This video shows Micah flying to her cage and to her boing.  We still have to work on recall and other commands as well as give her practice on flying in a straight line with more control and landing with more control, she's already worlds away from where we started.

Her first flights, when we could convince her to let go of our hands (mind you, we started out having to literally toss her into the air because she had NO idea what we wanted from her), was wild and panicked.  I felt horrible in the beginning, to tell you the truth.  She was obviously scared.  Who would have thought flying would scare a bird?  But she was scared, and her panicked flights were totally off the wall.  She was EVERYWHERE.

Then, landing, well... she didn't so much land as hover over something until it either came to her or she slowly managed to lower herself onto it.  This is a great alternative to simply smacking into things and I'm grateful she was able to do it, but it wasn't at all what I would call "landing!"

Now, she has learned that when we put her on our thumbs, we're going to ask her to fly somewhere.  She's still really dependent on us to put her on her thumb, unless she's got an URGENT need to be somewhere else.   I've been working on making sure she knows that when she is on my index finger she STAYS there, and we're also working on ways of teaching her that it is ok to fly from, say, her boing to her cage when we tell her to.   Really, I just want her to fly where I tell her to, so if something bad should happen and she flies outside when I don't intend her to, I can recall her from wherever she's gotten herself.  

Already, she has learned what I mean when I say, "fly to your cage," "fly to your poo palace," "fly to your boing," and "fly where you want."

If I just say, "go! fly!" she will usually fly to her cage or poo palace.  She will also fly where I point. 

The most interesting part is that it appears it is not just coincidence that she flies where I ask her to, evidenced by what happens when I tell her, "fly where you want."    When we were at fly group, she desperately wanted to fly to Debbie, but I kept asking her to fly to her poo palace.  She would sometimes fly straight to her poo palace and sometimes fly over to Debbie, consider her briefly, then readjust her course and continue flying to her poo palace.   Then I said, "fly where you want!"    She flew straight to Debbie and landed on her!

Of course, once when I said, "fly to your poo palace," she inexplicably flew to the big perch with the blue and gold macaw that would definitely love to "kill a conure".   The macaw was a good bird, though.   It scared the bejeezus out of me.   I kept asking her, "why? why? why did you fly there? why?"   She's never flown to that bird or that perch before.  Sheesh.

Anyway, she's doing really well with the flying and I hope she'll continue to improve and by summertime she'll be recalling or just flying when we tell her to, where we tell her to.   It would put my mind at ease a bit, knowing that she might fly down to me from a tree or wherever she might get herself.   I guess she's flown to a tree before she came to live with us, and fire fighters had to rescue her!  Silly bird.  I bet she loved the fire fighters, though!

In other news, one of the green winged macaws flew onto Micah's perch for no good reason (it was "visit birds who probably won't like you landing next to them" day I guess), and I ran over, yelping, and someone said, "Oh, Molly won't hurt Micah!"   I said, "It's not Micah I'm worried about!"   Sure enough, though Molly was whisked away quickly, Micah was pissed and was going to "kill a green wing."   Micah, you are a little bird.   ....With a sharp beak.   The Macaws have big strong beaks, but conures little beaks are sharp, sharp, sharp!  

Good thing this doesn't happen often and we're always watching these birds closely.   We kinda have to, with the Eclectus always almost literally underfoot.

Tags: videos

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.

Tags: photos, smart bird, videos