I tried letting my parakeets fly around the house when I was a child. They only ended up hurting themselves because they "panicked" and bumped into things. One of them even lost some feathers. I have noticed that since they weren't used to flying "long" distances they had difficulty flying. It took some time for my parents to catch them because every time my mom and dad would try to corner them all they had to do was fly to another part of the house. My parents told me never to let the birds out of the cage again. Our parakeets never became comfortable around humans and neither did any of the other birds we got after them. Since then I have never let any of my birds out of their cages. I envy bird owners who can have their birds perch on their hands or shoulders.