Uncontrolled Outdoor Flight: Louise's Story

by Susan McWilliams
Summer 2003

Introduction

On September 12, 2002, our normal gray cockatiel, Louise, flew out the front door of our house. In this issue's Viewpoints, I share the story of Louise's escape and return. I do so with several purposes in
mind.

As you will see, Louise's story is not the most dramatic but I think it provides useful lessons about flight risks, human carelessness, and the importance of the humans' response to a companion bird's uncontrolled, outdoor flight.

Flight Risks

Whether you keep your bird fully flighted or trim its wings, your bird likely flies, or tries to. This flight poses risks. I focus here on the unplanned, uncontrolled, outdoor flight of a fully flighted,
untrained cockatiel. Other flight risks abound, however.

Indoor flight poses risks. A bird with an improper wing trim may be at risk for "crash landings" and may lose tail feathers, break blood feathers,
etc. Both fully flighted birds and birds with trimmed wings may fly into danger and be injured. When we are lucky and indoor flight risks result in no serious injury to the bird, we contact our vet, our
breeder, our on-line bird friends, etc., and make sure whether Dawn dish detergent really is safe to use to remove grease from our bird's feathers; that we may or may not need to pull that
broken blood feather, depending on the situation; that it is kind of funny that our bird almost ended up in the toilet; that it's a good thing we no longer run that ceiling fan; that they do indeed seem to end
up in the strangest places when they finally land; I could go on, but you get my point.

While those who keep their birds primarily in "bird-proofed" settings (e.g., bird rooms, aviaries-indoor or
out) may not have to worry about some of these risks (most of us don't cook large pots of pasta in boiling water in our bird rooms or aviaries) flight in these settings can still pose risks. For example, a
"panic" flight in any enclosed setting poses risks of collision. Flight in an aviary setting can result in uncontrolled outdoor flight if the aviary structure is not fully intact.

Outdoor flight poses different risks. There are a variety of ways people attempt to minimize these risks. One is by attempting to prevent outdoor flight altogether. Another is attempting to train birds for
outdoor flight (see, for example, http://www.robharvey.com/information/training.html ). Others attempt to control outdoor flight through a variety of restraint devices (see, for example, http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww25e.htm).

Our birds are not trained for outdoor flight nor have we introduced them to restraints, so we are left with the first option. And, on September 12, 2002 we failed to prevent Louise from flying out the front door.

Louise’s Flight

Our YardI came home at around 5:30 p.m. from work, arms loaded with briefcase, purse, and a grocery bag. My husband’s car was in the garage but I did not expect him to be home, as he usually returns from work after I do, and often by foot, as his shop is within walking distance. I believe the front door was locked, but I am not certain, since I simply stuck my key in it after opening the storm/screen door and turned the lock. My husband tells me that the birds heard my footsteps on the porch and went into flight. He and the birds were in the front room right off of the hallway leading from the front door. As I opened the door I heard him yelling that the birds were out and flying. I dropped what I was carrying and reached for the door just as Louise flew around the corner. The outer screen door was about 6 inches open, as was the inner door. I turned and watched as she flew, at about thigh height, out through the opening. I yelled to my husband, "She’s out!”, and ran outside. He put LB, our other cockatiel, 5 months old at the time, in their cage.

When I ran outside I could hear Louise calling, shrieking, really, and I could see her flying in the large open field next to our house, circling higher and higher. She crossed above our house and I ran in pursuit to the empty lot on the other side, calling her repeatedly. She seemed to begin to fly down toward me, but was still at tree-top height. She crossed over again and ended up again circling higher and higher above the open field. Her cries were constant, but diminishing in volume as she ascended.

In minutes, she flew out of sight. We followed the sound of her cries all over our neighborhood, which is residential but scattered with wooded areas. We ran through neighbors’ yards, up and down streets, hearing her still but unable to place location by her call and unable to see her. After a couple of hours of this, I began to believe I was only imagining that I could hear her. We continued to look and call, now about one-quarter of a mile from our house. At one point we thought she might have flown above a thick bank of trees and across the highway on the other side. We got in the car and drove to an exit ramp and wandered in the woods there, calling. Dusk fell. The last I believed I heard of her, I thought her call was fading in the opposite direction, across the river that runs behind our house, but some distance from it.

