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.)

On the last day of the big golf tournament in January, I took Carly up to Torrey Pines gliderport. It was too windy for me to practice, but there was a big crowd of spectators, and quite a few of the more advanced fliers in the air. I normally only let her fly a few times around the fields on top, in case she draws the attention of any falcons. She screams like a banshee when she’s flying. Not exactly discreet, and I worry that it will sound threatening if falcons are on a nest on the cliffs below.   Shanti, the Harris Hawk flown by paraglider Kurt Sellinger, has been chased by Peregrines before when she is up in the air with him. None have ever shown up when Carly is out. Until this day.

It was her first flight, and she was quite rambunctious in the strong wind. She’d been up less than a minute, and — according to a pilot who was up between 500-1000 ft at the time — a Peregrine was circling at that height and suddenly took a dive at her. It was very fortunate he didn’t hit the target on his first try. He chased her several laps around the gliderport field and over the canyons. She tried to get down to me a couple times, but couldn’t shake him off her tail so she aborted at the last second. I lost sight of her when she flew behind a hill where some hangliders were parked, and ran in that direction. Men were yelling at the falcon and throwing hats — anything to distract it. I was calling to her and yelling out “where is she??” and kept getting “over there!” from all different directions. Finally someone said, “Behind you!” and THUNK, she landed on my shoulder at full speed and buried herself in my chest.

Peregrine Dive, by G. Castellano

The spectators (including the ones in the air) said she was doing phenomenal flying, turns, and dives to get away from it. I probably saw less than half because she was diving behind the glider shop and into ravines. But I do know one thing — there was no place to land safely for a long distance. No trees or areas to hide. Getting down to me was definitely the safest option. The falcon flight was like nothing I’d seen before, including when Otis and Gizmo (Red-fronted Macaws belonging to Hugh Choi) were chased on the beach. This one was diving at her repeatedly at very high speed, though fortunately not from as great a height as the first attempt.

You hear some people say that having a good trained recall is irrelevant in a raptor attack. And that it may even be dangerous if the bird is focused on recall instead of evasion. I have called Carly back before when I’ve sighted a hawk in the area. She also got to safety on my when she was being chased by a large flock of ravens. Clearly in this case she was attempting to get down to me right away, but she knew when it was and wasn’t safe to land. She may have been able to outrun it eventually, but I have no doubt the chase would have gone on much longer, and with an uncertain outcome.

She was remarkably calm after it was over, walking around with me at the gliderport. Not agitated, and not frozen like parrots sometimes are after a fright. She didn’t show any interest in flying though, and was holding on to my hand with a pretty firm grip!

She will not be flying at Torrey any longer, unless I know for certain from paragliders and birders that the falcons have moved on after nesting season is over. But it looks like they are pretty much year-round here. According to Janet Linthicum, nesting starts in March and fledglings leave the nest in August. We have seen them off the cliffs from October to February also. And there are shorebirds here all year, which appear to be their major prey.

Peregrine at Torrey Pines cliffs

By the way, the last time Carly met up with a Peregrine, several years ago, she was flying with a large number of seagulls and started to get a bit too far away. I called her back and it looked like she was bringing a friend with her. As they approached overhead I realized it was a Peregrine Falcon, flying side by side, about 10 feet apart. She came down and the falcon kept going. Weird.

For a wonderful set of photos of Peregrines in the area, see
Peregrine Falcons at Torrey Pines

I just came across some books by Dr. Patricia McConnell, an applied animal behaviorist, that are very intriguing.  One is called The Other End of the Leash: Why we do what we do around dogs. She discusses human-canine communication and reading each others’ body language.  It seems to me it could have some great insights for parrot behavior as well, especially regarding what we humans do around our birds.   I don’t know how many times I’ve had conversations — including with very experienced trainers — where one of us was wondering with frustration what kind of body language we might be sending out that inadvertently reinforces or punishes something our bird does that we don’t intend to.  Here are some of the first sections in the book:

• Little movements have big effects
• Hey Human! I’m trying to tell you something!
• Humans as Random Signal Generators

I’ve just ordered it, but thought I’d pass along the title and link to her blog: The Other End of the Leash, which also has some interesting posts.

Patricia is not of the Millan persuasion, and in other books debunks the “dominance” theory.  She is from an ethology (biological and genetic basis of behavior) background, but her training methods appear to be entirely based in applied behavior analysis and positive reinforcement.

