- Rock paper, scissor, shoot, I win.
- Oh, well. - You're saying it.
The biggest learning moment for me
on this trip is that three bottles
of wine at the grocery store is not enough.
- That's minus.
- I love you.
(upbeat music)
- [Lauren] Come here.
There it is!
- Hi, Jeff. - And I am Lauren.
- And the last time you saw us,
we're flying our little black capped conures,
Kiwi and Tiki, the smallest free flyers.
(upbeat music)
- Well, this time we are here back free flying our
new baby macaws, we have two.
We have Nova who is a ruby gold macaw and we have
Cosmo who's a blue and gold macaw.
And after the amazing free-flight experience that we had
with Kiwi and Tiki, you know, we were really inspired to
see some of the big macaws flying over the dunes.
And so we decided to take on two little babies
at the same time with our dream being for them to
fly together.
And so it's been a really rewarding experience
and we're excited and we have our older guys
and we have our much younger guys who we're very
excited to have many years free flying with.
- Training the macaws has been different from the conures
because we were starting from scratch with new baby birds.
Cosmo the blue and gold was fledging when we got him.
So his nickname was Crash Bandicoot because he would run
into every window or shell or you name it in the house.
He had no idea how to control his flight.
Whereas Kiwi and Tiki, we were starting to train them
at nearly 20 years old and they had been clipped on and off
throughout their life.
And it was starting from a very, very different point where
there was so much life experience that had to be kind
of unwound and unpacked versus the little birds.
It was just getting out of their way.
- I would say the one thing I have to add to that is
Dave kind of said early on that with Kiwi and Tiki,
they knew how to fly, they had skills
but it was really all about the training.
We had to be very specific with it because they were small
they were older and there was, you know,
different set of dangers.
But with the macaws you know, the training actually
was pretty easy to get them to do what we wanted them to do.
But they had no skills
because we had to teach them how to fly
in the first place and you know, learn all those,
how to work all the little muscle groups
which Kiwi and Tiki did.
So I'd say it was pretty opposite approaches.
- Definitely.
- So in terms of who was more nervous and for, you know,
the conures versus the macaws?
For sure,
I was so nervous to take Kiwi and Tiki outdoors.
One because I've had them for their whole lives, 20 years.
I didn't know what was gonna happen.
One of the scariest things was when we'd have the conures
in the house, occasionally something would happen,
they'd spook and they would just, you know, go everywhere
and it was not always easy to recall them.
And I was so scared that outside they were gonna get scared
by something and then they would fly really far away
and they're so small and green that they would blend in.
It would be really hard to find them.
Plus we were using telemetry, which is a really great tool
but it's not exact, at least in terms of telling you exactly
where to go, like GPS is.
And with the macaws I thought, well, you know
they're much bigger, they're louder,
they're gonna be brighter, more colorful.
Plus because of their size we'll be able to
use the Marshall's GPS, which would give us that just
extra insurance policy.
So for me, I was a lot more scared to bring Kiwi
and Tiki outside for the first time and I was so
much less nervous.
Having also been through the course once
and seeing other students, other macaw free flight
students have such great success with BirdTricks.
I was not nervous for the macaws.
- And that was the exact opposite.
I was way more nervous for the macaws than the conures.
I thought worst case scenario,
the conures go 30 yards, you know, you could just
walk a spiral and you'll find them eventually
they're not gonna go super far.
Whereas the macaws could go a mile in any direction easily.
We've definitely seen that in the past.
And also I guess on some level like Kiwi and Tiki were,
you know, your babies, the macaws were kind of our babies.
So kind of letting your baby outside to do something big
and scary and dangerous
or I guess for them it's just natural.
But for us it's big and scary
and dangerous was was a little bit
of a exercise and restraint for me, not for them.
But yeah, I was 10 times more scared.
I mean we were driving out
to the dry lake bed site and I'm driving
and Dave's in the passenger seat and he turns the camera
on and he goes, so how are you feeling?
- [Dave] All right, so how are you feeling?
- And I'm sitting like, I'm trying not to crash the car.
I'm ready. (laughing)
- I was like pretty chill about it.
- [Dave] All right Lauren, how you feeling?
- I'm feeling good.
(upbeat music)
We are now at the second location
because it was getting a little windy up higher
and Nova sit out for just a couple of minutes here.
Getting used to the new surrounding and then do some ABs.
(upbeat music)
Day one was incredibly successful.
We did find that both Cosmo and Nova controlled themselves.
They didn't take these really long flights.
There seemed to be some hesitation on Cosmo's part
with not wanting to take these longer flights.
He seemed to be a little uneasy
with the new environment and that's okay.
It's really important actually
that these birds learn how to self-regulate
and not push themselves so far
that they're always hitting failure.
It appears that these two macaws are going to be
slowly building their confidence and the skills will follow.
Which if you've taken our flight course
you know that that is something I really preach
and it's to not build those, oh, and mute your phone Dave
but it's to not try to push the skills too far too fast
and really slowly build up
with the confidence and those skills will follow.
