- I'm Jen Perry from North Carolina.
I have a five-month-old harlequin macaw named Tegan.
And this is my free flight journey.
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- [Jamieleigh] Oh stop, oh no!
(cheers)
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- [Jamieleigh] I don't know if I got her falling either.
Oh no.
Good job, Jen.
You're such a good sport.
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- When I got Tegan,
I knew I wanted to free fly her.
I had been watching Bird Tricks for quite some time,
had actually had a number of consults,
and was working with you guys
on a couple of my other birds.
But they weren't ready for free flight,
and I knew I wanted a macaw
and I wanted to see her in the sky.
So, I had her for less than a week
when I reached out to you guys
and talking to Dave, he said,
"Hey, we're going to Pahrump in two months,
you can go."
And I was like, what?
It seemed so fast.
So, sure, why not, let's go.
So we started training, and it was this roller coaster ride
of her being a baby bird,
me not knowing what I'm doing,
Dave coaching me through it and keeping me on track,
but there was a point where we just weren't progressing.
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Tegan!
Oh.
Tegan!
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And we were 14 days out
from when I would need to leave for the trip.
Because I was driving from North Carolina to Nevada.
So that's a week on the road.
Dave actually said during the consult,
after reviewing the film from the week before,
"Okay, you're gonna have to pull it together,
or it's just not gonna happen."
So he focused me in on what we needed to do
to accomplish that last week of training,
and it was either going to be on or it was gonna be off.
And I was not sure, really, if I was ready,
if she was ready, I was leaving it up to the experts.
And we did exactly what he said.
We mastered perfect recall, it clicked.
We were outside in the batting cage,
and it all came together,
and when we met seven days later,
Dave's like, "Yeah, I think you're ready."
And I was like, "Yeah, I actually think we are."
So, it was a absolute roller coaster, but it was awesome.
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- [Dave] How'd it go setting up the batting cage?
- Shut up, Dave.
(all laugh)
- We had a hurricane in the middle of it all.
It was great, it was awesome.
So the biggest struggle that I had with Tegan
on this journey was we didn't know each other.
I had her literally for a week.
We were still working on hand feeding
and trying to get that down as well as personality.
She's my first macaw and my first free flight.
So it was all this combined together,
where we just had to learn as we went along.
And get to know each other as well.
So that for me was my biggest challenge.
Not knowing what I didn't know about her and the process.
We overcame that by being focused.
And when it got down to the end of our training,
where it was do or die,
we dialed in, she was focused on me at this point,
and I was focused on her, and that connection just clicked.
And it just turned on, and we were able to communicate
and understand each other a whole lot better.
Seriously touch training, when I started that,
because it wasn't at the start.
Like, I'd only had her for a week.
So she's had zero training at that point.
We went right into flight, and as part of that,
we started doing touch training to get her moving around
some foraging trees that I had.
Her launching off of.
And that really helped her understand,
oh, I get that, okay.
It's not just about flight.
It's a little bit more,
and we started communicating in general
overall a whole lot better.
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So during the training, in mid-training,
I decided that I wanted to change the floors in my home.
So, I had the flooring delivered,
and it was right in the flight path,
so she had to normalize around and over this new obstacle
that hadn't been there before.
And then we had strangers in our home for two days,
which forced all of my birds to be out on our sun porch.
So I lost two days of training,
plus all of the disruption of being in a new location,
close proximity to all the other birds,
and then new flooring.
So it was, the first day she was flying
over those new floors,
she was doing this weird twitching thing.
She was seeing something that she hadn't seen before.
A reflection of some kind, or a shine off the floor.
'Cause I had carpet, and I went to vinyl plank flooring.
And it took her a little while to get used to that.
And it calmed down, and, for us all to calm down.
'Cause it's incredibly disruptive
to have strangers in your home,
even though the outcome was great.
You know, the biggest lesson that I learned
is to trust the process.
