Last Friday, December 29th, was my sun conure Oliver’s birthday. He turned 1 year old. I should say “hatching day” but those words are not the first ones that come to my mind yet. Out of an egg or out of the womb, however, he arrived to this world with the mission of making someone’s life more beautiful. Luckily, that someone was me.
Oliver was born in captivity in Texas, but its species is common in South America. I am also from South America but honestly, I have never seen one Aratinga solstitialis in the wild. They are more prominent in Venezuela, Surinam and Northern Brazil than Argentina. I’d love to travel to those countries one day and have the opportunity to see these colorful birds flying around in the jungle.
When I mentioned Oliver’s birthday to my boyfriend and his kids, one of them, the one that usually makes the most comments with neither knowledge nor previous research, said: “for his birthday you should set him free”. He was insinuating that Oliver’s life in captivity was basically a prison, a terrible place to be that needs freedom. Poor thing, he believes that the wilderness is a safe place and that captivity is bad.
Life in the wild is dangerous. For birds, death can come from anywhere: ground, water, and even air. Specially for a captive bird that has never learned how to hide or defend itself. A hawk can easily kill a parrot on the fly, for example. Also, many wild birds die daily for starvation or dehydration. My pets, on the other hand, have meals -three, not just one- and water guaranteed everyday. They are never cold and I make sure that they are never too hot ether. I protect them from predators inside and outside the house, and I fulfill all their needs as much as I can, including the needs of enjoyment, companionship and love. “Freeing” Oliver is more of a dead sentence than a present to him.
Having said that, Oliver is very close to experience a wider kind of freedom. Like his macaw brother, Endymion, Oliver is going to be able to fly outside. He is actually two weeks away from making his first free-flight. That is going to be his big birthday present.
Free flighted parrots are captive birds that are allowed to fly freely in the skies. The whole experience is based on the bond that the bird has with its owner, and some training that targets flying skills that the captive bird needs in order to fly efficiently. It’s like walking and running for us. We all learn to run intuitively, but if we want to run a marathon or an obstacle race, we need to practice. First at all, captive birds need to trust their wings, then they need to be desensitized of the exteriors and finally they need to learn to maneuver their wings and tails in the wind. They need to practice how to turn, stop, descend and perch with the wind coming from different angles. There are many in-house training to target those movements before going outside, like recall training.
For Oliver, my flying mentor is Dave Womach, from Birdtricks. We’ve been training for a couple a months and together we will fly Oliver outside for the first time. I am sure he will have the best birthday present ever.
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