The right training tool: Sid’s Balance & Flying Ethics
Continuing on from the last post, it has been a very uneven path with Piper acclimating outdoors. At times he has become very relaxed, and at one point was flying to the door when I was getting ready to go out, so he could come along. But it takes very little to cause a setback — anything from a new spook outdoors to not having had the opportunity to take excursions for a week or so.
I have heard comments from some that the reason I was not freeflying Piper sooner is because I don’t use weight management (although you are never supposed to control weight on a bird under 1 year old!) Piper’s recall is excellent indoors, as well as outdoors in our routine locations when he is on a harness (short 8-10 ft recalls). His focus is usually better than Carly’s, and as with her we time training sessions before meals to optimize food motivation. (Actually, I’ve rarely seen Piper NOT motivated by food, dinner or not!)
Acclimation is one part of training, and for us this is the hardest part. One of his early freeflights resulted in an extended chase by crows (off and on for hours) and that didn’t set us up for quick success for sure. His manner of flying after that was not relaxed, and seeing him flying with Carly was a huge contrast; one was a bird relaxed and aware of her surroundings, the other was a bird in a state of fear, flying straight and fast with unpredictable turns. Increasing his comfort level outdoors became a primary concern.
I’m reminded of a list that Sid Price presented once, in a talk entitled “It’s Not the Scale, It’s the Balance.” It’s also in his blog article on Food and Weight Management. On one side you have a training challenge, things that work against a bird’s motivation. On the other side you have a set of tools you can use to accomplish the goal, that increase a bird’s motivation.
Things that affect the motivation of the bird include not only its desire for food (its degree of hunger) but also:
- The reinforcement history of the bird.
– Does the bird fully understand that the executing the cued behavior will result in a desired reward?
— Has the trainer always been honest in their reinforcement of behavior in the past or for example was a large visible reward offered by the trainer to elicit a behavior switched out for a small treat when the behavior was completed?
- What is the relationship like between the trainer and the bird?
- Does the trainer have a history of positive rewarding experiences with the bird?
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These are just a couple of the things that contribute to the “will perform” side of the balance. Meanwhile on the other side of our imaginary balance are all the things that are telling the bird not to perform the behavior.
- Is this a new or poorly trained behavior?
- Is the bird physically capable of performing the behavior?
- Is the trainer being clear communicating what they are expecting of the bird? Clear, concise, consistent cues are essential components of this clear communication.
- Is the bird in good health and not exhausted by behaviors performed earlier in the training session?
- Is the bird in a novel environment with new distracting noises and/or sights?
Generalization of behaviors in varied situations is an essential step in training any bird. When entering novel situations a trainer should relax their criteria for the behavior and build the bird’s confidence.
The key is to use the right tool for the job. That first involves identifying the problem by looking beyond weight as the only option. If the real problem is environmental distractions, lowering weight is a very inefficient (or even ineffective) way to solve it; it could take a very large reduction to overcome the problem when it could more directly and ethically be solved by eliminating and then gradually increasing the distractions. If the problem is an unreliable new behavior, repetition is by far the most effective solution.
Another ethical consideration I have pondered also concerns Piper’s acclimation outdoors. Even after a year of going outside regularly he is still much more relaxed, animated, and playful indoors. He is rarely eager to go out, though once we are walking on the beach or sitting at the pool he sings and whistles. When we come home from work, he gets animated and sings when we turn into our driveway, and increasingly so as we park the car and walk up the path to our apartment. He’s the only animal I’ve ever had who actually appears to get excited about going home.
So I have had to ask myself, with all the risks, why train him to freefly? With Carly I decided early on I would go as far with flight and recall training as her skill and comfort level allowed, and I would do everything possible to minimize the risks. It was always about her enrichment, not about me wanting to do this as a sport. With the inherent risks of freeflying, should it be encouraged in a bird who seems to be just fine without it? I don’t have an answer to that yet. I believe it is certainly wrong to push a bird in that direction if it’s a poor candidate for freeflying, whether that’s because of poor skills, an unsuitable temperament, or whatever. So like with Carly — initially NO skills — I’m going to take this at Piper’s pace and see what happens. (Another post from Sid related to this is The Right Bird for the Job — The Right Job for the Bird. I have seen these decisions in play with the birds in the San Diego Zoo show, with everything from performing talkers to flying behaviors.)
The first few months Carly took walks with me on the beach (while still young) she was only relaxed if she was on my “shore side.” Now she dives over the waves, chases seagulls, and buzzes surfers in the water. As long as we can do this without undue risk I think it’s definitely worth it. (Much of our training is about minimizing risk — responding to an emergency recall whistle, not flying to strangers — and though the latter was especially challenging it’s no longer something she seeks out.)