You guys are experts, Dave analyzed my videos over the week,
each week, broke it down, identified the things
that were working, pointed out the things
that were not, told me what not to do ever again,
and then modified, gave me specific tasks for the next week.
And just segmenting it that way.
In the very beginning, Tegan and I struggled.
The first week I just didn't think it was gonna happen,
at all, ever, no way.
She was here, she was there, she was never coming to me.
And once, after Dave and I met for the first weekend consult
and I was able to just see this in segments
of a week at a time, and break it down,
I was much more willing mentally to trust the process
and just listen to the experts.
Trust in the bird, this is what she does.
I just have to figure out how to communicate these things
to her, and Dave helped me do that,
and that's how we got here.
So the outside experience combined with the training
that it took to get here has been all in all
a complete roller coaster ride that has been,
the ups and downs of every emotion, but so much excitement
to see her finally outside,
in the air, enjoying herself.
Today she had so much fun.
She actually wanted to do that.
And she wanted to come to me.
It was her choice and she did that.
Over and over again, not just once.
So that was really awesome.
And seeing her build her skills in real time
over this trip has been very rewarding.
- [Jamieleigh] Ready?
All right.
One, two, three, go!
- [Jen] Woo, yeah baby!
There's my Tego!
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- [Jamieleigh] Those two look really similar in the sky.
- [Jen] They are, some of Rachel's pictures.
- [Jamieleigh] There we go.
- [Jen] Tegan!
- [Jamieleigh] Whoa!
(laughter)
- [Jamieleigh] Whoa!
Got a little cross traffic.
Yay, yay!
Good girl!
- [Jen] She went over.
- [Jamieleigh] Oh, she did?
It's like, Mom, I'll meet you up here.
Oh, Rico got buzzed, yeah!
(birds chirp)
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- [Jamieleigh] Kane is exploratory.
- [Jen] Tegan!
Tegan!
- [Jamieleigh] Where are you going?
(bird chirps)
- [Jen] Tegan!
- [Jamieleigh] Yes!
- [Jen] Yay!
- [Jamieleigh] Nice!
- 'Cause she definitely built some skills
leading up to this, flying in the house
and flying in the batting cage,
but she hasn't experienced wind like this.
And she hasn't experienced sun like this.
So, this has been very rewarding
and it fills my heart to see her so happy.
I chose free flying, because every time I watch
one of your students free flying for the first time,
I was crying.
Every video I was crying.
I'm gonna cry now.
I wanted to see that for myself.
And give that to my bird.
(Jen laughs)
It's true, though.
It's funny, I really thought,
because I get so, or had been getting so emotional
watching your students and watching their journeys
and their rides, I thought the first time that I saw Tegan
in the air I was gonna just lose it.
I thought I was just gonna fall out,
y'all were gonna have to catch my bird,
there was no way I was gonna hold it together.
This is the first time I fell apart.
Because it's just so awe inspiring.
For me, I love watching animal behavior,
so watching her in the air, I don't know, it was different.
But if I sit down and think about it, talk about it,
then it kind of all snowballs and hits me.
So, weird.
Did I question my decision to free fly
after Opal went for a 5.3 mile flight on Day 1?
The answer's no.
Not for a second.
I have confidence in a bird in general,
including my own, but a bird in general's ability
to do what they do.
And what they do is they fly.
And it's a learning process.
Kids fall down when they're learning to walk.
Birds get caught in a gust when they're learning to fly.
And it's just part of the learning process.
So for me, no, it didn't knock me back at all.
I wanted, hm, I don't know if I want to say that,
but I wanted Tegan to experience
a little bit of a rough ride.
I don't want it to be easy for her.
I want it to be challenging.
I want her to get the wind under her,
push her, make her struggle.
She'll get better that way.
And you saw a little bit of that today.
Where we were in 10 mile an hour gusts
and she had to work a little bit.
But she did it and she got stronger and smarter,
and better for it.
So it didn't give me pause after Opal flew off.
Plus, we got her back.
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- [Jamieleigh] Yes.
Look at Halo going.
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(birds chirp)