READERS of this column in Cage & Aviary Birds will know that my dream and ambition with my parrots has been free flight. I had been fascinated by it since I first kept parrots 25 years ago. After 15 years of study - books, seminars, lectures and workshops, notably Steve Martin’s ranch in Florida - in 2014 I free-flew my blue-and-gold macaw Benni. From the earliest flights, I chronicled the excitements and nerve-wracking moments of the adventure.
We soon experienced a rite of passage named “the overnighter”. when your free flyer doesn’t come home for the first time. In Benni’s several thousand flights there were three overnighters, but on each occasion he was retrieved the next day.
The practice of free flight is fairly new, and had never been carried out deliberately
