What follows is essentially a description of how I got my bird to fly to me on cue. Many of the related ideas were derived from discussions on the freeflight mailing list. If you have a flighted parrot, I highly recommend that you join this mailing list, it's full of good ideas.

Recalling Phoebe

My bronze-wing pionus, Phoebe, is 5 years old and has only been fully feathered for a couple years. She did fly at her previous home (I don't know how much), but she didn't know recall. She didn't fly much when I first got her, but she would always fly if something scared her, and she usually flew to me (for security I suppose), and that gave us a good foundation to build on.

A complete list of stuff to think about while training recall would take more knowledge than I have (and more time than I have!) but let me say a few words about three factors that I think are particularly noteworthy:

• Motivation : A bird will only fly to you if it's motivated to do so. If you want reliable recall, you need to do everything you can to make flying to you a rewarding experience for the bird. When it arrives, it should recieve food, scritches, praise, or all of the above. If you must do something the bird detests (putting it into its cage, for example) wait a few minutes, and provide all the reward you can, so that the bird does associate flying to you with something nice, and doesn't associate flying to you with anything negative.
• Confidence : A bird will almost always take flight if it's sufficiently startled, but startle flights are of little use where training is concerned. To fly of its own volition, bird needs not only motivation, but confidence. The bird needs to know that its wings will take it where it wants to go, safely. You'd think that would be obvious to a bird, but birds that spent their formative (fledgeling) years with clipped wings don't always understand how useful wings can be. They need confidence in its ability to take off, confidence in its ability to fly, confidence in its ability to avoid obstacles (if there are any), and confidence in its ability to land. A bird that hasn't flown much probably has little or no confidence in any of these things, but that will change with practice.
• Fatigue : Tired birds lose motivation and confidence, and may learn to associate flying with fatigue. Flying is less fun if it's work, so don't get too carried away with flight practice. If the bird loses enthusiasm after a flight or two, give it an extra reward, and let it rest for a while. I must admit I have difficulty with this sometimes... seeing Phoebe fly is so much fun, I have to remind myself to let her rest before asking her to exhaust herself.

Confidence and motivation are related. A confident bird won't need much motivation to take flight; a highly motivated bird will overcome a lack of confidence in its desire to get its reward. If your bird doesn't take flight, but it's body language says that it wants to fly to you, have patience. It might just take some time for the bird to build up its confidence or to get sufficiently excited about its reward. In the beginning it was not uncommon for Phoebe to pace back and forth, chirrup at me, lean toward me, pace, lean, chirrup, over and over for a few minutes before finally taking flight.

Encouraging Flight

Confidence in flight comes with practice in flight, so I figured that the more Phoebe flies, the better she will be at flying in general and recall in particular.

Since I knew she could fly, I started pointing at perches (the same ones she selected to land on when something scared her into flying), and giving her tosses. There are two or three places in my house that she usually flies to when startled, so we used those for landing sites. I would point to the spot, say, "Go!" and give her a toss. When she got there, I'd give her a treat.

These days, I can just point at a couple of locations in my house, and she will sometimes take flight immediately, no toss required.

Boomerang Flights

I could not have predicted this, and I'm not sure how to encourage it, but I think this was very helpful.

At one point, I tried to get her to fly to my fireplace mantle - she'd never flown there on her own, so I wasn't surprised when she took a hard left and flew into the kitchen instead. She ended up atop some cabinets just a few feet from where I was standing when I tossed her - this was a preferred landing spot. The next time I tossed her toward the fireplace, I quickly stepped into the kitchen. She flew the same path, but when she saw me she went to my shoulder instead of the cabinets. I gave her a hearty reward for this, and we've been doing it a couple times a day ever since.

This gave her practice with flying, and practice with flying to me, and it gave her experience with getting rewarded for flying to me, so I think it was very helpful. It also allowed me to give her a toss to get her airborne, which helped overcome her lack of motivation.

Getting the First Recall Flights

Her first recall flights were in order to get breakfast. I used to pick her up and carry her to the kitchen every morning. I would prepare her food, and we would eat together in the adjacent dining room. This was a well-established ritual, but one day I just waited at the door to her room and whistled (the same whistle that people use to recall dogs).

It took a while, a few minutes or so, but she eventually flew to me. I gave her a treat as soon as she landed on my shoulder, then took her to a proper breakfast. I haven't picked her up any morning since then. As weeks went by, she needed less and less time to work up the nerve to take flight.. these days she sometimes takes flight as soon as I open the door.

