by Pajarita » Wed Sep 11, 2019 10:34 am
Any bird can learn recall but one simply cannot trust the training to work all the time. And this is not just my opinion, it's a fact - there have been lots and lots of professionally trained birds that have flown away and not come back. Michael himself once lost Kili that way - thankfully, he found her. I also do not believe that taking birds outside benefits them because I strive to avoid all unnecessary stress from my birds lives, and birds get anxious and stressed out when in unfamiliar territory - but that's my thing.
Having said that, recall is not hard to teach. It just takes time. For one thing, you need to identify the high value item and reserve it only for training. Then you start by teaching the bird to just take a couple of steps to reach your hand once you give the command - and praise, praise, praise and give the reward when it does. Then you do it from an increasingly longer distance until the bird needs to fly to get to your hand. Once the bird does this consistently, the bird is trained... not with a 100% rate of success but as trained as it can be.