Reminder: Morgan is a 7 year old camelot macaw with a foot defect she was hatched with. To catch up with Morgan's story, please click here.  Lessons from this video: Always end the session on a positive note and while the enthusiasm is still high!  Crashing is part of the learning process - just like a toddler looks to its parents for how to re...

Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Emerald Forest Bird Ranch Pictured: Channel bill toucans I'd been working out dates to come out and visit Emerald Forest for months and was so nervous something would happen to make it fall through. I was communicating back and forth with Jerry about the visit as well as my constant toucan-impulse questions that ar...

Photo by Dave Location: Waynesboro, VA Macaws: Camelot macaws "Comet" & "Tusa", blue throated macaw "Jinx" Recently I was asked what kind of personality differences I’ve noticed in the macaws I’ve worked with, and I thought it would make an interesting blog post for those of you wondering the same thing. For me, I have noticed that some g...

Our military macaw has always struggled with flying well. Mostly because he would spook and panic if he missed his first attempt at a landing, and end up crashing. We tried training him in a flight aviary where he could learn on his own time, we tried batting cages, we tried having him watch birds that were good at it and learning from them (o...

Photo by Dave Womach Location: Carbondale, IL Pictured: Galah "Bandit" & Military Macaw "Crash" I'm one of those people that says, "Everything happens for a reason." we may not understand that reason til later, which is usually always the case. I've found that there's signs in life that subtly tell you what path you should be going down. ...

Photo by Dave Womach Location: Carbondale, IL Shown: Galahs "Bondi" & "Ace"  Whenever we fly our birds in the arenas, we let anyone watch who is around or wants to. There's some people around the circus that I call or text to let them know we're going to be flying our birds because I know how much they enjoy being there. Then there's alwa...