Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

My boy Piper is growing up and getting used to the world. He is the one I rarely took out because he behaved so skittishly around new people or environments, and has shown little interest in going with us. (No flying to the door to come along, like Carly does.) I decided early on to just let him take things at his own pace, and I didn’t know if he’d ever change his preferences. Now he and Carly love the new digs, and both want to be outside all the time. They play outside on the stairs, we do training down in the courtyard every evening, and they can hang out in the trees. I think the way it is semi-enclosed felt comfortable to Piper. However, he has also become a great fan of flying in the nearby park — big rambunctious flights, high and fast, with lots of screaming. For some reason he has never had a big problem with learning to fly down, even though he hasn’t been outside that much. He will often make a few passes if he gets going too fast, but doesn’t hesitate to take the plunge. Perhaps flying like a kamakaze inside my old apartment got him over the fear of crashing. (He certainly crashed often enough.)

In addition to the flying, he is becoming friendly with new people. The other day he was seriously flirting with a neighbor woman on the stairs. We’re talking kisses and the whole nine yards. Fergus the cat was getting quite pissed off at the shift in attention. He is also getting much more comfortable around men, as well as larger groups, and he often goes with Carly and I to the neighborhood pub now. Here they are making out on the stairs:

His behavior change seems to be closely related to the new environment, though I’m not sure exactly why. But I think we’re all happier and more relaxed here, so that may have something to do with it. I would not have thought that moving away from a large, suburban greenbelt area into the heart of the city would be an improvement from the birds’ perspective, but this little piece of garden heaven in the city is unique.

And did I mention there are palm nuts on the property?! (That’s the tree in the background, one of many in the neighborhood.)

As with Carly, I’m glad that I let him take his time with this and “come out” when he felt comfortable. He is actually the same age now as she was when she first started flying at the beach. She showed no interest in getting off my shoulder there for 3 years, including 6 months when she was flying outside at home. It is possible both could have been pushed harder in their training to acclimate sooner, but I personally find it much more interesting, and respectful of the animal, to let them find their own pace. We’re not doing a show, and this is all about their enrichment, not mine. I must say though, it is great to get madman Piper doing some vigorous flying, for the sanity of the whole household!

Playing on the stairs… (Piper goofing, Carly sneaking, Fergus being sneaked upon.)

Now Carly gets to teach me how to fly.

Stay tuned.

Here are our instructors:

Some photos from the start of fall flying season.  (Fall flying season: Permissable to shoot stray tourists and high school students cutting class.)

Thanks to newbie flight photographer Frank Rodrick for signing photo rights over to Carly.

[click for larger images]

Back from the IAATE mega-road trip and easing back into the blog life…. Here are a couple of great quotes I saw as people’s signature lines today:

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.  — Bill Gates

A learning experience is one of those things that says, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.” –  Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

…
Yeah, success is sure fun, but it doesn’t always teach you everything you need to know.
Susan Friedman gave an excellent talk at the IAATE meeting in Albuquerque this month, and one of my favorite lines was how you don’t need to be a chemist to be a gourmet cook, or be a scientist to be a good trainer. But the science of applied behavior analysis is what you use “when the souffle doesn’t rise.” I actually used that in my talk a couple days later, because that’s what ABA has been for me, and why I have written blog posts like Beyond the How-To. The basic training recipes are great and should be learned and practiced. But even the best trainers know things can and do go wrong. That’s when it pays to know some of the science behind behavior and to try to use it to think through your own unique situation, the one that’s not covered in the cookbook. And in daily life with our birds, there is a lot that’s not in the cookbook!

The talks at the meeting were consistently excellent. On the subject of learning from failures, Jeff Ewalt from the Beartooth Nature Center (Red Lodge, Montana) gave a hilarious account of using these experiences to make oneself a better trainer, called, “Relax, It Will be Funny One Day.” It’s great when we can all share in these and get a laugh as well as learn from someone else’s experiences. But the main message was: relax, things happen to everyone. The important thing is to use that information to change your future behavior. Hey, sounds like applied behavior analysis! And reminds me of another favorite:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein

Yet how many times do we just keep doing the same thing interacting with our birds because that’s the way we’ve always done it, then put the burden on our animal to figure out what it is we want? Expecting them to change a behavior that is apparently reinforcing to them, for no reason they can possibly recognize? Fortunately there are those infamous learning experiences where something comes along and smacks us over the head hard enough that we finally realize, “hey, that thing I just did….” The cool thing about studying behavior however is that you start to train yourself to question methods that aren’t getting results before the big smack on the head comes. Sometimes.

Since I wasn’t able to prepare the presentation until after the deadline for the conference CD, here is a link to the slides online.

The last segment of the talk is a short video, from very raw footage that Pablo Anchante is putting together as a story called Wind and Whispers. Sneak preview!

