USA. Our trainer was Cassie Molina, a senior trainer at NEI. She had a wonderful sense of humour, and a dozen years of experience. NEI run several bird shows over USA and run the popular show at Disney world in Florida. Steve Martin himself travels the world, advising zoos and trainers how to get the best results from their animals with the least intrusive methods. We were given a list of birds to choose for training sessions under our trainer’s supervision.


These were the birds we choose and the weights they maintained during the workshop.


My chief birds were Samson and 36 BIRD SCENE


We were allowed to choose what behaviour we wanted to teach our individual birds. I started out training Palmer to enter a crate but then decided since my birds at home do that readily, it would be more useful for me to fly him in a larger space. In the large flight, the task was to get Palmer to fly round a loop around a pole.


Palmer. Samson, a majestic Hyacinth macaw’s weight went from 1440 grams – 1475. My second bird was Palmer, the palm cockatoo, whose weight went from 1076 – 1081grams. Karen chose two macaws, Skittles, a Scarlet and Laverne, a Blue and Gold experienced bird. Their weights went from 1125 – 1089 and 994 – 969 grams. Karen and I were also required to have some training sessions with Loki the raven whose weight stayed the same, and Pebbles, a Seriama,


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