How to free flight parrots?

[Wings]

If you want a free-flying bird, DO NOT get a caique. They are very poor flyers and in the wild usually only fly to escape from predators. Galahs are good free-flyers, as I am told.

 

[Caesar]

My IRN r fee to fly round the house (I must stress supervised) as well as my Lorikeet.
My Eclectus had his wings clipped by the breeder and he is coming up to 5half months. I dare say that I will let him Free fly but no way without a harness out doors.

 

[Birdman666]

Angelica gave you great advice!

This is not something I would try to learn over the internet. The odds of losing a bird that is free-flighted go WAY UP... because the bird gains confidence in his flying ability, then just goes, and ends up LOST and/or is a sitting duck for predators!

I did free flying for awhile. I lost two birds that way. One to a predator. One to a car. This is something you really need to do with someone who is an experienced trainer.

Don't say we didn't warn you!

 

[Birdman666]

just so you know macaws are usually the best candidates for free flight, they are loud, large, powerful fliers, and usually colorful. A loud and colorful bird is much easier to find than a small moderately loud bird. Caiques are small birds that all but the tiniest raptor(american kestral) will target as prey.

hawks and eagles will absolutely take a greenwing macaw right out of the air... Unfortunately, i have a friend who lost his free flighted greenwing to a red tailed hawk. Hawk hit it on the neck from above and behind and killed it instantly. Nothing the guy could do but watch and cry... That bird was his baby!!!

 

[Birdman666]

Well, we also have to distinguish between FREE FLYING A BIRD... i.e. opening the front door, walking outside with the bird, and tossing him up in the air to go fly around the neighborhood, trusting he will return to you...

And RECALL training... i.e. a bird is in a place where you don't want him to be, and you give the command, and he flies to you.

THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

Three of my five are recalled. My Red Lored Amazon was free-flighted when she was younger. (Before I lost two of my conures, and learned my lesson.) She isn't now, even though she certainly could be...

 

[MonicaMc]

Free flight and recall training should go hand in hand if a person is wanting to do free-flight.


If someone isn't wanting to do free-flight, then they can still recall train without free-flight.

 

[Kaya]

I have been looking into buying a caique and when I finally do I plan to free flight him/her. I haven't been able to find useful reasourves on the Internet so I was wondering if you could tell me about the free flight training process or direct me to a good website. Thanks!

Despite what most people think, recall isn't actually the most important part of freeflying a bird. The most important thing is food management and schedual management. This basically means, teaching your bird that ONLY when it comes home from outside will it be fed. You can literally have a bird that has no recall come home every night by this method. If you are really really determined to do this, I highly recommend you take Chris Biros freeflight class. Its the best $300 I ever spent in my life.
The class is online over skype, and he goes over the entire process in about 6 powerpoint slide lessons. It teaches you a lot of things about general psychology and animal training as well. I got my Alexandrine to start talking because of it.

Freeflight is not nearly as easy as you think. There are a lot of dangers that you would't even expect. I would recommend getting either a macaw, a cockatoo of some sort (Galahs are great) or a flock of about 5-6 sun conures. These are the only birds I would recommend for a first time freeflight trainer.

I'm training my flock of conures at the moment and you really do need to have more than 4 birds if you want to fly anything smaller than a cockatoo. When I fly mine by themselves they get chased and bullied by wild birds.

As for sources, Chris Biro is the only person I would trust about freeflight. He has been doing it for years with hundreds of birds. You can email him and he is incredibly helpfull
Heres his website: Avian Training and Flight Instruction
There is also a freeflight yahoo group he runs: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Freeflight/info

If you are going to train a bird for freeflight, I also highly recommend learning how to handfeed/handraise it yourself. A bird needs to learn to fly BEFORE it is weaned. You'll also need some sort of large outdoor cage or aviary because the bird will need to be 100% comfortable being outdoors before you fly it there. Ideally large enough for you to practice recall in.

If you have any more questions please message me. Freeflight is a wonderful thing if you do it correctly