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Eddie's Flight Club, Yeppoon (2025)

Helping birds communicate, not "behave"

04/12/2025

🩵 Corella Chaos: Echo Edition 🩵

Little Corellas are one of the most behaviourally and anatomically unique cockatoos, and their quirks are straight-up fascinating when you look at the science behind them:

🧠 Overbuilt Bird Brain
Corellas have an enlarged frontal cerebrum compared to other cockatoos. This gives them advanced problem-solving abilities, complex play behaviour and that hyper-curious, “must investigate everything” personality the species is known for.

⚡ The Corella “Head Shock” — Cranium Engineering
Their skull is reinforced with dense cranial bone designed to absorb impact during wild behaviours like chiselling, digging and hitting compacted soil. That built-in shock-absorption system creates their signature rapid head-jolt when they’re excited or overstimulated. It’s a neurological reflex tied to impact-ready anatomy.

🕳️ Born Excavators
Corellas evolved as ground and root foragers. Their beaks are shaped for leverage, their tongues generate strong pressure, and their neck muscles are developed for “pull-up” style digging. Dirt, mats, clothes, carpets — the instinct triggers anywhere.

🤼 High-Play Social Development
Young Corellas engage in intense play-fighting to learn bite pressure control, coordination and dominance cues. It’s one of the strongest juvenile social behaviours in any cockatoo species.

💨 Aerodynamic Show-Offs
Their air sacs and pectoral muscles are built for abrupt directional changes and fast acceleration. Corellas can pivot mid-air with ridiculous precision — a trait designed for flock manoeuvring and predator evasion.

🎤 Their Famous Corella Scream
Their syrinx (voice box) is tuned for high-volume, long-range calls so flocks can communicate across wide open country. That piercing shriek? It’s not drama — it’s engineering.

🩶 Powder-Soft Feathers
Corellas produce a heavy amount of powder down, giving them that velvety texture and coating absolutely everything around them in a soft, ghostly dust.

Corellas aren’t just cute little white cockatoos — they’re biomechanical, behavioural chaos engines built by evolution to dig, scream, play-fight and problem-solve their way through life.

Perfect little weirdos. Echo included.

01/12/2025

Parrots don’t have round eyes like we do — theirs are slightly elongated. That shape gives them a longer focal length, basically like a tiny built-in zoom lens. Their cornea is more curved, their lens sits deeper, and they even have a ring of little bones that keeps the eye perfectly rigid and stretched.

All of that creates the “tunnel” look, because you’re actually seeing straight down their extended optical pathway.

The payoff?
Insanely sharp vision, incredible depth perception, and the ability to spot tiny movement while flying at speed. Their eyes are literally designed for precision.

They don’t just see what we see — they see more.

Parrots have:

🔹 Four types of colour receptors (we only have three)
🔹 The ability to see UV light, so feathers, markings and food glow in ways we can’t imagine
🔹 A super high flicker-fusion rate, meaning they see movement in slow motion compared to us
🔹 Incredible depth perception, thanks to their elongated, “zoom-lens” style eyes

To us, the world is colourful.
To them, it’s like colour on turbo-mode with extra details, UV patterns, and motion cues we can’t even perceive.

Their eyesight isn’t just good — it’s on a completely different level.

30/11/2025

Why macaws do the little shoulder-raise / wing-flick

That tiny “shoulder lift,” half-wing flip, or soft flutter is a micro-signal in parrot body language. It’s subtle but very meaningful, and it shows up most when they are:

focused

emotionally regulated

interacting gently with babies or trusted humans

training or performing a task that requires precision (like retrieval)

It’s a cluster of neurological, social, and physical cues happening all at once.

1. Arousal Regulation

Birds don’t just have excited vs calm. They have a spectrum of arousal levels they constantly regulate.

The wing-twitch is a self-regulation behaviour, similar to:

a person adjusting their posture before concentrating

an athlete doing a tiny shake-out before a precision move

It helps them release tiny bursts of energy so they don’t escalate into overstimulation.

2. Focus + Anticipation

When a bird is focused on a specific target or waiting for your next cue, their nervous system ramps up slightly.

The soft wing raise is often paired with:

intent eye contact

slight lean forward

still feet

closed, relaxed beak

Those together signal:
“I’m tuned in. I’m listening. I’m ready.”

That’s why you see Griffin do it during retrieval — it’s a precision task.

3. Gentle Social Signalling

In parrots, that tiny shoulder lift is also a non-threatening social cue.

It communicates:

“I’m soft right now.”

“I’m not escalating.”

“I’m being careful with you.”

Many birds do it around chicks or bonded humans as a way to dial down their own energy so they don’t startle or overwhelm the other being. I'm sure Linda Plumstead has seen it often with her parent birds @ Macaws And More

It’s the opposite of:

puffing up shoulders

flaring wings

raising feathers

pinning eyes

It’s essentially a gentle posture.

4. A sign of emotional trust

This is the part people underestimate.

Parrots do the wing-flip around safe individuals.

You don’t see it in:

fear

uncertainty

territorial behaviour

overstimulation

You see it in:

comfort

light curiosity

gentle affection

training states where they trust the handler

So when Griffin does it during retrieval, he’s showing:

controlled confidence

excitement that’s being managed

trust in me

readiness to engage in a joint task

It’s a cooperative behaviour, not a defensive one.

5. Often paired with “baby mode” softness

Around babies or fragile beings, parrots naturally soften their body language.

The wing-lift is their way of:

making themselves smaller

appearing safe

controlling their own impulses

staying centred and gentle

It’s like when a person instinctively lowers their shoulders and speaks softly around a newborn.

So what does it mean overall?

A macaw doing the shoulder-raise / wing-flip is saying:

“I’m focused, I’m calm, I feel safe, and I’m ready to interact gently.”

Griffin doing it during retrieval is an even clearer sign of:

high engagement

controlled excitement

trust in the process

cognitive focus

confidence in the task

It’s honestly one of the nicest micro-signals a bird can offer.

28/11/2025

Eddie’s Flight Club is proud to be partnered with Together, we’re working to lift the standard of care for parrots everywhere and give their humans the tools to support them confidently.

Vetafarm foods are created by veterinarians to deliver complete, reliable nutrition. And honestly, we see the difference every day. When our birds—especially the rescues—switch to a Vetafarm diet, their focus improves, their training progresses faster, and those anxiety- or aggression-based behaviours start to settle.

Healthy birds learn better, feel better, and thrive—and that’s why Vetafarm is at the heart of what we do.

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