We returned to our house after we could no longer hear her calls and it had grown dark. I cannot describe the abject misery we felt. We sat huddled together on the floor of our living room, sobbing. We firmly believed, even then, that we had lost her forever.

The Search

At about 9 p.m., I made the first of many phone calls I’d make in the next few days. I called a good friend who was also LB’s breeder, and a person with rescue/retrieval experience. Ellen kept me calm and gave me basic instructions that were critical to the subsequent steps I took. She also spent a great deal of time that night putting together a flyer for me to distribute by mail and on foot. On the flyer she put contact information both for me and my husband and for herself. This turned out to be pivotal in Louise’s recovery. A link to this flyer appears at the end of this column.

The next day I went to work, mostly to use the equipment there to print out and photocopy the flyers. I mailed over 100 flyers to shelters, vets, pet stores, humane societies, within about a 40 mile radius. I took just as many copies of the flyer home with me and that afternoon I began driving and walking all over town, leaving flyers with neighbors on my street and those in my area, with local businesses, vets, the humane society and at the police and fire stations. I ran ads in three newspapers. My friend Ellen listed Louise as missing with all of the on-line lost bird sites we could find. We placed Louise’s old cage, the one she had before we got LB, in the yard in a visible place. We did not put out recordings of cockatiel sounds, although my friend Ellen offered them. Friday afternoon I returned home and was on-line checking the lost/found bird listings when my husband ran in the front door and said, "Louise was in a tree up the street!"

My husband drives a diesel car. Louise has long known the sound of that car and always calls when he pulls in the driveway. That afternoon he’d left work early, and was driving down the street when he heard her call through the open driver’s side window. He pulled over and got out and began calling. He could see her high up in a tree about 2 blocks up from our house. He attempted many times to call me on his cell phone. I was on-line. We have a dial-up connection and only one phone line. I was on it. He was forced to leave her and come home to get me and a cage.

When we got back to the place where he’d spotted her, there was no sign or sound of her. We had walked the neighborhood early that morning with no sightings or soundings. But now we knew that she had probably not left the area within a quarter-mile of our house, contrary to what we’d believed. But she was no longer where he’d spotted her. He told me that right before he came to get me she had been responding to his calls to her, but not climbing down the tree or attempting to fly to him. A large truck went by at that time, and she flew higher up in the tree and he could no longer spot her. It was at that point that he returned home.

That evening, and the next morning, we continued our rounds through the neighborhood and beyond, calling for Louise. It sounds crazy, but while we couldn’t actually hear her, every bird sound began to sound like the distinctive call of a cockatiel. We heard it everywhere and constantly.

Saturday I continued my rounds of posting flyers, moving now to the town across the river from us. At about 3 in the afternoon, I crossed the bridge and headed back to our house. I was physically and emotionally spent. As I turned down our street, I realized I’d neglected to drop a flyer at the police station in the town across the river. I was so drained I had little inclination to turn the car around and drive back. But I did, telling myself I absolutely had to.

She is Found!

The next morning, Sunday, we made the rounds again, on both sides of the river. I again went to the office to do some more on-line networking, and to try to distract myself as well. At about 11 a.m. my office phone rang. It was my friend Ellen. When I answered, she said three words: "She is found!" I couldn’t bear to believe it was true.

It was. Ellen gave me a number to call. The man who answered explained that Saturday evening his teenage son had found a cockatiel in their front yard and had tossed a dish towel over it and brought it inside. The next morning they swung by the police station, the one where I almost had not taken a flyer, and reported a found bird. The officer on duty showed them Louise’s flyer so they could make contact.

Since Louise is a normal gray hen, I didn’t dare to hope that the bird they had found was indeed her, despite the "match" between the bird on the flyer and the bird they had in a small pet carrier on their kitchen table, being fed parakeet seed which they had on hand from their college-age daughter’s parakeets they were minding while she was away at school. With hope alternating with disbelief, I made arrangements to drive to their house to see if the bird they had was Louise.

About an hour later my husband and I arrived at this family’s home. They live in the town across the river, about six miles from us by car, probably more like two miles, as the cockatiel flies. We entered their kitchen and I knelt down to look in the pet carrier. My Louise walked to the front of the carrier and softly called to me. My heart broke with joy.

