Flying Start in Business Helped by Bag of Tricks

This affinity Phil Speck has for birds all began with “Pancho.”

Thirteen years ago Speck was pouring concrete for a living in Riverside. One day a customer couldn’t pay him for a job and instead offered to give up Pancho, a rare Scarlet Macaw. Speck, who grew up on ranches and was an animal lover, agreed to the deal.

Soon Speck was taking animal psychology courses at a nearby college and teaching Pancho to bob for apples and perform a lineup of other tricks. Then he landed a job at the Riverside Wild Animal Training Center, where he directed the ornithology department, training birds to perform stunts for television commercials and films like “The Birdman of Alcatraz.”

Today Speck puts his talents to work at Freeflight in Del Mar, his breeding, training and boarding center for exotic birds. The center, adjacent to a veterinary hospital on Jimmy Durante Boulevard just south of the fairgrounds, attracts bird owners and prospective buyers from throughout the country because of its unusual approach to bird care.

To begin with, Freeflight is one of only a handful of boarding centers in Southern California catering strictly to birds.

Moreover, rather than caging the winged creatures around the clock, as most pet stores and kennels do, Speck allows his personal flock and dozens of feathered boarders to roam freely in a lush yard complete with waterfalls, mist makers and trees for perching. Although the only barrier to the busy roadway is a 4-foot-high bamboo fence, the birds--who range up to $20,000 in value--appear to have no interest in leaving.

“They love it here, because it’s a natural environment and they get lots of attention from our handlers and visitors,” said Speck, 31.

At night, the birds are housed indoors in separate spacious cages with eucalyptus boughs and toys. Despite the thick flock of birds, pet odors are minimal at Speck’s facility and, at his request, the county inspects his center once a month for cleanliness.

Each night he serves his beaked boarders a sumptuous supper that includes fruit and vegetables grown on the premises and Speck’s custom patented seed mix.

All of this, plus a guaranteed 6.5 hours of attention daily, costs $8 per night. Also available are grooming--beaks, wings, nails--for $20 and shampoos under heat lamps with special soaps and individual feather brushing for $25.

“We really pamper them here and make it sort of like a visit to Grandma’s house,” Speck said one day recently, as an assistant armed with a spray bottle wandered around the yard soothing birds with a veil of water as they preened and chatted in the searing heat. “The goal is to send them home as de-stressed as possible. We’ve got some owners who actually reward their birds with stays at Freeflight.”

While vacationing bird owners from as far away as Oregon ship their pets by plane to Freeflight, boarding is only one of the center’s functions. Most intriguing is the advanced training conducted by Speck and trainer Jennifer Abrams, who often take their most talented specimens on tour to schools and convalescent hospitals.

Take Snowy, for example, a 3-year-old Umbrella Cockatoo with soft white feathers and brown eyes ringed in blue. Her specialty? Imbibing soda by tipping back a can she holds in her beak.

Then there’s Frisbee, a large, brightly colored Catalina Macaw who is Speck’s personal pet. Each morning, Frisbee awakens Speck with the command, “Time to get up,” and then squawks out other directions: “I’m hungry” or “Let’s get to work.”

The bird, who drinks chardonnay but wouldn’t touch a chablis, has a vocabulary of more than 100 words, Speck said.

Potty training is another talent many Freeflight graduates can boast. “That’s a big one with owners,” Speck said.

Other common requests include teaching a bird to kiss, dance, fetch the newspaper (big birds only), and even roller skate. Birds, Speck said, are really quite adept at cruising across table tops on tiny skates.

Some birds team up for comic routines or chase each other in a flirtatious love dance. Speck says the toughest trick he has taught a bird to master was that first one with Pancho--the famous apple-bobbing-in-the-swimming pool stunt. Training time: four months.

Patience and positive reinforcement are the keys to advanced training, Speck said. Also critical is an understanding of bird motions--like the vigorous flapping of wings and sudden head movements--which are often misinterpreted as aggressive behavior.

“With training, 70% of the task is teaching the owner to recognize signs the birds are giving and to respond,” Speck said. “The birds are intelligent and, if they’ve been handled properly, relaxed. It’s only when an owner reacts fearfully that problems occur.”

In addition to the training program, Freeflight is often called upon to simply tame birds that have been mishandled or have a persistent bad habit. Many unsuspecting, bargain-hunting bird lovers purchase their pets through newspaper advertisements and wind up getting birds that have been smuggled into the country by being drugged and stashed in car trunks and other unlikely places.

Even birds brought into the country legally have scars and are in need of behavior modification.

“They’ve been grabbed in a net, slammed into a cage, thrown onto a plane, and made to sit through a 30-day quarantine check,” Speck said. “It has a definite effect on the bird’s temperament.”

For that reason--and to guard against illnesses often carried by smuggled birds--Speck purchases all of his breeding and sale stock from local breeders.

Despite the tediousness of training and taming, Speck said that his role as mother hen to a flock of boarders can be the most time-consuming chore. That’s because many bird owners are highly particular about the type of care their beloved pet receives.

In the case of one touchy cockatoo, for instance, Speck is required to wrap him in a towel at bedtime and rock him for 20 minutes--or until the bird falls asleep. Others are finicky about their diet--lightly buttered toast for breakfast, for example, or crumbled hamburger.

Yet another component of Freeflight is the Avian Husbandry Program, in which children select a Lutino Cockatiel chick at birth and hand-feed and care for it until it is ready to be taken home. And the center also serves as a sort of public petting zoo; passers-by, attracted by the vision of exotic birds among palms alongside a busy thoroughfare, drop in regularly.

Speck, a friendly man with dark curly hair and deep brown eyes, started Freeflight a year ago after his career as a competitive cyclist collapsed. At one time, the lanky bird trainer had designs of making the U.S. Olympic cycling team. But he crashed during the 1984 Olympic trials in Wisconsin, and his injuries left him with four blood clots in his right leg.

After extensive hospitalization and treatment, he got back on his bike and attempted to rejoin the competitive circuit. “But it wasn’t any good,” Speck recalled wistfully. “My leg would swell up and hurt. I just couldn’t cut it anymore.”

So he returned to Del Mar, where he had lived previously to train for cycling races. On a shoestring budget, he started Freeflight, working out of a garage that doubled as home and bird boarding quarters.

“At first it was pretty primitive--just me and a handful of birds out back, living and training,” Speck said.

But word spread and Speck’s skills won rave reviews. So his friend and landlord, veterinarian R.A. Roland-Holst, agreed to provide the ambitious bird trainer with land to expand the business.

Now Speck has a staff of four and more than 100 birds on hand. A dozen species are for sale.

He has completed his first full year of operation and, after expenses, has cleared $6,000, Speck said.

As for the future, Speck hopes to begin a captive breeding program to perpetuate endangered species, among them Scarlet and Hyacinth Macaws and Glossy Black Cockatoos.

In addition, he hopes to continue his training and public outreach programs in order to spread his message: “Birds are not just ornaments and status symbols that look good in your living room, but intelligent loving pets.”