Hello and welcome to episode 5 of Animale Therapie, the podcast about animal behaviour.
Today we’re going to talk about enrichment in free flight. Is free flying the ultimate enrichment that you can offer your bird? That’s the subject of today’s episode.
But first, I have to tell you that if you’re passionate about free flight and would like to take the plunge one day, but have a lot of questions, I’ve created a masterclass on the subject which is completely free and will take place on Tuesday 26 September at 6pm live. You can register here.
Before even answering the question ‘Is free flight an enrichment, or even the ultimate enrichment for our birds’, let’s first define “What is an enrichment?
Enrichment allows natural behaviour to be expressed in captivity. Because in captivity, you don’t find yourself in exactly the same situation (if at all) as a bird in the wild. And the aim is, for the bird’s well-being – and this has been proven time and time again – that the more an individual is able to express its natural behaviour, the more likely it is to increase its well-being and therefore also avoid all the other behavioural problems, such as stereotypies or pecking, for example. In any case, this is what enrichment is for: to allow the expression of natural behaviour that would have occurred in the wild. There are many benefits to providing enrichment for your bird. It can increase well-being, reduce stress and fear and, of course, prevent boredom, because you can’t be with your bird all day, so the aim of the game is to give it something to do to develop its cognition and curiosity. The more enrichments it has, the more things it has to do, the less bored it will be, the fewer behavioural problems it will have, and we always come back to satisfying the inherent needs of the species. In fact, our enrichments will change depending on the species we’re dealing with. The enrichments will differ according to its morphology, its initial needs, what it is technically confronted with in the wild, and so inevitably the needs are also likely to be different in captivity.
Just a little semantic background before we continue. Today we use the word ‘enrichment’. I don’t really like this word because it implies that it’s something extra. It’s as if we’re enriching the day-to-day life of the individual. But enrichments are supposed to allow the expression of natural behaviour. In other words, they are supposed to be absolutely necessary. You have to be able to present them to an individual in order to meet the needs of the individual and its species and therefore effectively avoid behavioural problems – we’ll say that this is the consequence that suits us – but the consequence that suits the bird, even if it means having a captive bird, is quite simply being able to meet its needs. For me, it’s absolutely important to be able to put in place elements of the environment that will satisfy the needs of the individual. Often, these enrichments are put in place consciously. That’s why we call it enrichment, whereas in the wild, it happens on its own, simply because the environment is adapted. Our aim in captivity will be to try as far as possible to reproduce, whether artificially or not, the needs inherent in the individual and its species, and to do so consciously, so that we can study the needs of each species and reproduce them in captivity.
And so we come to a fundamental problem, which is that if it’s absolutely vital, it’s not simply to enrich the life of the individual. It’s really necessary for their fulfilment, for their very development. It’s been proven, particularly in the very important phases of life, that the bird has the ability, for example, to fly from one branch to another, to gnaw if it needs to gnaw. If the bird is not able to display these basic behaviours, because the environment has been provided with what is needed, then the risk of problem behaviours appearing increases drastically. Obviously, it’s always a question of statistics and probabilities, but in any case, the risk increases dramatically.
This really brings us to the fundamental problem, which is that it’s no longer really a means of enriching an individual’s life, but a vital need. So we call it enrichment, but I really want you to bear in mind that enrichment is absolutely necessary for well-being. When it comes to birds, we don’t necessarily think about it, or at least we don’t necessarily ask the question that far ahead. And yet, when you have a dog, you often ask yourself the same question.
We’re going to ask ourselves “Am I in a flat? Am I living in a house? Can I have a dog in these conditions? Do I have enough time to take him for an hour’s walk? Because I know that a certain breed of dog needs to be exercised. So I plan ahead and I’ll be able to meet the needs. It’s also a form of enrichment. I’ll be able to meet his needs in my “captive” life for that individual and so we’ll have a fulfilling relationship, because I know that I would have met his needs by my side in a captive context.
Now that we’ve said that, there are several types of enrichment. Cognitive enrichment, which affects the individual’s memory, their relationship with space and a whole host of other things. The social aspect is also a form of enrichment. Having rich social interactions, either with individuals of your own species, or with related species, or with totally different species such as humans. Physical enrichment too, with the possibility of having motor skills in its environment, so a potentially large enough environment to satisfy this need on a daily basis. So-called environmental enrichment, which could mean, for example, putting leafy branches that the bird can touch, which will be modified relatively regularly in its environment, as if, once again, we were in a natural context, and in nature, there are changes in the environment that are fairly regular, if only because of the movements of the birds.
