Nate, that's awesome! And what a great photo... the smile on your face says it all... you just made my day!

Oh how awesome is that!!! WTG, Darwin!!

ChiaOwl
http://www.owly.net
http://www.ittybittybirdiebites.com

I'd been wanting to do this for a while, and finally all the pieces were in place. I had no pressing stuff on my to-do list. It was Friday, so I had a whole weekend to camp out under a tree if that's what it took. My girlfriend was there, so I had an extra pair of eyes if necessary. Darwin had a slightly smaller ration of food that day so he was a little bit hungry and a little more motivated for training.

He's been spending a few hours per week in a cage on my deck, so he was pretty familiar with my back yard. I was concerned that he might leave the area, but after seeing him fly off at Naomi's, and fly right back, I wasn't too concerned.

So, I put him on top of his cage. He didn't behave any differently than if he were inside his cage. That's more noteworthy that it seems - he'd never been on top of that cage before. It's too big to fit through any of the doors in my house, so it's always been on my deck and he'd only been inside of it before that day.

I stood at the bench on the far side of my deck and asked him to come to me. He did, immediately, and I gave him some bread, which he loves. To my surprise, he flew back to his cage to eat it. I should have seen that coming - he usually goes somewhere else to eat his reward (unless it's tiny, like a safflower seed), but I figured that outside he'd be more inclined to stay on me, a known perch, than go anywhere else. But his cage was a known thing to him, and even if he'd never been on top of it before he was perfectly comfortable perching on top to eat.

So we did some more of that - I held up my arm and a treat, he flew to me, got the treat, and flew back to his cage. Once or twice he got head scratches before getting the treat, and he seemed to be OK with that. Then I opened the sliding glass door, stepped inside, and held up my arm - he flew in through the door (a short flight since his cage was right outside the door), he got a treat, and he ate it on a shelf while I closed the door.

So that was a perfectly uneventful free flying session. He got a regular evening meal with all he could eat, to show him that coming home is always the best thing to do after flying outside.

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA