Birds can fly in our homes–safely!

There are many articles on the internet discussing the pros and cons of wing clipping. However, these assume that the “pros”–usually argued from a safety perspective–can only be attained if the bird’s flight is limited or eliminated by having its wings clipped.  In this section of the site, we will explore the commonly mentioned dangers a flighted bird may encounter and learn how we can minimise or eliminate those dangers from the bird’s environment.  I will first discuss dangers in the home, then concerns about parrots accidentally flying out the door.  After reading this page and others on the site, consider whether there are truly more pros to wing clipping than there are cons.  NOTE: Although I have tried to cover as much as possible, this is not an exhaustive list.  When pursuing flight, it will be necessary to evaluate your own home for dangers and make the necessary adjustments.

Windows, glass doors, and mirrors worry many people when discussing flight for birds.  Fortunately, this is one of the easiest concerns to address.  Birds can learn to safely avoid windows, glass doors, and mirrors.  The ideal time for them to do this is, of course, while they are learning to fly as babies.  Because they are forming their understanding of the world as they experience it, baby birds need only to consistently identify the window or mirror as a solid object in order to avoid it in the future.  The baby bird may bump into the window or mirror initially, while it is still a clumsy flier, but this is comparable to a toddler bumping into things as it learns to walk and move about the room.  We can’t compare an adult bird who has never seen a window before, who rushes into it at top speed, to a baby bird testing its environment.  If you and I had grown up without ever seeing windows, mirrors, or sliding glass doors, could we be expected not to crash and hurt ourselves if suddenly surrounded by them?

This amazon demonstrates that birds, given experience and acclimation, are just as capable of identifying and avoiding panes of glass as we are. Credit: Monika of Parrot Harness and Free Flight UK.

A bird who has passed the stage of learning to fly as a baby can still learn how to avoid these; it just requires a little more precaution while teaching them.  Starting off in a smaller room with windows and mirrors covered allows the bird to familiarise itself with its surroundings without the added challenge of a solid-yet-transparent object.  Windows and mirrors can be uncovered partially, then fully.  As suggested by parrot behaviour consultant Pamela Clark, a bar of soap can be rubbed onto windows and the layer of soap gradually removed as the bird learns.  Masking tape is another option.  After the bird recognises that windows represent solid barriers and can fly around them reliably, the tape can be removed.  For birds who are comfortable perching on a hand, they can also be introduced to windows and mirrors by watching a human tap on these objects.  They can even tap them with their beaks and experience the solidness themselves.  Suction-cup perches can be added to windows as well, if desired, offering the bird a place to land when it flies toward them.

When birds are raised in an environment with windows (or gradually introduced to them as adults), they have no difficulty avoiding them. In fact, they tend to enjoy landing on them to take in the view. The pros and cons of wing clipping typically discussed involve pros for the human and cons for the bird. Safety can be achieved in far better ways than clipping.

Ceiling fans are dangerous to birds, for obvious reasons.  Once we know how important flight is to a bird, we can’t really prioritise using a fan with exposed blades over a bird’s natural mobility.  I completely understand that some people live in very hot climates, don’t have air conditioning, and so on and so forth.  Fortunately, we can do a few different things.  We can use pedestal fans or box fans when the bird is out and in rooms that it has access to.  We can run the ceiling fan at night when the bird is in its cage.  (Safety covers like this can be placed over switches that control fans as an extra reminder not to flip them.)  We can purchase a bird-safe ceiling fan to install in an area where the bird will most likely spend a lot of time, such as the living room.  (Bird-safe ceiling fans can be found by searching online for “enclosed ceiling fans”.  You can check out one great example here.)  Obviously these are more expensive than a cheap standard ceiling fan, but birds are, in general, not inexpensive pets.  You’re going to be paying for a cage/aviary, food, perches, toys, and at some point, vet visits.  If you really can’t live without a ceiling fan, 200-some dollars doesn’t seem like much to invest in exchange for your bird’s ability to move normally and exercise for the rest of its life.  Ceiling fans with exposed blades are fairly common in most homes, but so is non-stick cookware, and we can’t use that around birds, either.  Sometimes we just have to make adjustments for our pets.  Personally, I have never felt ceiling fans to be particularly effective, an opinion I held well before I owned any birds.  In the absence of air conditioning, I much prefer a fan placed in the window coupled with a pedestal fan near my person.

For this cockatiel, the ceiling fan is just another perch to practise recall from. There are much better fan options that can be run in the presence of birds. Credit: @peppered_cosmos on Instagram.

The kitchen stove seems to cause people a lot of grief when they think about flight, but the solution is incredibly simple: just put your bird in a room with the door closed or in a cage while cooking.  Cooking is not exactly a bird-friendly activity, and it’s probably ideal if they’re nowhere near the kitchen while it’s happening.  Birds have incredibly sensitive respiratory systems and, even if none of your cookware contains polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)–also known by the brand name Teflon–there are still gases and chemicals produced while cooking that are better off not entering their lungs.  A person might be comfortable cooking with a clipped bird nearby or on their shoulder because they assume the bird can’t fly.  The same bird may suddenly take flight if startled or lose its balance and end up in a heated pot or pan.  Putting birds away or in another room while cooking is the safest option for multiple reasons.