And enrichments such as foraging, where the aim of the game, once again as in the wild, is to encourage the individual to behave in ways he would if he were outside, such as foraging: This will involve hiding favourite treats in particular places in the aviary or in the house, in small containers that are easy for the individual to access, which will enable him to satisfy the needs inherent to his species, such as foraging, while at the same time being rewarded for performing these behaviours, because he has performed the natural behaviours that he would have performed innately if he had had the opportunity. Our aim is to create opportunities in the environment to allow the bird to perform these behaviours almost spontaneously, without necessarily needing to learn them. There’s also another type of enrichment that I haven’t mentioned yet. It’s simply doing things with your bird. Teaching it tricks, doing medical training. All this is also a form of enrichment, because the animal’s behaviour has consequences for its environment.
All this is also a form of enrichment, because the animal’s behaviour has consequences for its environment. From that point on, it can be considered an enrichment. We bring something new and it’s “thanks to the animal” if that something has appeared in the environment thanks to its behaviour. In this sense, we can talk about enrichment for the tricks, educational activities and everything else you put in place, but with your bird, which will also, by the same token, help to improve your relationship with it.
If you haven’t already done so, what I really recommend is to draw up what we call an enrichment plan. I talk about this in my hang-gliding training and it’s super important to meet the needs of the individual, but also because it allows him to get used to new elements of the environment that may appear very slowly, quietly and at his own pace. In this case, in free flight, it’s really important to do this exercise, because if the bird doesn’t know anything, because it’s systematically in a captive context of living in a house, there’s every chance that it will be completely taken aback when it goes outside and that there will suddenly be far too much information to manage and digest. So the chances of stress increasing dramatically are high.
For these two reasons, in my opinion, enrichment is absolutely vital and that’s why I recommend that, if you haven’t already done so, you make a little plan, even if it means getting a little calendar, and every day you write down an idea for enrichment for your birds. You can use one or more of the different types of enrichment we’ve talked about. And then, there are things in the environment that you’re going to install that will fit into several enrichment categories by doing a single activity. And that’s fine too. For example, you could add branches or old ‘rotten’ wood that you might find in a wood or forest and hide treats inside. In this way, you are enriching the environment, the food and even the environment itself. This is going to play on several types, several levels and it all becomes very interesting. So, of course, I’ve taken one example, but there are lots of types of enrichment (and that’s why I’ve taken the time to dissect it). And in each category, you can even make sub-categories, but basically, what you have to understand is that you can really, if only, give the food you put in the aviary every day in a different way, rather than systematically giving it in the same bowl all the time in a super boring way. You could imagine taking this same food ration and scattering it around the environment a little so that it’s totally different from usual. Because in nature, the food isn’t always waiting for the bird in the same place every day, of course not. In the wild, they have to make a major cognitive effort to find that food and that helps to fuel their well-being.
And it’s really important to try and reproduce these things in captivity too. It doesn’t have to be very time-consuming, but the more you think about it beforehand, the better organised you are to do it and the more time you’ll save during the week. If you’re giving the bird its food in a different way, you could imagine, for example, putting the food in the same bowl, but instead of leaving it 100% available, putting small sheets or balls of paper that you’ve crumpled together and putting them on top of the food ration, still in the bowl, so that the bird has to remove these crumpled balls of paper to get to the treats underneath, just as if it were looking for an insect under a bark, which helps it to look for its food. And you could start like that, which is a relatively simple exercise, and gradually increase the difficulty as the bird becomes more confident and unafraid.
This brings me to a very important point, which is that an enrichment is only an enrichment when the bird is able to cope with it, when there is no stress. If you see your bird stressed by, for example, the toy you’ve put in its cage or aviary, then it’s no longer an enrichment, it’s no longer a pleasure. Even if the object was bought for that purpose, and that’s all it does. So if you buy a toy, the only function is to enrich the bird’s environment so that it doesn’t get bored, we agree. Except that if, from his point of view, it’s something in the environment that’s too big, too sudden, too close to him and he can’t back away from that toy, or it’s simply too much because he’s had negative experiences with a toy and maybe one day he got a paw stuck. Whatever may have happened in his life, if you notice that your bird is displaying stress behaviours at the time, then it’s no longer enrichment.
And that’s really important to understand, because instead of making it a pleasurable activity, instead of making it something that’s super enjoyable for the individual, we’re doing exactly the opposite. And because it’s constantly present in the environment, there’s a significant risk of creating chronic stress. I’ll be talking about all this in next week’s episode, which will look at the impact of stress on free flight. I’m going to talk about stress in a much more precise and in-depth way. If you’d like to find out more about this topic, I invite you to come back next week for the next episode.
Now that we’ve said all that, let’s talk about the benefits of free flight. Free flight in itself, if the bird is perfectly well, etc, enables us to satisfy our needs. In other words, there are so many different things in the environment. Something always happens because you can’t control everything in the external environment. Birds have much greater motor skills because there’s obviously a lot more space.
They also have a lot more control over what happens, in other words, they can choose to go to point A or point B depending on what they want to do. And all that in itself is a form of enrichment. You’re ticking several boxes in the types of enrichment you’re offering your bird. Similarly, if you have several birds flying together, you are satisfying the individual’s social needs. Similarly, if you do an activity with your bird outdoors, just as you might do indoors, you are providing social enrichment for that individual. The same goes for foraging. You could imagine having a fruit tree in the environment in which you want your bird to fly, and having the bird come out when the fruit is available and realise that there’s some great fruit there and decide to go there. This is foraging. It’s almost as if it’s in a real-life situation in the wild where it’s going to go from point A to point B to look for sources of food and resources.
So, in that sense, is free flight a form of enrichment? Yes, without a doubt. There are lots of things that the bird can do outdoors that will enrich its daily life and really help it to meet its needs. Now, is free flight THE thing to do for a bird, so that it can absolutely feel good?
Yes and no. There are two reasons for this. The first is that, as I was saying, if you’re flying your bird and free flight is extremely stressful for it, if it’s a sensitive bird or a rescue bird with many fears, it’s a mistake to think that free flight will satisfy its needs and make it feel good. Because, as we said earlier, anything that frightens you is no longer an enrichment. In this case, we’re simply falling into emotional management, and for that bird, it’s going to be more of a chore, even something extremely difficult to manage, even very unpleasant, and it’s not going to be positive at all. And in that sense, is it desirable to free-fly with a bird that doesn’t appreciate it or gets into trouble every time it’s put into that situation? With all the risks that this entails too, because a bird that is in difficulty means that potentially the risks of loss are going to be much greater than a bird that is enjoying itself and has total control over the situation.
In that sense, can we say that free flight is the ultimate enrichment? No, because it depends on the individual. If free flight is too frightening, it’s no longer an enrichment, full stop. It depends on the individual, it depends on his background, it depends on his sensitivity. And all this has to be assessed for each bird, to make sure that the bonus activity we’re putting in place for that bird, in that context, at that moment in its life, is actually something positive.
The second reason I can think of is that, for almost all species, we can satisfy the needs of captive birds and enable them to reproduce their natural behaviour without having to put them at risk in free flight.
Because, yes, hang-gliding involves a lot of risks and there’s a benefit/risk balance to be had for an individual. Couldn’t I do the same thing differently? Rather than offering this individual an outing that could put him or her in difficulty and that, in the end, would increase the risk of loss, when I could do just as well with infinitely more safety, since in home practice there is little or no risk of loss or accident. In any case, it’s negligible.
We can meet the needs of almost all species in captivity. You can forage, you can bring in one or more conspecifics, whether from the same species or a related one. We can do tricks with them, we can improve their environment. You can create an aviary that is large enough to allow them to have sufficient motor skills to reproduce the behaviours they would have done in the wild.
And that’s also something to understand. Free flight is not just about flying for the sake of flying. You don’t simply let your bird fly because it needs to fly. Of course there is a physical need, but the bird may not enjoy flying per se. Because it’s an activity, in the same way as asking anyone to run a marathon every day, it may not be a pleasure for him. But they can do it. And yet it’s a need. You’ve got legs, they’re made for running.
We need to cultivate motor skills. That’s obvious, because our birds need it. And if a bird has no motor skills, there are a whole host of studies showing that this increases behavioural problems, stereotypies, depression, etc. You have to cultivate motor skills, but there’s a huge gulf between cultivating motor skills and free flying. It’s perfectly possible to develop motor skills in a 100% safe environment. If you really want to fly your macaw and your five-metre-long aviary isn’t enough, or even your living room isn’t enough, you could imagine working on the transport cage, working on the car, so that it’s serene, and going into a huge barn or a totally enclosed riding arena and letting it fly in this environment.
If your bird likes to fly, it needs a safe environment to meet its needs. Just as you would take your dog for a walk every day, you plan this time in your timetable and say to yourself ‘Here, I’m going because I know that my bird has greater needs in terms of physical expenditure because it is a particular species, because it is a particular individual, whatever the reason’. So you could also imagine doing this without putting your bird in free-flight conditions where there is a risk. And all that can be evaluated.
Is it possible to satisfy an individual’s needs without putting them in free flight? Yes, yes, yes and yes. And I’ll come to another point. If you don’t want to go free flying because you don’t want the slightest risk of loss or accident, that’s perfectly OK. Nobody should make you feel guilty about that. You have lots and lots of other levers to pull in captivity to allow sufficient enrichment and satisfy the needs of the individual.
There are lots and lots of levers. There are hundreds, if not thousands, I can’t think of them all. I can’t think of everything. It’s also a question of creativity, but in any case, one thing is certain, and that is that you can put in place enrichments that meet the needs of the individual. So don’t feel at all guilty if you don’t want to set up a free flight for your bird. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Indeed, learning to free-fly can be very interesting because a bird lives an extremely long time. In the case of small species, they live for 12 years, and in the case of very small species, they can live for 70 or 80 years. And it’s true that you can’t guard against all the risks over such a long period: open windows, aviaries that open accidentally, a cage that isn’t closed properly and a bird escapes, an aviary that’s damaged and the bird escapes. In fact, if you have a bird that is trained and has been trained in the idea of free flight, but doesn’t necessarily practise it every day, there’s no need. In that case, it will increase the chances of it returning safely. It can also be extremely interesting to learn to free-fly for these reasons. Now, you don’t have to take up free flying and say to yourself ‘I absolutely have to do this because if I don’t, my bird will be unhappy’. It won’t. Will it? And that’s something I really want you to understand.
It’s silly. I’ve created a hang-gliding course, and you might think, “My aim is to sell this course absolutely. But no, I’m in favour of reasoned practice. In other words, my aim is that whatever decision you make, you make it with full knowledge of the facts and with as many tools as possible to assess the situation. My aim is not to sell you a course because I created it, because it suits me, not at all. My aim is to get results for you, for your bird and for your situation. So I don’t want you to take a course and say to yourself ‘I absolutely have to do this because I absolutely have to get my bird into free flight’. If you don’t like it, if your bird doesn’t like it, if it’s not suitable for him, all these are aspects that absolutely must be taken into account when practising free flight. If I had to sum all this up, you are under no obligation to practice free flight to maintain your bird’s well-being. So don’t feel guilty if this isn’t the case. You are free and you have other means of action to satisfy the well-being and needs of your birds.
I’ll stop here for today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and that it’s helped you understand a lot of things. We’ve gone very quickly, I’m well aware of that. If you want to go further, next week’s episode will talk about the impact of stress in free flight. There are a few things I’ve started to tease out today, because of course we’re going to be talking about stress – we talk about it a lot. So if you really want to go further into this, come back next week. And if free flight really is something that interests you, if you really want to take the plunge, if you’re not sure that it’s the right thing for you, I’ve created a free masterclass on the subject, which will take place on Tuesday 26 September at 6pm live. I’ve left you the link right here, so don’t hesitate to take a look and sign up if you’re interested in this subject.
If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, don’t hesitate to comment. In fact, in the comments section too, you’re more than welcome to suggest an upcoming topic that’s close to your heart. You can also join my Instagram for more information, tips and free resources under the handle @animalethérapie or on Facebook. Do you have a behavioural problem with your pet or would you like ethical and professional support? You can contact me directly at contact@ animalethérapie.com. And I’ll see you soon for a new episode.
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