Difference Age Makes

From FBwiki

Why Age can be an important Issue for training flight.

Written By Chris Biro, all rights reserved.

Here are the main factors that make training a bird at the natural age of fledgling (prior to weaning) to your advantage: 1) Primed and ready to learn to fly, 2) Peak Physical Fitness, 3) Parental bond, 4) Fledgling aged birds really want to fly, 5) Less fearful of new situations, 6) Fewer bad habits.

Primed & Ready to Fly - As a baby parrot grows and develops it reaches a point in its life when nature has it ready to learn to fly. We call this time Fledging. There are a various physical and mental aspects to its life that are especially in its favor for flight training at this fledging age. This means that the bird will master these skills at the highest rate of speed at the natural age of fledging. A bird in the wild that learns slow is at greatest risk of predation since most predators are keen to locate individuals that display signs of being handicapped by decreased skill or ability; usually the very young, the old or the ill. The fledgling aged birds that I have flight trained learned the vast majority of their flight skills in just a few weeks, as compared to many adult birds that take months to years to learn a similar set of skills.

Peak Physical Fitness - The fledgling aged bird is primed by nature to be a peak athlete as soon as it leaves the nest. I have seen fledgling conures make first flights that were far longer than the flights I see from my adults who frequently make long flights out doors everyday. But I have yet to see an adult bird, even living in a 3000 sqr ft aviary have nearly as much stamina as birds flown outdoors even occasionally. The fledging aged bird has a significant advantage if allowed to fly outdoors soon and build on that high physical fitness level it starts out with.

Parental Bond - The baby bird is at the fledging age especially bonded to mom because mom is still feeding it. This a potential benefit for the trainer if this is translated to a heavier bond to the hand feeder / trainer. This is a very useful condition when you as a land based creature are attempting to train a flighted creature to fly. In the wild mom can fly with the baby no matter where it goes. But you the trainer cannot. So anything that helps the bird stick close to you during this phase of learning is especially valuable and helpful.

There are some people out there trying to misrepresent the value of the parental bond during flight training. So let me try to make this clear here.

The primary goal at this stage is getting the bird to master its basic mechanical flight skills without it getting lost or facing some other critical problem. The faster the bird can master these skills, the safer it will be. The bird should already have mastered how to control its basic flight functions indoors and should already have good recall response indoors. Now it has host of new basic skills to master once introduced to flying outdoors. It needs to learn how to cope with greater speeds, cope with increased height issues, cope with potential obstacles and factors that limit visibility to handler, land in swaying tree branches, select suitable landing sites, fly in wide open spaces, compensate for windy conditions, navigate around the immediate area without losing contact with the handler, do all this at the same time, etc.

These each can cause the bird significant problems at times and can be factors to cause the bird to be stressed. A stressed bird will not respond predictably. So selecting the location to minimize contact with various of these elements until several others are mastered is very important. Increasing any element that can reduce the negative effects of facing such new challenges is to your advantage.

This is where the fledging age learning is so helpful since it helps keep the bird near you as the bird masters these various skills. Of course at some point that parental bond will fade and you will have to keep the bird close through the same methods someone would if they had an adult bird. But if you have done this correctly, then all of these various skills have been mastered by the time the parental bond fades and all you have left to do is motivate the bird to come when called and stay nearby. That is very different than trying to motivate the bird to come when called and stay nearby AT THE SAME TIME the bird is learning to master those outdoor flight skills. Add to this for older birds a decreased speed in learning these skills and it just becomes that much harder and more risky project.

Wants to Fly - The baby bird will reach a point that it really just wants to fly, to the point of sometimes being hard to keep it down at times. By contrast often the older bird will be reluctant to fly, at least in the beginning - a real bummer if he is being reluctant while sitting in a tree as you wait for him to come down to you.

Lack of Fear - The baby bird is also not afraid of some things that an older bird will often be afraid of. First time events are a normal thing for a fledging since so much of its life is about first time events at this age. The older bird can more easily be overwhelmed with new things or at least react fearful when exposed to new things. This will not always be the case because some birds get enough exposure to new conditions and events through out their first year to be fairly well adapted to dealing with new conditions. But certainly not all and certainly not all pet store birds.

Fewer Bad Habits - The baby bird comes with a clear slate, ready to learn new things and ready to adapt to the life you will provide it. The adult bird comes will many previously learned ideas about what life is like, maybe not even the life style you will be providing it. Often these previously learned ideas result in troubles habits that must be broken before reliable flying outdoors is possible. That makes the fledgling aged bird a far easier bird to flight train.

As helpful as this age factor is, it should be understood that this age advantage is not a substitute for good training. As the bird matures, the bond of the baby bird to "mom" will decline. That is normal and ok. But during the strong bond period, if those good behaviors were reinforced frequently, then the same behaviors should continue even after the parental bond has diminished.

Someone on the Freeflight list asked "I have read all of your artiles and went through them again. I still couldn't find what is my duty to train an adult African Grey (5 months old); what is more that I should consider when training an adult than a baby ?"

Thank you for paying close enough attention to notice there might be a difference for this age. The main difference will be the need to build a more solid behavior history for solid recall. The more the bird loses the parental bond, the more you have a bird that will be independent and willing to go take care of itself. To compensate for this greater independence, you need to establish rock solid recall responses and may need to use a bit more hunger to keep the motivation high to comply with cue requests. You still need to get the bird comfortable and calm being in the intended outdoor environment, you still need to practice flying the bird to and from a perch so the behavior you will ask the bird to do once outdoors will already be very familiar to the bird. And of course you do need to be able to easily handle the bird so a good relationship is still important. I should note though that it is possible to flight train parrots to fly outdoors that cannot be handled but I think that only makes the entire process just that much more difficult. I do not recommend pet owners attempt to flight train birds they cannot easily and comfortably handle. I am sure your 5 month old will be easy for you to handle. Hopefully the bird at 5 months old is already flying well indoors.

There is a reason most of the articles here are about training a fledging aged bird and not about training older birds. The difference in the responses of the bird are quite extreme with the fledgling aged bird being very easy and quick and the older bird being much slower. A 6 month old macaw will still be fairly quick to pick up flight skills, much more so than a 6 year old. But I am very uncomfortable coaching via internet novice trainers on freeflight training any bird not at the fledgling age. The risks are significantly higher the more the bird is out of that natural window of time in which they would learn to fly in the wild. The process is essentially the same but the trainer will NOT be able to rely on your bond as much with the older bird - the personal bond between trainer and bird will not prevent the bird from flying off accidently. With an older bird the bond is not the key people often think it is, solid response history is the key. In other words, with the older bird you two should do hundreds of repetitions getting correct responses to get the bird into good physical shape and to solidify a solid recall response in each of a variety of locations indoors before going outdoors. So as a rule, I don't counsel people on line who want to flight train adult birds. The adult bird is possible to flight train, as many professional trainers have proven. I believe training an adult bird to fly outdoors is a fairly advanced endeavor that requires fairly advanced training skills and is not appropriately taught to novice trainers via on line coaching. Due to the ease and speed at which a fledgling aged bird will learn to fly, I am comfortable offering advice to new trainers who are ready to follow my instructions with a fledgling aged bird.

Parrots: more than pets, friends for life.

Chris Biro

chrisbiro@whidbey.net

(206) 618-2610

www.wingingitadventures.com