I have a new bird and I am teaching her to fly.
Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous because I actually can’t fly myself, although I did try tried several times as a child until my dad banished me from my flight pad on the garage roof. The second time I broke my arm he decided that the time had come to explain to me that my arm was an arm and that it would never be a wing. I remember sobbing. I was four.
This new bird is five months old and has been hand-raised. She has come all the way from the other side of Australia. She is beautiful, exotic, an endangered species and, even though she is temporarily in a cage in our veranda (right next to our weiro’s cage) I let both birds out during the day and they usually hang out on top of the biggest cage, munching seed and chattering to each other.
Last evening, I put Buttons the weiro to bed in her cage so I could concentrate on our new bird’s first flying lesson. I flapped my arms up and down and she looked at me from her perch for a moment, then suddenly began to copy me and, a moment later, she was flying all around the veranda – wow! I was a little disconcerted when she smashed into me but when I picked her up she pressed her substantial beak against my nose as if to say, “that was fun!”
Her name is ‘Wantok’.
jmgoyder 