As for toilet bowls, there is once again an incredibly simple solution: just keep toilet seats closed.  Leave a note up for yourself and family members if necessary until it becomes a habit.  In all honesty, if you flush with the toilet seat up, this causes bacteria to be sprayed into the air and all over the room.  It is far more sanitary to flush with the toilet seat down, which means shutting it after each use.  Keeping a flighted bird happens to encourage you to be more hygienic.  Thanks, birds!  Other open sources of water which a bird could drown in (pot soaking in the sink, big glass of water on the table, etc.) should not be left out uncovered unless the bird is being supervised.

Birds are capable of incredible control and precision which make flight in the house a piece of cake. The key to unlocking this control and precision in our pet birds is to, ideally, allow for fledging and normal development.  Should normal development not take place, it is up to us to facilitate gradual learning in a safe environment.  Clipping feathers and changing the shape of a bird’s wing–a shape which is aerodynamically optimised–will not help them master flight any more than hobbling a dog will help it master an agility course.  Credit: @bird_tails on Instagram and TikTok.

Cats and dogs are commonly cited as a household danger but, frankly, it is questionable as to whether one should mix either of these with birds.  Regardless, if a flighted bird is not safe around cats/dogs, a clipped bird most certainly is not.  I have heard the argument that a bird will be less likely to trigger predatory instincts if it can’t fly and that it can be put on a high perch where dogs can’t reach.  Cats and dogs may be stimulated by seeing a fast-moving animal in flight, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t stimulated by seeing a small animal scurrying on the ground.  If they only went after flying animals, they wouldn’t kill mice, squirrels, and rabbits, among others.  Many common dog breeds have been specifically bred to assist with bird-hunting.  Thus, there is just no truth to the idea that cats and dogs will leave a flightless bird alone but will viciously pursue a flighted one.  Furthermore, a flighted bird at least has a chance to get out of harm’s way.  Should a clipped bird find its way from a perch to the ground–whether by falling, fluttering, climbing, or jumping—in the presence of a cat or dog, it may find itself in grave danger.

I have often seen the argument that larger birds cannot safely fly in the home. This, of course, is untrue. Large birds learn how to avoid obstacles just as well as small birds. It may be more challenging for them fly in certain spaces, but that does not mean they will crash into walls and windows. Credit: @peace_of_parrots on Instagram.

Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list of in-home dangers.  There are other things to consider when keeping a flighted bird.  For example, if your bird is free to fly around the room, you will need to ensure there are no toxic substances left out for them to ingest.  You will need to supervise your bird or keep electrical cords out of their accessibility.  (Cord protectors are an option for some species.)  However, after enumerating all of these dangers, I would like to point out that clipped birds are not immune from harm in the home.  Clipped birds can be stepped on, sat on, shut in closing doors, and, if something scares them, they may even launch themselves into the same dangers people mention when discussing flighted birds.  Clipped birds do not have the same level of coordination as a skilled flyer, so they can’t very easily avoid a stove or container of water, even if they recognise the danger.  They can injure themselves when crashing to the floor, and they can fly into walls or windows if startled.  Flighted birds who are accustomed to flying in the home environment avoid these obstacles because they have the knowledge and experience to do so.  Ultimately, there will be risks associated with keeping birds in captivity, flighted or clipped.  It is better to equip our birds with training and provide them an environment compatible with their natural movement.

Even macaws with very large wingspans can manoeuvre safely within the home.  If doorways prove too uncomfortably narrow, most large birds will adapt by walking through them and then flying within the rooms themselves.  We must give birds the opportunity to develop flight skills instead of fearing their ability to fly. Credit: @flying_orion on Instagram.

Finally, we come to the question of escape.  So many people say that they clip their bird so it “can’t fly away”.  But clipped birds–even ones which have not flown for years–can and will attempt flight when badly frightened because it is an instinctual response.  No one wants to watch their bird disappear out of sight or land in the street as they come to the crushing realisation that it was flightless only until its survival instincts kicked in.  Unfortunately, this is exactly what so many have felt.  People answer doors with their clipped birds on their arms or shoulders because “they can’t fly”.  People take their clipped birds out in the yard, unrestrained, because “they drop like a rock”.  People leave an unscreened window or door open just a bit too long because their birds “have been clipped their entire lives”.  The false sense of security impressed upon bird owners through clipping is so much more dangerous than being fully dedicated to flight and taking every precaution necessary.

Bird rooms, indoor aviaries, and outdoor aviaries provide birds with secure, flight-friendly spaces.  While not possible for every bird owner, they are certainly worth mentioning.  Credit: @flightedfeathers on Instagram (bird room) and @chewwbird on Instagram (aviary).

A “magnetic screen door” (click the link and check them out–they’re extremely useful!) can be affixed to entry/exit doors as an added barrier.  One can hang a sign on the front door while birds are out to notify family members; they can then knock or ring the doorbell so that birds can be put in their cages or in a different room before the door is opened.  People with garage doors can preferentially enter/exit the home through the garage as this creates an excellent double-door fail-safe.  People with more than one entry/exit to the home might use the one that makes it the hardest for a bird to reach quickly.  One may also consider using a specified room for the birds to fly in during times when people may be busily entering and exiting the home.  Living with flighted birds may sound difficult if one is unaccustomed to it, but it becomes a very natural part of life.  I don’t know anyone with flighted birds who has difficulty with following safety precautions that suit their household and lifestyle.