Louise returned home with us on Sunday afternoon, less than three full days after flying out the front door. She was examined by her vet the next day and pronounced in satisfactory health, though underweight. After her return, our immediate concern was her nutrition. Soon we had to consider the other implications of this experience.

Some Lessons Learned

I love kal!It is difficult to describe the miracle which Louise’s recovery was to us. Despite the encouragement and support of many people, we found ourselves despairing of ever finding her and imagining the absolute worst case scenarios. And there are aspects of her recovery that are still miraculous to me. First is that I did indeed turn around and take a flyer to the police station. Second was that the family who found her went there first. They themselves have a variety of companion animals, including two small dogs which had escaped the summer before and, get this, ended up on OUR street, found by a neighbor, and reunited with their family, as a result of reporting the loss to the police. (The family suspects the dogs wandered across the old railroad bridge that crosses the river between our two towns and terminates on this side of the river about 2 blocks from our house.)

For us, the first lesson was in faith and perseverance. Without encouragement from others, I might not have been as persistent about spreading the word of Louise’s escape as widely as I did and through as many avenues. I cannot stress enough the importance of continuing to act as if your bird can and will be found, no matter what defeat and despair you feel inside.

Second, we inadvertently learned the importance of having a good, clear picture of our birds. One of the links at the end of this column actually advocates having a lost poster ready in advance, on the off-chance that a bird should escape. This used to sound excessive to me. No more. Multiple contact sources are also important. A busy phone line can make the difference between lost and found.

Third, as Louise’s story makes clear, and as other accounts do as well, birds often stay in the immediate area of their escape for significant periods of time. My husband’s sighting of Louise a day later a few blocks from our house is by no means unusual, according to other stories I’ve heard and read. Sustaining a vigilant search in the nearby area is a must. While it did not lead to Louise’s retrieval in this case, it has in others. She clearly had not flown across the river at that point, as I had mistakenly thought.

The harder lessons had to do with the conditions which made Louise’s escape possible in the first place. Many advocated wing trimming to us, both before and after her escape. We decided not to modify Louise’s wings but rather to change our own behaviors. The guilt we felt was difficult, the steps we took to make Louise and LB safer were very simple.

An on-line friend made us a sign to hang in our front door (the only entrance/exit to the house that we cannot restrict access to). Before the birds come out of their cage, that sign is hung and the door locked. We simply do not open the door for any reason when the birds are out. Period. This sounds like common sense, right? It is, but we hadn’t practiced this form of common sense prior to Louise’s flight out the front door. We’d become cocky, in fact. Before this we came and went through the front door on occasion while the birds were out of their cage. We’d tell each other when one of us was doing so, but we still did it. No more. People who knock on our door when the sign is up know that they will have to wait until the birds are retrieved and safely re-caged before the door will be answered. The only people I’ve noticed who have been deterred by such delays are people I don’t know who I suspect were selling something door to door. No great loss.

Just last weekend, I had the birds out with me in the morning after my husband left to do some errands. I had, as usual, hung the sign and locked the door. The birds and I went in to take a shower. At some point, my husband returned home to get something he’d forgotten. He spent about 20 irritated minutes standing on the front porch, knocking on the door several times, calling me from his cell phone, walking around the house trying to spot me through a window.

The birds and I, meantime, were luxuriating in the shower. So he had to wait. When we emerged from the bathroom and I heard a knock at the door, I put them in their cage and answered it.

Certainly, he could have let himself in, despite the sign and the locked door. We were, after all, safely locked in the bathroom. But had he, and had I and the birds stepped out of the bathroom at that point, had they been startled and flown, following their usual pattern of flying in a circle through the downstairs rooms of the house, one or both might have flown out the door.

Quite simply, the door does not get opened from either side when that sign is up. It means the birds are out.

One day after putting the birds back in their cage I left to do some errands. I came home later and the birds are out, sign was up and the door locked. I was fairly sure I’d simply forgotten to take it down when I left. But I couldn’t be positive. My husband’s car wasn’t there, so he was not likely at home but, again, I couldn’t be positive. So, I knocked. And I waited. And I knocked again, and again. I ultimately did what will sound crazy to some. I got back in my car and drove up the street to his shop to confirm that he was not at home. Only then did I go home, confident that I’d left the sign up myself, and that it was safe to enter. If I was a more modern person, I’d have called him on his cell phone from my cell phone. We’re only half-way modern, he has one and I don’t.

