Chips came home!!

[Salsa]

Scary but comical story. I am at my aunt's house in Roatan Honduras and today while my husband and I were out doing tourist things she was home and had the "three chickens" (white cap pionus) out in the bushes beside the house (supervised). This is their usual afternoon routine. They are pretty young and until they learn to answer their call they won't be allowed to grow their wings. My aunt has several birds, both poinus and amazons, that she has trained this way. Once they learn their call they are allowed to fly for several hours during the day but come in on the play gym otherwise (its pretty cool to go out in the afternoon and do the call and then see about 8 different and wonderful parrots come flying in from the near by trees and bushes). Anyway while the babies were having their time in the bush, my aunt was sitting and watching them and reading. Apparently the gardener came by and accidentally scared them and Chips decided to give his wings a try.

The long and the short of it is that he flew off and after much duress, searching and after our return we decided to just hope that he would find his way home. So about an hour later I came out of the bathroom and saw an odd sillouhette on the window and amazingly it turned out to be our little Chips clinging to the screen and answering his call!! So tomorrow morning wings will be re-clipped, but he is happily roosting with his siblings tonight... at home!! At least we know he is getting the gist of his training.

[Bradleyzoo]

Hi Salsa... So glad Chips came home! How scary! Hey - we live on Roatan!! Is your aunt´s name Joy? Don´t want to mention last names on the internet, but I saw a pìcture of you in another post with your beautiful Salsa and you look like someone I know named Joy, who also has a lot of parrots. Where are you staying on Roatan? We are out on the east end in Punta Blanca. Also, we are trying to organize a work crew to help Dr. Baird at the bird sanctuary at Blue Ocean Reef (near The View) this week. If you´re still around, are you interested?

[huntress]

Oh how wonderful to live in a place where your pets can fly free. It brings a whole new meaning to the the poem about setting them free and if they come back to you they are yours! I used to have doves that flew free allot. It was my fault they got killed by a predator,not while they were flying, but while they were captive. I didnt build a weasel proof home for them back then. Lessons learned.

[Salsa]

Bradleyzoo - yes Joy is my aunt. We are staying with her. My husband is tiling her pool and we have been up to see Dr Baird and Sumo a couple of times this week. We will be around this next week and I would love to help out!! Do you have Joy's numbers? You can pm me and we can work things out.

[Sally]

Will they continue to go outside? Very scary. I would be afraid of hawks, dogs, cats and like what happened, just being spooked.

[Salsa]

Yes, they will continue to go outside. With all of the other birds, once they were trained and such, they have maintained great health and such. The only time she has had trouble was when she tried to keep them in a very large aviary and the guard dogs got in there. Since then they have been trained and have free roam for a few hours a day. The babies are only out with constant supervision. 90% of her birds are re-homes. These three babies are the only ones she has had since weaning. She did have one join a local flock of wild amazons, but she was ok with that because it was living the life it was meant to live. To be honest I don't know if there is much in the way of hawks on the island.

[ROYJOY]

its a small world when BB members bump into each other in random small countries.