Continued from page 2While most people are nervous the first few times they do their own grooming, the bottom line is that if you do not shortly become comfortable grooming your birds, don't. Birds will mirror our energy and if you are panicked, they will be too. Birds have it tough enough without having to be around some frantic person holding a sharp object.
Let's take a moment and look at some other clips that are popular. First are the "show clips", or those clips intended to restrict flight while maintaining the normal appearance of the wing. Note the emphasis on the word appearance. The purpose of this is to point out that these clips are of absolutely no benefit to the bird, only to the eye (or ego) of we humans. All of these practices involve seriously compromising the birds' safety.
Probably the most popular ego-clip leaves the 9 and 10 (occasionally 8, 9 and 10) primaries intact. When the wing of a bird thusly clipped is held against his body, it is impossible to tell that the wing is clipped. The problems with this clip are that, for most birds it either allows considerable flight or, at best, diminishes the margin for error if the owner is less than vigilant in clipping growing feathers. This is especially true if the 3 outermost feathers are left unclipped. Either way, there is an significantly increased chance of injuring the outermost feathers while they are developing (following a molt) or of snagging the feathers and injuring the wing while trying to free them.
The next show clip clips every other feather. Obviously, this will never prevent flight, so the trailing edge of each feather is stripped of its barbs (the portion of the feather that is not the shaft). Hopefully, anyone who hasn't heard of this before is scratching their head right now. Silly, silly, silly.
Finally, some people clip only one wing, the logic being that you shouldn't clip more than necessary and that clipping one wing prevents flight. However, we're not trying to prevent all flight, only sustained, controlled flight. We don't want to eliminate all control, we just want to limit it to downward flight at a 45 degree angle. With one wing clipped it is almost impossible for a bird to land on his feet or to avoid landing on something. Again, as a pilot, as long as I can keep the window side up and the rubber side down, do what you want with my engines or propellers, I'm going to land and walk away. Birds have very powerful chest muscles and their wings are a marvel of design, generating tremendous lift. The beauty of the 45 degree angle clip is that just enough control remains to steer clear of obstacles and negotiate a safe, fairly soft landing. No such control is possible when lift is so unequally distributed. Trust me; the FAA does.
Believe it or not, there is more to wing clipping than has been discussed here. There are issues of fledging and how clipping related to numerous behavioral problems. For example, both clipping AND not clipping are major causes of feather plucking. If a young bird is over-clipped and suffers too many hard fally, he can become insecure which can lead to plucking. On the other hand, a bird that is unclipped will feel that he has too much autonomy and that you are not the protector of the household. Once again, insecurity.
But on the physical side of things, if you are trained in these methods, are calm and confortable and know how to handle an emergency, it has been shown that birds tend to find grooming by someone that they trust to be a much less stressful experience. So, ready to try grooming a Hyacinth or two?
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