Micah has been going to an indoor fly group recently. We just started, and we have missed several times due to (my) illness or being out of town, but we've been practicing some things at home and Micah enjoys our time there.

First, let me update on the flight thing. When Micah molted all her clipped flight feathers out, it was my intention to clip them again due to her love of the outdoors, our small house and the fact that Jennifer always clipped her and I doubted Micah was a competent flyer and feared for her safety. However, it was right after her big molt she started laying eggs. The longer she had her full flight feathers, the worse I felt about taking them away from her.

Then, one day I realized how truly sedentary she is. Her main daily activity is sitting in her polly dolly cuddling it. Most birds spend time flapping their wings as they play with their toys. She does not do that. The only times she flaps her wings on her own is when she is on a perch chewing on something and loss her balance OR if she was upset with me, she would climb up to the corner of her cage, grab hold of the bars on the side and top, and flap away. Flapping always gets her some attention, so she learned if she wanted to get me over to her cage in a hurry, she just has to start flapping her wings like a crazy bird. Other than that, Micah's in-cage activities centered around cuddling and preening her polly dolly, eating, ringing her bell, preening and sometimes chewing on the toys and perches.

We took her to a vet I don't really like, and the vet scared the poop out of us saying stuff like Micah has little tiny birdy cataracts, which is to be expected, but only of a bird much older than she is. The vet basically made us believe Micah was creaky and unhealthy and whatnot, which is not really true. She's a healthy and happy bird.

BUT she is sedentary, and though right NOW she appears healthy and happy, if she continues spending the majority of her time just sitting around, she won't stay healthy and won't live as long.

Now, I have made a point of exercising her as much as I could by spinning her around and letting her flap her wings (an activity that is also done to tell her to/help her to poop), but there's only so much of that she'll take, and Matthew is a big sucker. I ask him, "Did you exercise her?" and he replies, "She doesn't like it!" And I groan. Anyway, this is not really enough.

So, at some point, I thought, well... crap. How do I get her more active? She doesn't really like to climb all over the place. If given a series of perches or other climby-type objects, she'll pick one she likes and sit. And stay.

Normal birds in the wild get all their exercise via flight. They fly all over the place all the time. Wings are to birds as legs are to humans. Of course. Everyone knows this. But many clip their companion bird's wings.

The problems I had with Micah flying were mainly her lack of skill introducing possible danger, our small house introducing birdy dangers and the results of a suddenly spooked Micah while outdoors. Birds just take off when they're frightened. Micah has ended up in trees before and not easily retrieved. We live in a pretty urban area. There are more dangers than just trees. She also has no idea that not all people are nice.

Every one of those problems can be overcome with training. The goal being that we train Micah how to fly skillfully and to return to us when we call her.

The problem with THAT is, how on earth would I train Micah to fly?? My house is WAY too small for that. And, I didn't even know where to start! I was about to decide to clip her wings come spring when we found a group of people who fly their birds weekly in the Lake City Community Center. Which is right by my house!

SO.

That gives us an opportunity to teach her to fly, give her good exercise every week at minimum, give her socialization with other birds and humans and hopefully give us some good methods of training.

When we first started going, Micah would not even flap her wings when we tried to run her around. There's a lovely cockatoo who is not flighted due to abuse by prior owners, so his foster mom runs him around in a circle and he flaps his wings. Micah took a HUGE liking to this woman (which is unusual because she's the archetype of the shape and size of people she Does Not Like), so this lady tried to do the same run-around with Micah. Micah just hung on tight and sat.

Micah would NOT let go of us to fly. She was excited to see other birds fly, but she was scared to fly herself.

Whenever we finally managed to launch her into the air, her flight was almost panicked - she would fly VERY fast, and often had to loop around and hover to get to her destination. This is the same way she would fly at home when she decided to fly at home. Which is why we didn't want to try to teach her to fly at home - she flies FAR too fast and I was very afraid she would lose control and slam into something and injure herself quite badly.



In the few weeks since we started going to the fly group and practicing things at home, Micah has changed a lot! We've taught her that if she is sitting on our thumb, she flaps her wings. We want to teach her that if we put her on our thumb we want her to fly, but we'll take what we can get for now. We have been practicing with the concept of, "Birds use their wings when they want to go somewhere!" So instead of just ferrying Micah around wherever she wants to go all the time, sometimes we will instead pick her up, put her on our thumb, and she will flap her wings... and so long as she is flapping her wings, we will walk her to her destination. If she stops flapping her wings, we stop moving. Then when we get to our destination, she gets a little tiny treat and a lot of praise.

Sometimes, we will make her fly to her cage when she wants to go. She can't hold on to our arms very well, so we try to put her on our arm (it is difficult!), and then with a little movement of our arm, she loses her footing and flies to her cage. Then we make a big deal out of it, clapping and cheering and giving her a little tiny treat.

Over the weeks, her flying has become markedly less panicked. She doesn't flap her wings as quickly, so her progress to her cage is more reasonable, she doesn't need to loop around, and she doesn't seem upset by it. There have been times when I made her fly to her cage that she was scared by the experience and it broke my heart. She makes this little trilling noise when she is afraid, and she made it once when I made her fly to her cage, and I almost cried I felt so bad.

Anyway, right now her landings are okay because she can hover REALLY well, but it takes her some time to actually land. If she didn't know how to hover, she would be crashing a lot. I know that soon she will figure out how to land smoothly, but I haven't seen any improvement there yet.

I think the big difference I see is that she has immediately begun to grasp the concept of "birds use their wings to do important things!" Now when she is on a perch chewing on something (the poo palace and the bathroom shower perch both have chewy things in sort of inconvenient locations that require her to bend over to chew them) and begins to lose her balance, she no longer actually begins to slip and then panic and flap her wings. NOW, she extends her wing and balances herself to avoid slipping. I had never seen her use her wings for that before.

Another thing Matthew and I both noticed was Micah has started to settle down again. After she laid her eggs, she hasn't been quite the same. A bit more aggressive, demanding, anxious. Today she was like the bird we knew before she started laying eggs! Maybe it's just because better weather is coming again, it's warmer and prettier and the hours of light are longer, but it could also be better exercise make for a healthier, happier bird. It makes sense.



In other news, Micah likes the dryer. Specifically, being IN the dryer.







And for your video enjoyment, Micah clicking to me from inside the dryer.