- The biggest challenge, and this is still a little bit true
is because we started with babies.
You know, one of
the things that's most important that I learned
from BirdTricks is that all the foundations
have to be there, diet, sleep diet is a huge part of it.
And so having baby birds getting the diet right
has been tricky.
Getting them from hand feeding and trying to transition them
onto a really good healthy diet that's a, you know,
a training diet, that's been really hard.
There's no manual out there and every bird is different.
You know, we've learned from BirdTricks certainly that,
you know, a blue and gold macaw can be, you know,
this way or this way, really depends specifically
on your bird, so it was really up to us to like find
that optimal weight range and and diet and also
they're going at different rates
in terms of what they're eating.
- I think it must have been the first week we had the
macaws we kind of have a C shaped first floor of our house
with a stairwell in the middle and they flew from one end
of the C all the way to the other and week one.
And I said, well we have a space instantly.
So Lauren actually ended
up finding an outdoor batting net, very wide, very tall.
So they had plenty of room relative
to our house to stretch their wings and and experience wind.
It's in a valley, so there's other birds,
there's wind, there's airplanes, there's cars.
It was really good for a desensitization as well
as a exposure to wind in the elements.
One day we brought them out
it was almost 40 degrees and it was pretty cold.
- [Lauren] Yep.
- Other days it was 80 degrees and really hot.
So it was a good way to get them a little more used
to feeling some of the outdoor elements.
- Good morning.
It is day two, oh sorry for the lighting.
Super exciting to get Cosmo and Nova outside.
And today we've got a special treat or surprise.
We are inviting Heather
out who is going to be flying her two blue
and golds as well as her gray and her galah,
so that we can start to layer in distractions
and really build upon the success we had yesterday.
The winds are gonna be a little bit higher
but fingers crossed for another awesome day.
(upbeat music)
- [Lauren] Without BirdTricks I wouldn't have had
the confidence
I think to teach two macaws how to fly confidently outside.
You know, I would never have been able to
catch all those little things and apply the right lesson
at the right moment to be able to set our guys
up for success. (upbeat music)
- Jeff and Lauren's birds did phenomenal.
They really progressed.
We didn't have a single missed return flight.
We didn't have any of those.
We had just an awesome overall experience.
I cannot wait to see the progress when Lauren
and Jeff take the cause and Kiwi and Tiki
who also got a little bit of fun time playing outside.
I can wait to see how they do on our trip here
in just a couple of weeks over on the sand dunes
and hopefully lots of wind and just a blast.
- For instance, one of the things that Dave kind of said
early on when we were like struggling to figure
out how are we gonna get Cosmo to fly
without crashing into stuff, he was just like
why don't you try putting him on the table?
- Right, well he likes the perch.
- And I was like, right
and I, it was just like, it was this like very simple thing
but it was just enough
of a motivator to get him to go at a moment
we were prepared to catch him
so he didn't crash and then build his confidence.
And just the simple concept of like,
you know, there's skills and confidence and if
you build confidence first the skills will naturally follow.
If I didn't have BirdTricks
as experience through the, you know, 15,
20 years that they've been coaching all different types
of people with all different types of birds,
different ages in different situations.
And I know, you know Jamie, Dave said, do you need to
take the course over again?
And for me the answer was a clear yes because it was a very
different scenario and I just felt I had more confidence
knowing that they were gonna catch the mistakes
they were gonna be able to coach us.
Probably not as like as closely monitoring right
as the first time because we did learn so much
the first time with Kiwi and Tiki.
But I think having their oversight gave me the confidence
to be able to, you know, push our guys further, faster
than I would have if we had tried to do it alone.
(upbeat music)
♪ Today is gonna be a little something more ♪
♪ I've got a plan in mind, a special thing in store ♪
♪ The light bulb inside my head says get out and play ♪
♪ 'Cause you'll never feel this way ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ It's my lucky day, my lucky day ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ Don't need a pot of gold ♪
♪ A rabbits foot or to be told it's my lucky day ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ Slept in 'cause I don't care and didn't make the bed ♪
♪ Sipped coffee on my couch, what can I do instead ♪
♪ No work is only fun 'cause it's all okay ♪
♪ 'Cause you'll never feel this way ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ It's my lucky day, my lucky day ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ Don't need a pot of gold, a rabbits foot or to be told ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
(cheering)
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ Don't need a pot of gold, a rabbits foot or to be told ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
♪ Don't need a pot of gold, a rabbits foot or to be told ♪
♪ It's my lucky day ♪
- [Heather] Today was legitimately the first day
where I'm like, I don't know if Lauren
and Jeff had more fun or Cosmo and Nova did.
- So I think that the biggest learning experience for me
building off of what Lauren said
with how sometimes we hold our` birds back
is how much other birds can teach.
Again, as humans and trainers, we can do a lot
of things and flying is not one of them.
- All right, here we go.
3, 2, 1, go.
- So having other birds that are good flyers
and experienced flyers is such an accelerant.
- [Lauren] The biggest joy that I have gotten
from this trip is just watching them fly together.
(upbeat music)