Thank you so much for posting from me too! I've been doing the same thing. We take our little ones from their "birds' room" where the temperature is kept at 78-80 all the time with a humidity of 40%, outside in our DYI aviary. Fortunately, I live in N. CA and the weather is mild here year long. It's dry except for the El Nino rains that may come through (we were in a bad drought). We can get cold in the winter, sometimes a day or two of freezing or near.
We've had a back patio where, installed a fully enclosed canopy with a canvas top and insect liner all the way around. My husband insulated under the canvas roof with pond liner, then I purchased tapestry type heavy duty upholstery fabric and hung on the ceiling (maharajah style) with a large disco ball hanging from the middle (flies hate reflective light) and a heavy screen on top to allow for air. I added clear, heavy-duty, mold-free, shower curtains outside of the insect screen on plastic shower hooks (to open and close as needed), put an outdoor swamp cooler out there for use during the really hot days, and the birds loved it. We are planning to now re-install all new screen-type wiring all the way around the whole inside with a double door (net with a second opening that has heavy duty screen/glass), we just re-freshed the pond-liner on the roof, began putting in a ventilation w/filter system, and just purchased 2 large outdoor heating lamps (each 500 Sq ft. outdoor) that will be outside of the canopy on each open side to allow for either sun or heat (2 other sides are against the house), one wall has a window into our room and the other wall has a second screen door and a third slider. The outdoor heaters are really tall and the heat comes down from above. We also have 2 portable room to room heaters that works great, child proof with temperature (ceramic heater 8 yrs old). Our sycamore gets hacked back every winter to a stub (makes great chewing toys for our guys after cleaned and dried for a year) and the sun shines through keeping that area in the sun all day (both areas sit East/West and sun either comes through (winter) or passes right overhead (summer). In the summer, that same tree grows 25+ feet with huge leaves and provide us with fantastic shade.
I'd love to hear of large indoor/outdoor flight cages but ours are so used to this now. Unless we get another bird that is larger than our lovebird, we want to introduce to our flock (I don't see this happening unless there is an emergency), we don't mess with their "sleep area." Ours fly free in their room and sleep in the evening in the larges cages they have been in for a long time now, they are also ones we are comfortable grabbing and running with in the middle of the night without even thinking. They spend (other than 12-13 hrs sleep), they are out flying and the 1 hour in the sun in their cage. Our hens, as nervous as we believe chickens are, know our neighborhood quite well and us too. They, along with our dogs, are trained to run with us when we make a certain noise.
ps. I had to have my husband water blast the old paint and re-paint to assure the paint was okay for the birds. After, it turned out, the paint was okay throughout the whole house since the painter knew I had kids when we got the house painted last and was good about it and I apparently paid extra for it too (dang, long time ago) but better safe than sorry! I figured it was time anyway.