With Piper I’ll see how he adapts to being outdoors in general, and how the manner of his startle response develops over time. The training routine is the same as with Carly, just with less attention to flight skills and more to acclimation. He joined the family first and foremost to be a companion with Carly. If that includes flying, wonderful. If not, they enjoy each other immensely many more hours each day than we’d ever be spending out on the beach. I won’t risk that just because it would be cool to have another freeflyer. But I’ll give him every opportunity to progress as far as he wants to.
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September 21st, 2009 at 7:06 pm
A couple of things stand out in this post. First, where did the rule come from that you can’t manage weight before a year of age? Its important to get a bird on the wing within that first year in order to acquire skills. Its true that food reduction need not happen for the first few months while a relationship is established between bird and trainer. However, birds need to learn to fly within the first year and if you want the bird to be competent outside, weight and food management will probably have to be part of it. Not probably, these toolswill have to be used.
I’m uncomfortable with what has become the politically correct take on weight management. My experience is that there are not very many birds that can be flown at weights above what they would eat ad lib. Not many birds can be flown at weight equal to their ad lib weights. Most birds have to at least be started on the training process at weights well below an ad lib weight. I’ve read the cited papers and mice and holes but I’m waiting for published data with a decent sample size, not a case study here and there, that documents psycho appetite and truly explains the evolutionary underpinnings of such a mechanism. Right now it sits in the category of pseudo science. Any good trainer could produce a case study like this with an unusually compliant bird. A focused study might change all of that but it hasn’t happened yet to my knowledge. In my experience studying wild birds, they don’t do much with or for food if they aren’t food motivated. The parrots I’ve studied in the field invested time in social interactions related to breeding when they’re food satiated. Putting aside red herrings, anyone attempting to fly a bird outside in something other than A to B’s had better be prepared to carefully monitor and alter food amounts and body mass. They’d better be prepared to restrict calorie intake at times. Reductions will be necessary and rises in weight will be possible too. It’s absolutely dynamic and the astute trainer will reduce and increase weights with a thoughtful eye always on training goals and a strong bias toward the upper end of the weight range. My conviction is that people who place too much emphasis on keeping birds at high weights will be chasing wayward birds a lot. Whether wild or captive, birds face extreme perils when dispersing or blundering through unknown territory. That’s usually when they are predated upon or killed by stochastic factors. And even if the wandering bird is eventually recovered, managing a bird such that it flies away into unknown perils in a city or country ecosystem is an example of a different form of negligence.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Food and weight ARE important factors, it’s just that they are not the only factors. The 1-year rule is what I have heard from breeders. More research on all of these things would be great. Let me know when anyone is funding something like that!
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I used weight management on Carly at critical times. I am not against it. In this case however, with Piper, it doesn’t address the problem. He can be hungry as hell, and if he’s spooked nothing else matters. Immediate emergency over food seems to be a pretty standard set of priorities with most animals.
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Weight also didn’t address the problem of Carly flying to strangers on the beach. I initially tried lowering her weight. She would greatly reduce her flying time and frequency, but still try to fly off at least once to explore someone while we were out. There are so many competing reinforcers outside in public, urban places. Food doesn’t compete with all of them. I actually am working on an article about this. With the people problem a big part of the solution was reducing the value of the external reinforcer by making it available at other, safer times.
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Being hungry isn’t going to keep Piper from being alarmed by things. His flying skills are excellent (as seen when we had some outdoor flying early on). I could approach it by flooding, taking him out anyway, as hungry as possible, and hoping that he would become desensitized to a highly variable environment before a spook flight took him off and he was lost. That’s a risk I am not going to take. In the wild, baby birds *have* to take some of these risks, and not all make it. I want better odds than the African jungle.
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I keep a close track on Carly’s weight when we are flying outside. I do not fly her at high weights, and I think it’s foolish to try to use that as some sort of gauge of politically correct training skill. She could be much fatter than she is if I gave her all the treats she wants. On a healthy diet, her weight stays fairly stable, within about 5-8 grams. When she is at the high end of that or over, I don’t fly her. She might be OK that day, but the probability that we will have control problems is higher than when her weight is in the normal range. However, weight is not the only thing I look for when we are about to fly. I also watch her behavior closely. If she is not responding well to cues indoors, we don’t go. If she is behaving very nesty, obsessively digging and shredding, experience tells me that’s a risky time to fly. If she has just eaten we don’t fly.
