Cooper is very tame and he hasn't had clipped wings in at least 10 years. (Yes, he is quite a geezer now.)
The reason I decided he needed a trim was because he has recently been moved from a large house to a small apartment. He also is living with another bird for the first time ever.
It seems like there is bird behavior where if one takes off for whatever reason, the other wants to take off too, especially if they are close together. For Teka (the budgie) this isn't really dangerous because he is smaller and able to turn and avoid the walls. Cooper, on the other hand, has a naturally bigger wing span and has trouble turning in time when he is in a panic. He sometimes crashes into the wall and hits his head or his wing. He's even started bleeding on his nose after hitting the wall.
The solution I decided on was clipping Cooper's wings so he can't get as much speed when he starts flying. (I'm hoping he will gradually get calmer in the future. Another thing I could have done was not let both birds out at the same time.)
His feathers will grow out again in a few months, but by then he might be more comfortable with his new home and buddy and not be as quick to panic. We only clipped off about two inches of the outside two feathers on both wings. You can see his wings in this picture.
Cooper still has 90 percent of his wing mass and can fly for short distances. He just can't get the same height and speed. Since Cooper loves walking and climbing around, limited flight is not a tragedy for him. He'd much rather ride on a human anyway.
The clipping did not hurt him because there were no arteries or veins in the feathers we cut. It was like giving a haircut to a nervous toddler. Cooper was not a fan of being held and having his wings stretched out and then trimmed, but a few minutes later he was back to his normal self.
I don't believe that clipping a bird's wings is mean to the birds. A pet bird like Cooper or Teka doesn't need to fly from predators. If you let a bird vet clip your bird or follow a guide, you won't hit any of the "blood feathers" that have an artery, so your bird won't feel any pain. Clipping only two (at most four) feathers on each wing will not rob a bird of all its flight power. It will just keep them from flying too fast and hurting themselves. This is some basic information about wing clipping, so if you still don't think it's a good idea, that's fine, but don't try to tell me wing clipping permanently maims a bird or anything like that.
And other people don't want to clip their bird's wings at all, which is fine. In my experience tame birds on the whole don't need it. I wouldn't have clipped Cooper's wings if I weren't worried about him literally giving himself a concussion or breaking his own wing.
Right now Cooper is wandering around on his playpen eating old seeds. Cooper, お元気で！
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