Photo by Dave Location: Centralia, WA Flying: Blue throated macaw "Jinx" It can be a huge challenge to encourage an older bird to fly. Depending on the situation, of course. But if you have an older bird and it refuses to fly, it’s likely because it has never flown in the past and it literally does not have the muscles to do so. When they sta...

Our military macaw has always struggled with flying well. Mostly because he would spook and panic if he missed his first attempt at a landing, and end up crashing. We tried training him in a flight aviary where he could learn on his own time, we tried batting cages, we tried having him watch birds that were good at it and learning from them (o...

I realized just the other day how I've used mirrors A LOT in my training of parrots. It sounds weird, but every time I use the mirror to train one of my birds... it seems to train something completely different. Okay, I've only had two examples of this but now that I've caught onto it I will be using it on ALL my birds eventually. So far, it's j...

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Orlando, FL Shown: Blue throated macaw "Jinx", Camelot macaws "Comet" & "Tusa"   I received this question after the entry of mine No Excuses: Ideas for exercising your bird.   Hey, I read your article on exercising bird by flying them. But my question is how do you get a bird to exercise by flying (even just in...

What I'm about to share with you is a very valuable tip and it makes your training sessions go so much better! I use it with my birds all the time. But sometimes we get SO excited about the newest trick we're training, we forget this tip and our training sessions end up sucking or not being as progressive as we'd hoped them to be. So here's th...

Photo by Dave Location: Springfield, MA Shown: Galah "Bondi"  It's impossible to train any animal when you're in a bad mood. Animals, especially parrots, are so sensitive and in tune with your emotions that they read you like an open book. It's obvious to them, and faking it only makes it worse. I know, I've started training sessions in a gre...