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There are two extremes on the fringes of the community and it gives the false impression that it’s an either/or decision — manage weight or don’t. I believe both are wrong. What you said here is exactly how I approach it:
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“It’s absolutely dynamic and the astute trainer will reduce and increase weights with a thoughtful eye always on training goals and a strong bias toward the upper end of the weight range.”
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When we need to work on a particular training problem and motivation is not high, or we are going into a new situation, I might either withhold a meal for a bit longer than usual (normally that’s enough) or drop the weight a bit. It really doesn’t take much if all the other variables are taken into account (such as those on that list). It’s when the focus always lands on weight first that it’s necessary to lower it by larger amounts.
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Some carefully weight-controlled birds are great at sitting up in trees for hours too; sometimes there are other things in play that need to be considered.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:52 pm
I just mentioned this privately to Jim, but it’s worth saying here too. If I’d relied only on weight management Carly would not be flying today. Period. It took some creative training interventions to get her reliable again once puberty hit.
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The loud opinions at the extreme ends of food and weight management really distort the whole discussion. It’s a training tool, and weight is something that has to be monitored when flying outside. Sometimes reducing weight is essential, and it’s sometimes useless.
September 21st, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I’m sure learning to fly in the first year is a good thing, and definitely a faster path, but Carly begs to differ that it’s essential. She was still growing in flights at 2 years old, and learning how to use them. I think it’s probably a very individual thing. No one who has seen her fly comes away with the impression that she has poor or even sub-standard skills. Especially the seagulls she taunts.
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
Raz — Thanks for a thoughtful responses. It sounds like you are right on target with weight management. You make an excellent point that the dialogue lately about weight management is polarized between low-skill trainers who misuse wieght and the PC camp who dwells too much on keeping birds heavy. Why do we want to have our birds at a higher weight than they could achieve grazing at the buffet bowl all day long? Has anyone been reading the exploding literature on the general health benefits of calorie restriction in a variety of taxa? Apparently not, let’s fatten them up.
Either approach is going to lead to harm with birds that are flown outside. A nonresponsive bird above its ad lib weight that is electrocuted on a power pole is just as dead as one that dies from an environmental stress factor due to bad weight control.
The training community has to relearn the lost ability to take a stand on ethical and professional grounds and deal with bad trainers directly. They will always be among us, how we deal with them is very important. We can’t let them set the agenda in practice or theory. We have to talk to the people who have the eithics and wherewithall to do a good job at training. Only then can we discuss topics like weight management more honestly and openly. The Karl Rove spin thing doesn’t help.
Weight control is a phenominal tool. Like any tool, it can be dangerous if used irresponsibly. A hammer can build a house or can kill someone, depending on the person holding it. Weight control will make all the difference between a well-adjusted, reliable and predictable flier that is healthy and robust and a lost bird.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:31 am
I read this blog entry with interest, I’ve been following along on and off for awhile now. Although I have had my Amazon for ages it wasn’t until about a year and half ago I decided to let his wings grow out and get him flying. Been moderately successful in the house and aviary so far. I’ ve trained working dogs for ages and some of your story of Piper reminds me of this one pup I started up a few years back. Keen little dog , but unfortunately the first time I turned her loose on sheep it was a wreck by pure act of fate. Turned to pup off by sucking the confidence out of her and made her real up tight about sheep. I tried and tried to get her back interested with miserable out comes. Finally, I gave up in a way I’d tie her inside the 10 acre field to the fence line where she could see me and watch me work all the other dogs. After months of this one day I looked over there and noticed she was finally looking at the sheep with her pre wreck intensity, ok she was practicality foaming at the mouth to work. So I cut her loose and she was on those sheep and never looked back. So perhaps “forgetting” about Piper and let him just kick back and watch Carly be comfortable outside flying and you work with her while out there may get his little mind thinking it is ok. I know too from decades of starting young horses sometimes if training just wasn’t going the way I’d like I’d just shelve the horse for a length of time to give his young mind a chance to working things out. Physical maturity doesn’t alway denote mental maturity, also my female horses and dogs have always been faster to mentally mature and much more focused work ethic right off the start. Looking forward to see how this shapes up for you.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Erin, those are very interesting comments. It really is the way I’m going with Piper now. I think I underestimated the impact of that early scare. Before that he was really nowhere near as spook-prone outdoors.
I have seen situations with Carly where she was not ready to do something, so I just let it be and continued to expose her, then all of a sudden, it’s a go.
Thanks for the input!
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:18 pm
[...] was an interesting comment on the earlier discussion about acclimating Piper. Erin wrote: I’ ve trained working dogs for ages and some of your story of Piper reminds me of [...]