Hi there,
What are your goals with flight training? Do you want to fly your bird indoors only, or outside as well?

Outdoor flight behaviors start indoors. Take a look at the articles here on training recall (search for: "Recalling Phoebe") and fly to perch. Also look at the article "Fly Day" for a great way to get your grey indoor flight practice. You will want lots and lots and lots of indoor practice before you start to think about flying outside. Did i mention lots? In the meantime, if your grey can spend some time in a cage or aviary outside in the area where you hope to fly him or her (if that's something you're thinking about for later), that's a great way to help get your bird accustomed to your particular corner of the outside world. If you decide that indoor-only flying is best for you and your bird, the training will make it easier to live with a flighted companion, and also help you get your bird back home in case of accidental escape. Teaching your bird to come to you when you call is an important safety measure even if you decide to keep your bird clipped.

Hope this gives you a start, but you should really do a lot of reading and thinking and training and talking with lots of different experienced people and asking lots of questions before you decide. Most people only fly their birds indoors, very satisfying for the people and the birds! i would guess that of those who do fly their birds outdoors, the vast majority only do so when they can be with their birds.

Please keep us posted, let us know how it goes!

First of all, a short disclaimer: I would not recommend to anyone that they let their pet bird fly outside. I wouldn't recommend against it either, if you've done the necessary training, but since it's impossible to judge that sort of thing over the internet, I'm probably never going to recommend it. If the bird gets out before it's ready, the bird may die. I can't even judge my own bird's readiness and she's right in front of me every day, I certainly couldn't judge anyone else's readiness.

That said, I *would* recommend indoor flight to just about anyone. But even that comes with a very strong warning to keep your windows covered and keep your doors closed. Again, mistakes could mean death.

If you want to have a flighted bird, learn everything you can about training. There are some articles at this web site about training in general, and even some articles about training flighted behaviors like fly-to-me and fly-to-perch. There are also many more articles all over the web - search for "parrot clicker training" for some examples.

It sounds like you have some unreasonable expectations about what training can accomplish... You cannot traing your bird to fly "only when you want him to." Even if you train your bird to fly to you, there will be times when the bird flies away. Birds just do that. :-) You can train him to stay for short periods, but probably not for very long, especially if you are not around. I know a couple of people with outdoor flyers who are struggling with the fact that their birds DO fly too far away - I do now know if anything can be done about that.

It may actually be possible to train some of these things, but I suspect that it would require that you do nothing but train your birds all day every day - for most of us, things like work or school make that difficult.

I have heard from some people that birds breed better if they are flighted. There is a zoo in my area that keeps most of their parrots clipped but all of the parrots in their breeding programs are flighted and kept in aviaries where they can fly.

How much experience do you have with birds? Have you trained birds to do other things before? Have you trained any other animals?

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA

This grey is a wild caught bird I bought it from a parrot farm.I have tame and train it to do many tricks with the clicker,thanks to www.birdtricks.com

Well said Nate, thanks....

Yes many thanks to www.birdtricks.com. Thanks to them and this website I am discovering a whole new world with my bird that I never knew existed. Have you got birdtricks package? I have ordered it, it's on its way. :)

Ben
South oz

Thanks for the link, I haven't heard of them before but I'll check them out...

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA