This is the best one in my opinion:Originally Posted by littleindiangirl
YouTube - Buckle, A Baby Shamrock Macaw
It shows the bird from being a baby to a free-flying one.
There are more videos at http://www.wingsatliberty.com/videos.html
I've been researching this extensively for the past 2 weeks... talking to a LOT of people on it and most agree that they are more confident of the bird not getting lost when trained as a free-flying bird than being a clipped bird. Although, there is 1 prominent incident of a lost bird - Andrew's African Grey - although Andrew admits that it was his error in judgement that caused the bird to be lost. The bird was not trained for wind-flight yet and she caught a draft and couldn't find a way to get back down. There is also the incident of Tinkerbell in Taiwan (or Singapore?) who was trained for free-flight but when she was flying came in contact with a flock of pigeons and went with the flock instead of coming back to her owner. She was recovered but the owner decided to never fly her again except with a harness. Chris Biro himself lost 2 macaws on one of his bird shows but they were both recovered the next day.
So, yeah, I guess there is always the chance of the bird getting lost, but I think it is the same chance as a clipped bird. Of course, having a flighted bird is MUCH MORE responsibility to the owner than a clipped bird. And I am only talking about TRAINED flighted birds. I mean, having an untrained (or improperly trained) flighted bird is just an accident waiting to happen, that's for sure.
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