Cloud was my first bird, a very young budgie from Petco who had a severe clip. It was a nice, clean clip, but severe enough that she would fall like a rock. Since getting the other budgies and Coyote, based on how she acts and how young she was, I don't think she ever fully fledged (or fledged at all). She's never been close to tame, so she never spent much time out of her cage until recently. When I started letting them all out together in the living room, I gave all the budgies another fairly heavy clip so I could catch them if I needed to. Ninja and Waffles could still glide to the ground but poor Cloud was once again pretty much falling (not as bad as before but still).

Well they've all been molting like crazy and now Cloud, just today, actually flew! It wasn't anything crazy and it was more of a slow descent to the play gym but still, it was a fly and not a fall and not a flappy jump. I could tell she loved it because she then did it over and over again, like a kid who finally tries out the big water slide, decides its the best thing ever and gets in line for it over and over and over again.

I swear, there is already a change in her personality. She just seems less grumpy or something. Honestly, I don't think this is crazy lady talk here, I seriously think that her flying today has given her some confidence or something she lacked before.

The only bad part is that now all this flying around is making things difficult with my cat. Coyote is regularly doing laps around the house now and now Waffles has started to do laps (he was in an aviary before I got him so he has always been a good flyer). Ninja is still just happy to flappy hop around the cage tops and the play gym but I have a feeling Cloud is going to start wanting to fly laps too and I want her to do that. But my cat! Ugh, my poor old cat. I don't know how to coordinate this because it's not like they communicate with me when they want to do their laps so I can put poor old man cat in the back room, it is just a sudden, oh! they're up! and someone has to jump up to make sure my geriatric cat doesn't decide to try to catch a living thing for the first time in his entire life.

I wish I had a larger house. I also wish I had a zillion dollars so there you go.

Being able to fly gives birds a lot more contol over their activities so it is very good for their confidence. It also gives them decision making experience, since they get to decide where they want to go and what to do when they get there. Maintaining cat security is tricky though since you want the poor old cat to have quality of life in the time that's left to him and probably don't want to lock him in a different room the whole time the birds are out, since it sounds like they're out a LOT. Maybe the birds could spend some of their out of cage time in a different room so the cat can have time with the family.