Photo by David Location: Orlando, FL Upside down: Galah"Bondi"  The first bird I ever trained to go upside down and do the "bat" was my galah, Bondi, who is currently 4 years old. The second bird I trained to do the bat impression was my blue throated macaw, Jinx, and most recently I trained my 1.5 year old Congo African Grey parrot, Cressi, ...

Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, FL Bird pile: Camelot Macaws "Comet" & "Tusa", Blue Throat Macaws "Zoey" & "Jinx" So recently my flock got to meet Zoey, the newest freeflight student! It was a playful mess of fun with her around! She wasn't at all intimidated by the "older" birds (I still think of them as babies) and joined right in ...

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Orlando, FL Shown: Macaw "Jinx" One of the tricks that is a must for me to train, is getting the bird to lay on its back in my hands. That behavior or "trick" just means the world to me and I love achieving it with my birds. I recently trained my blue throat macaw to do it and he is SO good at it now. It's one of...

I made the goal to focus hard on trick training all my parrots who don't know as much as Bondi (my lead trainee) and really try to get them to know more behaviors this month. I wanted this month's priority with my birds to be all about behavior training whether it's natural behaviors on cue, prop tricks or just trained behaviors.  I thought s...

Photo by Dave Location: Spokane, WA Pictured: African Grey "Cressi", Galah "Bandit" & Macaw "Jinx"   Remember my "Bathing = Bonding" post about how I used the act of showering/bathing my birds to get them to be OK next to one another, even though outside of that environment they hated one another? Well, I decided to try that AGAIN... and it...

I got my blue throated macaw, whom I call "Jinx", back in October 2008. He lived with me in Orlando for less than a month before I took my first traveling trip (via airlines) with him to Seattle, Washington for Halloween (I love spending holidays with my flock!)   Photo by David Location: Lacey, Washington Stealing the Bandana: Blue Throated Ma...