We had another daily ritual that revolved around my morning shower. I would put her atop a bookshelf in my bedroom (put physically, but by pointing and, if necessary, tossing), then when the water was running hot I'd carry her to the shower, put her atop the shower-stall door, and periodically give her a drink of warm water as I showered. Phoebe loves warm water, so this was something she enjoyed every day. One day I just hopped into the shower, leaving her looking at me atop the bookshelf. Again, I whistled, and again, she took some time to think about it, but eventually she came... and these days she sometimes takes flight as soon as I turn on the water.

In any random situation at home where she was perched somewhere and I was going somewhere, I would try to get her to fly to me, rather than me picking her up. Food lures were very helpful at first. When I give her treats, it's often a sunflower seed that she picks directly from a small plastic container, so I'd show her the container, rattle it a bit, whistle, call to her, tap my shoulder, and so on. When she was coming consistently, I faded out the food lure, and just gave her a single seed from my hand after she arrived.

After doing recall exercises every day for weeks, Phoebe got to a point where she will fly to me almost any time I whistle.

Teaching Recall With The Frisbee Game

A few months later, Phoebe started to recall for my girlfriend as well. In that case I think she learned because we have been playing 'feathered frisbee,' flying Phoebe back and forth between us. We would start by having her step from my hand to Elizabeth's, where she would get a treat, then step back to me (and another treat). During that phase, the person she was to fly to would call to her just as if she was being asked to make a recall flight, and the person she was to fly from would point and say 'go' just as if she was being asked to fly to a perch. This is not about teaching the bird to fly, it's about teaching the bird that those cues mean treats can be earned.

After she got the idea that going to the other person would get her a treat, we started standing about 5 feet apart, and giving her a gentle toss to get her to fly between us. It didn't take much, because she already knew there would be a treat waiting for her when she arrived.

After doing that every other weekend for a few months, Phoebe started flying to Elizabeth on cue, without any toss on my part - she would just jump off my hand. A couple weeks after that, she started flying to Elizabeth from perches - only short distances, at first, around two to three feet. After a few recalls at those distances Elizabeth gradually started extending the distance.

I'm sure it helped that Phoebe already knew recall with me, but I think you could teach a bird recall from scratch this way (and if you try this approach, please let me know how it goes). It would probably proceed much faster if you practiced more than once every week or two, and especially if the bird already knows/trusts/likes the people involved. Phoebe is very shy and has been slowly warming up to Elizabeth for about a year now, so recall flights constituted a big milestone in trust as well as flight training.

Practice Makes   Perfect   Pretty Good

The more I practice recall flights with Phoebe, the better she gets. However, in any ten recall attempts there's probably one, maybe two times where she doesn't fly to me right away. Sometimes she just hesitates for a while, sometimes she's just not interested. I'm still searching for methods to get her recall up to 100%.

If you're planning on flying outdoors at some point, I highly recommend trying recalls in an alternate, unfamiliar, indoor location first, to see how the bird behaves in an unfamiliar place. When I took Phoebe to my office, she was very motivated to stay on my shoulder, until something spooked her. Then she took off, flying as far as she could as fast as she could. (She almost never gets spooked at home anymore, but on unfamiliar turf it didn't take much). When I set her down, she usually flew right to me, except when I set her down atop a set of shelves. Then she wouldn't fly to me at all. This was after about 8 hours in my office getting familiar (or so I thought) with her surroundings.

Her behavior at my office was nowhere near as reliable as her behavior at home. I have a feeling that it was indicative of what would happen if I took her outside. She'd stay close, until something (inevitably) startled her, at which point she would fly up to a high vantage point, where she would freeze - and that would probably be way up in a tree where I couldn't reach her.

A few months later, I took her to a vacant office building where some friends and I flew our birds. I walked around with Phoebe for a half-hour or so to let her get familiar with the large room we were in. When she was acting comfortable, I had her step off my hand onto a windowsill, and I cued her to fly to me from there. It took her a while, but she did come to me. She later did some 'feathered frisbee' games between me and my girlfriend. Phoebe did quite well, but there were times when her recall response was very slow.

After a few weeks of going to a big empty building twice a week, Phoebe's recall performance improved quite a bit, but it still isn't as good as it is at home.

Recall at home is one thing, but don't assume that it will carry directly over to outdoor recall. A change of scenery changes everything, so even a strong recall indoors will not guarantee any outdoor recall at all, or even indoor recall in a new location.

© 2003 Nate Waddoups