So before I really get into what I've found out about Alex's flying, let me give a brief history of how Alex's flying has been over the time I had her.

When I first got her, she was still being hand fed. It also took longer than normal for her to be weaned, and also at the time, she had some damaged follicles from when the parents plucked her. If I remember correctly, I think some of her primary flight feathers were still pins.

She had never once been clipped. However her flying had always been rather bad. She tends flap harder, has a little trouble steering, and lands on the floor more than anything. Sometimes she may tumble forward upon landing (not nearly as much as she used to). She's gotten better about staying in the air and flying upwards, but she still needs a lot of work.

At least twice, she has had incidents where she managed to knock out all of the primary flight feathers in one wing. During those times, she could barely even glide. She'd just flap and flutter downwards. She'd make some distance of course, but I'd hardly consider it a glide.

I also believe that she might've been overweight by the time she did get weaned. I've never weighed either one of them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Alex had been over 100 grams. She had since then lost some of that weight but is still a little on the heavy side. I have a feeling that might have a minor role in her flying but that's not what this thread is for.

While watching Lucy and Alex fly today, I noticed something. When Lucy does her sharp turns and such, she's very dynamic with her body. It's not just her wings that move. One thing I specifically noticed was how she uses her tail to help adjust her speed and direction.

Alex however, appears to have trouble with this. She keeps her body in one position and her wings do most of the work. Her tail also tends to remain pointed downward and spread out, as if she's about to land. Frankly I'm quite surprised she's able to turn herself at all, or even fly upwards.

It appears that she's just now starting to get it. I saw her tail a little more straight out, but once she had tilted it downwards to land and then miss the landing, she couldn't move it back to adjust her flying, like Lucy can.

Does anyone know what could cause her difficulty? Is it just something she may have yet to learn, or could there be something wrong with her tail?
Is there any way I can help her improve her ability? Would she just need some more practice? And is there any reason why she hasn't learned how to do this by now?

Any thoughts on the situation would be appreciated.

Funnily enough the more stunted of the two cockatiel chicks I recently hand raised is the exact same! Probably one of the most clumsy birds I've ever had. It makes me laugh when she's flying in a flock of 6 and she just can't seem to get it right. I always assumed it would be naturally built in for them to know how to fly once they've built up their muscles but I guess some birds are just different!

How old is Alex? As mine are getting a little bit older they are getting better but the more stunted chick is much less agile in the air. I do keep mine in an aviary though so they have to fly to get around. If Alex is still a young bird I'd say it would probably be a matter of practice makes perfect

My feeling is that all the problems she had to deal with as a baby has slowed her down significantly, and maybe permanently in some areas. It takes her longer to learn things, but it's good that she does seem to be slowly learning the skills. There are certain ages where the brain is most ready to learn certain things, and for flying it's the time between fledging and weaning. She missed the opportunity when she was that age. So it will be harder for her to learn it, but there's hope for her to be a better flyer someday.

Alex is just over a year old, hatching somewhere in October (breeder doesn't know for sure since she didn't expect the birds to lay in cold weather, and it was pretty cold for late October last year if I remember correctly). But the thing about Alex is that she had gone through a lot as a chick. Her parents had a clutch in October when it was starting to get cold, and for some reason they didn't take care of their babies. All of the babies were dead and thrown out of the box, but Alex. The breeder didn't realize Alex was still alive until she heard peeping in the nestbox, and saw one lone chick plucked of all her feathers.

So Alex had been traumatized, and possibly also stunted from undernourishment.
In fact, this is one of the earlier pictures she sent me of Alex:

And this was what she looked like when I got her:

Needless to say, her appearance certainly has improved.

She was still being weaned when I got her, and the breeder said it should only take a few more days. Instead, it took her about... A month I think? More or less...

She still acts much younger than her age. She tends to be very baby like. Heck, few months back I even heard her make the "feed me" cry for a brief second. What the reason behind it might've been, I don't know. She didn't want food, she didn't want scritches (as a baby she would make the cry whenever she wanted food, to be pet, or just simply held). She didn't seem to direct it towards me or Lucy, so it's hard to tell what that was about. Maybe it was just a noise she knew and felt like making it for the sake of noise.
She also made the cry when she was younger if she didn't like something that changed and wanted it to go back to the way before, as seen here.

Alex had always seemed to have her quirks. She's more prone to night frights from the looks of it (Lucy had about two night frights when I had only her. She and Alex together have had at least three already), tends to get either more excited than Lucy does when playing with shiny things, and that will result in either aggression or just flapping chaos (I know she likes to play with it though; she goes towards anything shiny and it starts out as simple playing). She's also very clingy, and appears to only start being independent (to an extant).

It's quite possible that this is just a part of her being a little delayed mentally. I'm not sure how much she was allowed to fly while at the breeder's house when being weaned, but I had tried to encourage her to fly more when she was younger, especially around the time she actually got weaned, by trying to get her to fly to the table by herself (which was before I got their playstand). Now she'll fly to me when she feels like it, or fly around if she gets too excited or scared. So she's definitely flying more often.

Her agility has indeed improved though, as opposed to when she was younger or when the flight feathers were growing back after she had managed to knock them out. She hasn't had a major night fright in a while it seems (the quantity of Alex feathers I tend to find that's not during molting season would indicate that she still experiences night frights on a smaller scale; ironic that I don't see as many Lucy feathers during these times, if any at all).

