Learn bird training from the experts
Hands-on training
A couple years ago, I was fortunate to have the time and the means to visit Avian Behavior International (ABI), one of the premier bird training facilities in the world.
It’s run by Hillary Hankey, her staff, and guest experts from other training facilities and sometimes zoos. Hillary is “a falconer, professional animal trainer, and behavior consultant.”
Her facility is in a beautiful, remote location near Escondito, CA. Pre-COVID, they offered a week long training class as well as an advanced class. Both involved classroom time learning modern bird training techniques and hands-on time trying out techniques on her extremely diverse flock of birds.
It’s also an opportunity to train non-parrot species as well as some heavily supervised interaction with birds of prey. They also have other animals such as donkeys and goats that are useful to learn training techniques.…