tielfan wrote:
Free-flying parrots takes some very intensive recall training to really do it right, with "food management" as the recommended technique to make sure the bird comes back. The basic idea is that the bird doesn't actually starve, but it THINKS that it's starving and comes when you call because it really really wants the food. That's according to a recall group that I briefly belonged to, anyway. I don't want my birds to spend their lives thinking that they're starving, and all the hawks in the neighborhood make it pretty dangerous anyway (they're mostly Cooper's hawks). So my guys won't be doing any free flying outdoors. The guy who built my house had a cockatiel that would fly around in his yard, and he lost it one day when a hawk swooped down in the middle of a barbecue with the yard full of people and grabbed the tiel in midair.
I couldn't train recall based on weight management with parrots. It works with raptors because that's natural for them. They get hungry they eat. With free flight I think it's essential to have mutual trust and the incentive to come back to you should be the bond you have. You don't need that with raptors but I think it's the only positive way to train the parrots. I've heard a lot about weight management with them but that scares me too much. I don't want them living feeling like that either