Carly at the Beach, raw video

I’ll be posting more on some of my favorite talks which were about falconry, and interesting similarities between very old and new approaches. The highlight for me was Steven Bodio’s keynote address about hunting with eagles and large, lanky sight hounds, including his experiences in Central Asia. Here’s a sneak peak of that, a blog about Lauren McGough (below, second from right), who is learning to become the first female “berkutchi,” (Kazakh eagle hunter) in Mongolia, on a Fubright Foundation scholarship. (Click on image to go to web site.)

My traveling partners on the road trip were Carly, Piper and Peter Topping. Critters came because I’ve been so busy the last couple months I really didn’t want to board them for a week, so all they had was a few days in Albuquerque at an avian vet’s office where I could visit. Peter now has more bird trainer friends than any 15 year old alive, and I’m hooked on Lada Gaga.

Cassie and Helen train Peter on the latest techniques for getting birds out of trees

All in all it was a fantastic meeting and learning experience. Sid Price and Nance were unsurpassable hosts. I hope they are taking a well-deserved rest now!

Robin Cherkas in her Living with Parrots Cage Free blog has a very nice post this week:
Signs of the Old Coco. It resonates so much with what I have been experiencing with Carly recently, and with how I am stumbling my way through dealing with it.

And I don’t mean stumbling in a bad way necessarily. Behavior is often not black and white and I think it’s necessary to step back and just observe sometimes. And let what we observe guide what we do, even if we don’t know exactly what the plan is all the time. It’s easy to overlook just being with your bird, when busy training new behaviors or maintaining old ones, plus juggling several birds, taking care of daily routines. With our pets, most often we set the agenda. I was beginning to feel a bit out of touch with my own birds, even though I am very conscientious about paying attention to their body language, moods, etc. But it seemed as though it was always in the context of something I was doing, or wanting them to do.

Robin’s Amazon Coco had been showing the aggressive and unpredictable type behavior that sometimes comes with adolescence, and her behavior was very different than what Robin was used to. Instead of fighting it, Robin looked for ways to adapt, through changes in her own interactions and the environment, in order to make a stressful time easier for both of them. Carly has gone through many changes in the past 2 years also, as she comes into breeding age; with her the behavior changes have been intense nest-making, less interest in food, a lack of focus when training (even when she hasn’t eaten or her weight is down), and less playing.

So for a little while here I am taking a step back and observing. What does SHE want to do? (Besides make nests!) I am discovering there are things she likes to do that I didn’t recognize or had forgotten about. One of them is having me pick her up from under the wings, hold her upside down, shake her and give sloppy loud kisses. (Piper looks horrified.) But it’s butt-wiggling fun for Carly. How did I forget that? Once before I forgot how much she likes to play rough and play-fight. What finally clued me in? She started biting me! Sometimes when she is “being a pest,” in any of the many ways possible, what she appears to want is “to tawk.” This means sitting on my hand, close to my face, while I talk to her and she just stares intently. This can go on for a minute or ten. Then she’s off to go play!

I am taking the time to learn in the same way from Piper now too. (No roughhousing please!) It is very rewarding to step back and see what these guys come up with for interaction all on their own, with no training session in progress, no juggling with other activities like cleaning or cooking, no half-interactions while on the computer or watching TV.

I guess this is relationship building at its most basic. We still keep the basics of our usual routine, with a training session (or “treat earning” session) once a day, foraging activities, going outside. Flying is limited to days when Carly isn’t displaying a lot of nestiness (and is on hold temporarily while I figure out what to do about the crow situation).

But I am focusing my energy on learning from them right now, not the other way around. What do they really find reinforcing? When they come over to bug me when I’m busy at the computer, what do they really want to do?

Peter Topping has an activity he likes to do with his birds called “Sapien Driving.” The idea is that the bird is the driver, and we are the vehicle responding to their cues of where to go. It’s an exercise in watching body language and a fun empowerment and bonding game. I do it with my cat outside now (he is big on walks and exploring) and I have been amazed at where he takes me when I let him set the agenda.

What I’m doing with the birds is kind of like that, just seeing where our interaction takes us. It is really interesting!

Seeing how the ages old argument about flight skills in baby-fledged vs unfledged birds is being beaten to death debated again, with the assertion that said skills can be determined through still photos [ed. comment: ?!] Carly and I have decided to assist the experts.

Clearly what the bird is in the process of doing, and what its intent is, is a key component to determining the skill of the flyer from the photo. To that end, we offer these photos to which thought bubbles have been helpfully added. I assure you, the utmost care was taken in conferring with the subject so as not to introduce observer bias into ascertaining the private behavior (thoughts) of the subject.

Oh, and Carly would like to invite y’all over to dis joint she knows at the beach where they pour the killer margs. Only wait til after flying, cuz it makes ya go kinda goofy.

Photographs © Hillary Hankey (top 3) and Grace Innemee/CityParrots.org

A package arrived today from afar: genuine Omani Tinkwear. After custom tailoring to Piper’s size, we attempted the first modeling session. The dreaded head loop that he grew to despise on a previous harness took about 5 minutes to train. I think ShanLung laces his harnesses with drugs.

We’ll see how it goes from here. Definitely is soft and light. Many thanks ShanLung.

