Re: [Freeflight] Mickey, landing

[Nate Waddoups <thoughts@n...>]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 birdsrfun@a... wrote:

> Any suggestions would be appreciated. I know he would love to freefly
> if he could learn to land. He is overweight and I am sure this does
> not help either.

How overweight? I don't know what it's like to be parrot of course, but
when flying radio controlled aircraft, extra weight means having to plan
further ahead, or overshooting the runway. The latter kinda sounds like
Mickey. Practicing helps, but only if you know what you're doing wrong
and I'm not sure how to communicate that to a flying parrot.

Is there a place where you can train him to fly upwards to you? From the
floor might even be good enough. My thinking here is that short flights
from the floor to your shoulder would give him practice landing at low
speeds, since most of his effort will go into climbing, not gaining speed. 
Perhaps that experience will give him something to think about.

Also, Phoebe is learning to fly faster, and when she does get going fast
she usually swoops down low and then flies upward to shed speed right
before landing. If Mickey gets used to approaching you and landing
smoothly from that sort of trajectory maybe he'll learn to apply that
technique even when he's not starting from the floor.

On the other hand, I know little about parrot flight instruction and I'm
making this stuff up as I go along. I look forward to feedback (for both
of us) from people with more experience than I. :-)

-- 

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com