I had a heck of a time getting her out of that tree. I had not realized she could reach it with the leash on. Anyway, one day she flew right past me with the long leash on and wound up landing in the tree behind me. Anything longer than about 6 feet and she was in trouble for landings. Then one day I had an adult Scarlet named Jezebel who I was trying to train to fly who was eager to launch herself toward me but had no clue how to slow her flight. It was going well and the leash was a valuable tool for me. The leash was extended to be about 30 feet long at some point. At some point they were no longer tugging at the end of the leash and flew just like they did not have a leash on. After they got good at this I started lengthening the leash part so that they had more room to vary from the direct route. The birds would have a short leash attached to one leg and then they would fly to me along a 100 ft route with the other end of the leash sliding down a tight string (100 ft long). In my early days of exploring flight training methods I tried using a leash with a dog run kind of set up. He was lucky the bird did eventually get loose and was found a few days later.)

(Note: recently this very thing happened to someone who staunchly claimed he always kept the anchor end attached to his belt. Adding a leash to this could be really bad. I have had enough accidents where a bird got loose from my own hand to know how easy this can happen. And I have seen people with birds on a leash let them sit on a perch with the leash just dangling over the perch or on the ground. Should a bird wearing a harness and a leash get loose and find itself in one of those really tall trees, way out on a small branch, in one of those locations no truck could ever get near, then you potentially will watch the bird die there. But my main concern for them comes from people’s unbelievable ability to be careless. Some never seem to be able to get on with real training and stop using the leash “crutch”. Using a leash on a bird also can limit how much the trainer learns about flight training. If training a baby bird it is my belief that such tools are simply not necessary, even for new trainers. A leash to me is far more dangerous than it is of value. I do not like the idea of anything attached to a bird that could become entangled in a tree. Is it common? Is there a site I could see such a device?” The Question: “I saw in this last post the mention of the use of a harness for restraining the movements of a parrot.

Make your own parrot harness