it :/

Cairo is free-flight trained, but as anyone in the FF community will tell you, you must be prepared and accept that they might get lost, get chased away, or fly away. Cairo flew off twice from his previous family when free-flying (and was lost for a couple of weeks each time), so we only fly him off a Kevlar kite wheel now. Sometimes I think about free-flying again, but when I remember how distraught I felt when he spooked off, I rethink it again.

Let us know how it goes! Looking forward to hearing what new treats he likes