This is a simple system. It is the most important thing I can think of to keep my birds safe from untrained, unplanned, and uncontrolled outdoor flight. Some day I’ll have a self-enclosed bird room, and then I’ll have one more line of defense between my birds and any exit from the house when they are out of their cages. Until then, the door stays closed and locked when they are out of their cage, and a simple sign stays on the door. I am sure the reader can think about how such a simple system could be applied to their own living situation. Not everyone lives in a small house with only one main entrance/exit in use. Others may have to hang multiple signs on multiple doors. Pretty simple as well. The fact is, if the door is not opened, the birds cannot fly through it.

Short and Long-term Effects of Outdoor Flight

One aspect of this situation that was also painful but worth sharing, is the effect of Louise’s absence on LB, and on our reactions to LB. LB is Louise’s foster chick. She and Louise have shared a cage LB’s entire life. LB was very nervous during Louise’s absence. I believe she was not only affected by the absence of her companion but by the tension which permeated our entire household during those few days. LB got her companion back, but had she not there might have been long-term adjustment issues for her.

Additionally, I suspect that our own treatment of LB was markedly affected by Louise’s absence. At times I couldn’t bring myself to look at her as she was too painful a reminder of what I thought I had lost. This may sound heartless. At that point we had had LB in our lives for five months. Louise was our first bird and had been our companion for almost four years at that point. I did not then, nor do I yet, have the relationship with LB that I did and do with Louise. This difference was made starkly apparent to me during Louise’s absence. I’d like to think that LB would not have suffered long-term had Louise never been returned to us. However, this experience revealed the differing relationship we have with each of them. It is not popular to acknowledge that we don’t necessarily love all of our pets in the same manner. On top of the anxiety and guilt I felt about Louise’s escape, I also felt guilt about my feelings for LB. I’ve come to see them as normal, but at the time they seemed heartless to me.

Louise has suffered no long-term physiological ill-effects from this experience. However, one long-term effect I have noticed is that a bird that used to appear to take pleasure in flight is now very fearful of the experience. Our birds react very negatively to the telephone ringing and if they are out of the cage they often launch into flight when the phone rings. With Louise, these flights are accompanied by her fright call. She also exhibits her fright behaviors when we walk near the front door. She still makes short-distance, routine flights without fear, but flights around the house, once made for fun and of her own volition, are now fear-induced and fearful. LB continues to fly for fun, and these flights also make Louise nervous.

Conclusion

As I finish typing this, Louise is on my left forearm, LB is on my right shoulder. The toilet lid is closed,; the screens on the open Birds are out of their cage !windows are reinforced; the phone volume is turned to its lowest setting; the mouse cord and other computer lines and cables are covered; there are no scented candles burning or plug-ins in the outlets; there are no coated pans in the house; there’s plenty of fresh seed and a large bunch of fresh kale in the refrigerator.

And the 'Birds Are Out' sign is hung and the door is locked.

Links and References

For a thorough and thoughtful discussion on wing trimming and flighted parrots, see:

http://www.holisticbirds.com/Hbn02/spring02/pages/flight1.htm


For on-line lost/found bird listings and information, see:

http://www.birdhotline.com/index.html

http://www.lostandfound.com/index.tpl?cart=
105966314712608501&country=

www2.toolady.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?
s=b57c02e285b4107903dadfdd5d966ef8&forumid=6

http://www.birdmart.com/classifieds/lost/

http://www.birdsnways.com/birds/blost.htm

http://www.mickaboo.com/lostandfound.html

http://members.tripod.com/~feathered_friends/directory.html

For articles and information on preparing for or responding to the unplanned, outdoor flight of a companion parrot, see:

http://www.parrottalk.com/missing.html

http://members.tripod.com/~feathered_friends/missing.html

http://www.realmacaw.com/pages/checklist.html

http://birdmart.com/classifieds/lost/tips.html

http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer

http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww43e.htm