BirdTricks

BTT (Extra) Flying to a Stand/Perch

Added 2024-02-17 19:00:02 +0000 UTC

In today's video I am showing how to teach your bird to fly to a t-stand or perch. This comes in handy when you are a solo trainer needing to keep the training moving along without having to walk back long distances. I originally thought this could be a BTT episode, and it will be kind of, but as an extra really since I wanted to share it earlier than I would schedule a BTT out.

My biggest tip for this is that you use an incredibly steady t-stand like ours. Something that won't spin or tip or even wobble when your bird lands on it. We've had so many experiences of set backs because of unstable or poorly built t-stands being used during flight training. Avoid that, please!

Also, I want to reiterate that working on just getting your bird to step up, then big step, then reeeeeach, to eventually hop is typically a phase everyone spends a lot more time at than I show here. On the other hand, you might start further away than Jinx or Zip did - it really depends on your bird!

For freeflight training: We do not typically recommend this when teaching freeflight because we want alllll the emphasis to be on flying to you and not away from you. Also, when out in the field, the winds may not be in a supporting direction and the bird can be pushed into a non-voluntary exploratory flight that ends up being a panic flight because of the circumstances. We really don't want that so we don't encourage doing this for freeflight for those reasons. I mention this because I know we have some of our current freeflight students here on Patreon and don't want them implementing one of Dave's biggest pet peeves (lol).