Given that she's starting to use her tail, it might simply just be a thing that she needs to learn and practice, rather than something physically preventing her. Could also be force of habit to some extant. Here's hoping that she eventually figures it out.

Poor bubba! I didn't realise she had such a rough start

My two bubs were being fed by their parents but they weren't doing half enough of what they should have been doing so I had to coparent them. Their feathers grew in slower and they had sheaths on their feathers for a lot longer than normal. They had been under nourished and they were quite cold too. The parents seemed to sit in the box but not on the chicks to keep them warm. The more stunted of the two is still begging for food from the parents as well, even though they do eat on their own. Still making baby sounds and everything. Could she have been stunted from the parents neglect do you think? That would certainly make things go a lot slower for her

What mutation is she if you don't mind me asking? I didn't realise she had red eyes!

She's a fallow mutation. Quite a rare mutation, and I was surprised to find out that's what she is.

It's quite possible that she was stunted to some extant, especially since it took longer for her to wean. Then again, she also needed a bit of an extra push. Once I switched from syringe feeding to letting her eat it off of a spoon, it only took a few days until she lost interest in the baby food.
Funny enough though, the day after she was weaned I had them out and made myself a sandwich. When I sat down and started eating, she started making the feed me cry. Thought she had gone into a relapse. No, turned out she wanted my food. Gave her a piece of the bread and she was fine.
Nowadays, she just tries to fly up to my sandwich and land on it.

She definitely does have her strengths and weaknesses. She learn some things quickly and other times, not so much. I taught her the "gimme kiss?" trick in less than five minutes just by using scritches as a reward (she doesn't make the sound; just lightly pecks my lip). Although it appears her weaknesses fall on the physical side, and that's not just flying.

Have you ever seen a cockatiel climb onto a small box, and then fall forward trying to get off of said box?
Or how about a cockatiel that somehow misses the step when trying to sit on the edge of the food bowl, and ends up face-first in the food?

I have a feeling her eyesight might be really bad too. She tends to miss narrower landings and when I try to scritch her through the bars, she doesn't seem to get that I can't reach as far as she wants me to when she lowers her head. Lucy at least, knows to bring her head closer.
So I wonder if Alex also has trouble with depth perception or something.

Overall, she's a bit of a mess. I have a feeling her flying will improve, but it'll take a while. Her landing has improved at least. She doesn't skid forward anymore when she lands on flat surfaces.

Red-eyed birds are said to have poorer vision than dark-eyed birds. I can tell that my lutino girls have a harder time seeing in dim light than my normal-eyed birds do, but other than that they don't seem to have any trouble.

I don't know if the problems as a nestling could have interfered with the development of Alex's eyes. Or maybe she's just nearsighted or something. It happens in humans so presumably it can happen in birds too.

Well here's an interesting fact: animals with lateral eye placement don't have the 3D depth perception that animals with frontal eye placement have.

So neither Alex, Lucy or any of my birds have the kind of 3D depth perception that we have. In fact, none of our birds have it except for Deebee's hawk.

But this would make sense when you're trying to give a bird a treat and they're reaching out before it's close enough, vs. giving a treat to a dog who knows just how close it needs to be. When I give my dogs treats, I make them sit and stay, and they only reach out right when they're close enough to eat it, whereas the birds try to get it long before its within their beak's range.

But there are visual cues that our brain picks up that gives us an idea of how far something is, even if we were to lose our depth perception. So it would make sense for birds and other animals with lateral eye placement to pick up on these cues.

So either Alex is bad at picking up these cues, her eyesight is actually worse than the average cockatiel and possibly bad as far as red-eyed mutations go, or that clumsiness has nothing to do with eyesight and she's just really uncoordinated.

Back on the topic of flight though, it appears Alex is finally starting to get that moving her tail helps her steer from side to side and to turn. However it's still pointed downwards as she does this, as if she's trying to land. I wonder if she's doing it to help keep her leverage in the air or something? It's hard to tell...

The internet is indicating that birds with eyes on the side of the head have little or no binocular vision, which means their depth perception is poor. But they have ways to compensate, mainly by moving their heads so they see something from different angles and estimate its location that way. Wild birds are skilled at landing on a branch that's blowing in the wind, so it must work pretty well.

Squeebis can fly through a door that's slightly ajar, with an opening that's about two inches wide. He's not only mastered the estimation of depth and location, he's also figured out the precise moment that he needs to fold his wings against his body and glide through the opening. He's the best flyer in the flock.

Everything about Alex sounds like the older chick. The other day she whizzed around the aviary and instead of landing on the edge of the water bowl/bath she just plopped straight in it and wobbled out. She looked so confused

Very interesting about the 3D and binocular vision. Owls having forward facing eyes have got insanely wide fields of vision too. Not to mention their eyes take up 2 thirds of their head space! They cannot actually see directly in front of them though. When you hand raise a hawk they'll open their beak up for you and you can put the food in. With owls you have to touch the side of the beak to get them to open up. They'll close their eyes to protect them too. Off topic a bit but interesting nonetheless

I thought she might be a fallow. What's her actual mutation? White face pearl fallow? I can't tell, either way she is absolutely stunning! And definitely rare