Pajarita, I really think that you shaped your opinion based on very little information and then became somewhat fixated on confirming your bias.
Pajarita wrote:First of all, it's not only 'a' member of this forum who condemns free flight (namely, me
). Michael, the owner of this site, a professional trainer with a background in animal behavior, and somebody who trained his birds for free flight and did it for years is now opposed to it - why? Because he realized that it's not safe and he would not risk his birds for it.
Listen, I am not insulting Michael, but we have to be realistic about his free flight approach. From whom did he learn free flight? No one, right? He tried to teach himself? He tried to teach himself to free-fly birds who were adults (and I believe at least one was previously clipped) in a city park. This is NOT a professional approach to free flight, so please do not attempt to pass it off as such. It was not even a big city park (like Central Park) with at least some natural buffer, which would have been dodgy enough; it was an extremely small one that was directly surrounded by the cityscape. This is one of the worst locations you could possibly begin to free-fly. I wish Michael would realise this and stop vilifying free flight on the basis of his experiences.
It seems as though your entire perspective on free flight was catalysed by the actions of someone doing it very irresponsibly. Guess what? When I first started, I was irresponsible, too. I also tried to teach myself, thinking I knew enough about birds to tackle the challenge. Just like with Michael, it did not go well. This is like trying to teach yourself to ride a horse, climb a mountain, or scuba dive. This is why falconry requires an apprenticeship. You really cannot use Michael's experiences to justify anything other than not flying beginner birds in the middle of the city. After pursuing mentorship and learning from experienced free-flyers, I realised the pure stupidity of the things I had been doing before. We have to be able to admit when we were wrong.
Pajarita wrote:Secondly, your arguments are not valid. For one thing, it's not that the practice is in its infancy, it's that no matter how long you've been doing it and how much you might have learned about it, it will never be safe. If it was, professional trainers that have been doing this for many years (there have been free-flight shows in amusement parks and zoos for years and years) would not lose their birds - and they do.
Zoos and amusement parks are some of the worst examples of "free flight". Having a bird fly from point A to point B or do circles in a very small area does not even really build their outdoor flight skills, let alone navigation skills. It's complete child's play. My birds are better free-flyers after a year or two than those birds are after ten flying in that setting. I told you, free flight is in its infancy. Actual free flight with parrots where they are treated like athletes--not just silliness where the bird flies a bit in a zoo arena, having its weight kept artificially low so that it never really wanders, then gets stuffed back in a cage--is most certainly in its infancy.
Free flight will never be "safe"? Define "safe". Nothing is 100% safe, not even having a bird in your house. How many birds die every year from accidents in the house? By your logic, birds absolutely should be clipped, because then there is a much lower chance of them flying out the door. There are plenty of examples of clipped birds living long lives, so why risk them being able to fly? Why expose them to ANY danger, right?
"But you have to take precautions to prevent that." Is it EVER 100%? No? Then don't keep flighted birds. And yes, clipped birds can be stepped on or sat on. So just don't keep birds, period. Nothing is ever 100% safe. Free flight can be a lot safer than what you currently believe because you're basing WAY TOO MUCH off of Michael's experiences. You then purposefully seek out the accidents, tragedies, and failures that confirm your own bias. You have no idea what the proportion of birds who have been free-flying successfully for years is compared to the birds who have been lost.
Pajarita wrote:Furthermore, even homing pigeons which did not only evolve to return to their home (a genetic trait that parrots don't have) and which have been trained and bred for it for thousands of years (the Egyptians did it 1,000 BC) get lost in races - and not one or two but THOUSANDS of them (last race in Portugal, out of 14,000 pigeons, 8,000 never returned - almost 60%!!!!) so, obviously, it's not a matter of the practice being in its infancy, a matter of learning from mistakes or even a matter of more or less training because, if it was, there would be no lost professionally trained birds or, at least, a very small percentage.
Parrots are not released tens or hundreds of miles from their home and expected to find their way back. This comparison is not legitimate. Parrots are flown in a completely different manner. Particularly for parrots who fly repeatedly at the same familiar locations, their ability to navigate back to the original area if they fly off is actually very good. There is a very small percentage of professionally trained birds who get lost. If I had to take a guess right now at this very moment, I would say the number is probably 10 out of 100, and that's taking into account smaller birds, which are inherently riskier to free-fly for a number of reasons.
Neither you nor I have the exact data, but I actually study free flight very closely because I care about mitigating risk and preventing future accidents. I have a realistic idea of how many birds are lost, and it is a much smaller percentage than you currently imagine. I know people who have been flying the same birds for ten years. The trick is getting them to that point without making a stupid mistake, which is why they should be from an ideal developmental background and why you need an experienced mentor.