There 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 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 the 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.

I’ve been thinking along these lines myself, having seen Carly go through similar phases. When we started flying outdoors she had no inclination to fly at the beach, never gave a single signal that she wanted to do anything other than sit on my shoulder, even though the macaws were flying. Then after about 6 months, one week she started doing her “wanna fly” motions that I’d become familiar with at the park and she was good to go. (We started small of course, with short recalls.) But I think it was much better for her to make the decision herself.

Piper comes out to the beach with us on a leash and rides on my head quite contentedly. Same around the park/pool where we live. When we’re able to generalize the locations so that he is calm in many more situations, and when it is clear he wants to be outdoors, we’ll start thinking about doing some outdoor flying. In the meantime, let’s hope he likes his exotic new duds.

Before restarting outside with the harness on Piper I want to build up a strong history of positive experiences. So in this phase I’m doing our usual indoor recalls with it on, giving bonus treats, and giving him dinner while wearing it.

If he happens to have a bad experience outside or gets spooked, I don’t want there to be such a strong association between outdoors and harness that he doesn’t want to put it back on.

A very different training experience than with Carly. She was calmer outside from day one, so there was very little risk of anything associated with the outdoors becoming an aversive.

This is not from day one, but day two, after coming home at age 4 months. In the background is the rest of the gang, Fergus the cat at right, Moby my homing pigeon walking on the path at the left, and Ripley the dog in the center (over Carly’s head).

* No, she is not on any kind of restraint here. She was always so calm and stuck to me it never even occurred to me that she should be on a harness (at the time I didn’t even know such a thing existed). She was also given an extremely severe clip at the store, so she literally couldn’t fly, period. In a very stiff wind it might have been possible, but we don’t get much of that here so it was easy to avoid. As her wings started to grow out, and before I learned about training, I was very fortunate that she was never inclined to take off.

For more information about using a harness, see the Complete Harness Training Series of blog posts.

The new Good Bird magazine looks like a conspiracy among friends. Hillary Hankey writes about kitchen manners (ho boy — I just realized what an odd juxtaposition of words that is), Mandy Andrea writes about getting an adult bird to make those first steps toward flying, Grace Innemee talks about training a Jackdaw (and is also the “Animal Lover” profiled), and I adapted the recall article on my web site for the magazine. Carly snuck in to one of the photos of Grace as well.

Since I have almost no photos of Carly’s indoor training, we had hoped to feature photos of Barb Saunders doing recall training with some adult birds she has taken in, many of whom were unable to fly and/or had severely damaged feathers. Unfortunately we weren’t able to locate the high-resolution versions quickly enough to meet a tight deadline before it went to press in June.

So here are the photos of Barb’s birds learning recall in her aviary and looking spectacular compared to when they arrived.

Phil the Philippine Blue-Naped Parrot doing the famous “big lean” while working on getting the first jump-flap. (For hints on that, see Mandy’s article.) Phil’s was so scraggly when he arrived that he almost had no usable wings at all.

Peaches the Moluccan doing a recall in the aviary to Barb’s hand.

Ronnie the Galah flying to Barb, just learning and on a roll that day!

Fred the Bare-eyed Corella learning to fly down. One of my favorite all-time photos. He was a wild man when Barb first got him and he’s become a great trained flyer.

The article is here, but you should really go get the whole magazine at Good Bird Inc. if you aren’t already a subscriber. (It may be a day or two before the new issue is linked.)

This is from the recall article, and very funny in light of the recent posts about recall vs flight skills:

Also, when teaching flight skills and recall (they’re not the same thing), sometimes it can be necessary to work on each separately. You can do one whole session of easy recalls, just to get and keep that behavior well trained. Then do another later when you work some of the more difficult skills.

Notice I didn’t say you can train one but not the other, or “decide which one you want NOW.” You can use one daily recall training session to really push the skills, and another at slightly lower difficulty to work on the very fast snappy response. The two complement each other very well. There is absolutely no need to neglect recall training to teach flight skills, or vice versa.

Barb and her birds and aviary will be featured in an upcoming blog post.

(Note: the photo in the article of Daphne should read Ducorps Cockatoo, and credited just to Barb.)

It was exactly 3 years ago today that Carly did her first jump-flap off the counter onto my arm. Even with all our other flying adventures, it’s still the most memorable event. I don’t know who was more excited, me or her!

Here she is a couple weeks later (and a few cell phone cameras ago!) practicing. You can barely see here, but she has only 2 or 3 flight feathers on each side.

She was so eager to practice every day that when we were finished she’d often leave her dinner to come back and do more. Contrafreeloading in action!

I think she likes this stuff.

Carly doing a vertical “paratrooper drop” landing at the beach. Photo © Hillary Hankey 2009.

Of course we’re celebrating this afternoon by…. going to the beach.

For an article on techniques to try to help previously clipped birds take this first step, see the current issue (Summer 2009) of Good Bird Magazine where Mandy Andrea has an article on teaching the mature bird.