Pajarita wrote:Also, the comparison between driving a car and having an accident and free-flying a bird and losing one is apples and oranges. A human being can make the decision to drive or not to drive, how, where and when so it is, up to a point, in conscious control of the outcome - birds are not.
Once again, this is incorrect. My birds 100% have conscious control of the outcome. If they don't want to fly that day, guess what? They don't fly. Responsible free-flyers pay close attention to their birds' behaviour. Moreover, responsible free-flyers never hurl their birds into the air or otherwise force them to fly. Responsible free-flyers carefully select locations that will work the best with that species and that individual. Responsible free-flyers militantly check wind and weather conditions so as not to expose their bird to situations that are too difficult. Responsible free-flyers study locations for their wild bird activity before selecting them as potential flight locations. Responsible free-flyers typically fly more than one bird so that they have flock security and protection, just like they would in the wild. If the birds wish to fly, they fly. If they do not, no one makes them. That is the freedom of choice.
Pajarita wrote:A sexually mature bird that has no mate will go looking for a mate and that means flying away. Period. It's not my opinion, it's a genetically programmed need (survival of the species) and nobody can train a bird to suppress it. But even a bird with a bonded mate who got left behind can get spooked and fly far away enough so as to get lost. Only problem is, when they get lost, most of them either end up in somebody else's home or dead.
This is a gross oversimplification. Certain species are more prone to wandering for a mate than others (like the eclectus), I will give you that. But the truth of the matter is that pair and flock flying is the future of free flight because it is safer, and more and more free-flyers are beginning to realise and adopt this. This is just one more example of how we are learning and growing as practitioners of this activity.
I am not going to sit here and try and convince you that no free-flyers are ever permanently lost. I'm a realist, or I wouldn't be a responsible free-flyer. But your perception of free flight reminds me of someone who is adamant that having birds flighted in the home is just too much risk. The risk level when done properly is probably a 3, and you're acting like it's a 9 or a 10.
Pajarita wrote:Besides, as much as you enjoy seeing your birds fly (and I am not questioning this) and although I am sure that every single person who free-flies birds enjoys the activity, most of them do it for the show-off factor and not for the bird's wellbeing. Having said that, I am also sure that there are lots of people out there doing it because they simply do not realize that when it comes to losing a bird in free-flight is not a matter of 'if', it's a matter of 'when'.
I find the first part of this troubling. How many free-flyers have you actually taken the time to interact with? I believe that most of us are doing it because we love our birds. Losing a bird period is not a matter of "if", but "when". There is a fundamental disconnect between your thinking and our thinking. You just want the bird to be as safe as possible and live as long as possible. We want the bird to be as free as possible while minimising risk as well as we can. Life in the wild is not peaches and cream either, you know...
Pajarita wrote:But the biggest argument against free-flying is why take the risk when there is no need for it?! All arguments for or against go down to this simple truism - because there is no need on this green earth for any bird to be put in danger just so it can free-fly when there is a perfectly good and perfectly safe alternative: use a leash outdoors and/or fly them in an enclosed place. Same exercise, same experience for the birds but safe.
It is not the same experience at all. There is absolutely no tether in the world that will allow a bird to experience what they would during free flight. I am not saying that everyone with a bird should pursue free flight, because the vast majority of them honestly should not. But it is not the same experience. A small parrot such as a cockatiel can get decent exercise in a standard 20 x 10 x 8-foot high room. For a macaw to get that same amount of exercise, they would need a room that is roughly 60 x 30 x 26 feet high. How many macaw owners have houses that big?
And leads/tethers can be plenty dangerous, they really can. A bird on a tether can be taken by a predator. I know at least one person whose bird was killed by a dog when the dog ran up while it was attached to a tether. This is where someone like you comes in and remarks "You shouldn't have taken that risk! There was always a chance a dog could show up at the park!" Then there is yet another person who cries "This is why birds shouldn't be flighted! There is no reason to expose them to this danger when they can be perfectly happy clipped and given other opportunities for enrichment!" Each person strikes the balance between safety and freedom at a different point. You strike it without free flight while we strike it with.
I honestly think that if you pushed yourself to set aside your bias for the moment and examined macaw free flight specifically (join some groups, talk to some actual free-flyers, watch videos of their macaws flying day in and day out), your opinion would definitely change. One, you would see the level of enrichment that macaws derive specifically from outdoor free flight and would likely concede that it is generally worth the risk for them and that the risk is much lower than you had thought. I'm not asking you to agree with me on small birds because that is a point of contention even in the free flight community, but I am asking you to start with reexamining your opinion of free flight with regards to the larger birds.