Another book recommendation I have that is more species specific but still has lots of insights worth sharing is a book called Cat vs Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat, by Pam Johnson-Bennett. A friend sent it to me (thanks Russ mommy!) when I was dealing with the prospect of getting my old kitten used to a new kitten, and then “rehoming” my older cat back into our household after he’d gone AWOL because the old kitten was just wearing him out. I think many of the ideas in here are useful in thinking about working with a multi-parrot household as well.

The concepts are grounded in ABA also, including suggestions for using positive reinforcement to make certain behaviors worthwhile (such as being in the same room together!), using very small approximations to work toward an end behavior, and using “diversionary tactics” (reinforcing alternative behaviors) to prevent unwanted situations.  (And I just noticed one of her books is recommended on Dr. McConnell’s web site!  Small world of animal behavior.)  The recommendations appear to be working.  We went from hissing and growling in all directions to this in about a week:

Gatos negros

Birdwatching

Pam also has a blog and web site with great behavioral tips, many of which can be translated into Parrot.  For example, on her blog is this wonderful post about the dangers of falling into constructs like attributing behavior to anger or spite, instead of relying on what we can actually see:

All about Cats and Dogs: Is your cat mad at you?

Happy reading!

It has been a bit over a year since I started my plan to improve Carly’s outdoor flying behavior when we are confronted with many competing reinforcers. As you may recall, the main problem was her extreme sociability and tendency to fly to other people to visit, sometimes far down the beach out of sight. She had a special attraction to men with reddish hair, to the point that for a while I resorted to scanning the beach to make sure there weren’t any up ahead. She would become so distracted that all she would do is sit on them and literally stare at their faces, and fly back immediately if I took her away.

Carly giving Roelant Jonker (reddish hair under cap) “the Gaze.”

I first set up the plan described in Carly’s Training Plan: Super-Generalizing Recall Training in January 2009. Here’s a recap of the elements I started with, some of which were part of our original training routine, and some of which were new:

1. Daily A-B recall practice indoors or outdoors.
2. Keep weight at lower end of normal range (450-455 g) and fly before meals.
3. Train an “emergency recall” using a referee-type whistle that can be heard far away, signaling a jackpot treat.
4. Use extremely favored treats (like peanut butter, gingerbread) interspersed with normal treats (nuts, seeds)
5. Give a large end-of-session bonus treat.
6. Fly only at the beach when there are few people, initially.
7. Incorporate A-B recall games into our beach flying routine
8. Add socialization outings to our weekly routine to decrease the value of flying to visit people.
9. Be more sensitive to body language indicating a preference to stay at home rather than accompany me to work. Be more sensitive to providing choice in general.
10. Increase foraging enrichment at home to decrease value of exploring trees, etc. (just in case that was part of the problem, as well as to help with more time on her own)

. . . . .
Now, a year later, let’s see which of these I have found the most important. First I’ll look at the ones that were part of our original training routine, or new element added, numbers 1-3. The emergency recall whistle was a helpful addition. (See blog post here.) The noise at the beach is considerable with waves and people, and my voice doesn’t carry that well. When she starts to fly fast in one direction she is down the beach before I know it. The whistle is tricky however, because you can’t use it very often without it losing it’s “specialness.” I find prevention of exploration flights is a better strategy, so the whistle isn’t overused.

Daily indoor recall practice is not as important as I thought it would be. I don’t want to discourage this because at the beginning lots and lots and lots of practice is essential to build confidence and habit. Later on it’s essential to keep indoor recall practice fun with various flying games, but I find it’s difficult to compete with freeflight where they can work up speed and really stretch their wings. Indoors I often do other types of recall, like challenging climbing/targeting games.

Food and weight management has been an interesting experience. Flying before instead of after meals is essential in order for food to have much value at all. I remember Barbara Heidenreich saying she doesn’t use weight as a training criteria, but only relies on the birds behavior and responsiveness at the beginning of a session. I honestly thought that was impossible, until I realized I was doing just that. I can tell much more about how Carly is going to behave flying outside by watching her behavior inside — responsiveness to food, interest in chewing and nesting, desire to be right with me or on me — than I can by checking her weight. She has bad days outside with low weights and good days with high weights. It’s just not that helpful. Again, I don’t recommend this at first, and if I were introducing a new behavior or very new environment I would probably make sure her weight was on the lower end of her normal range just as extra insurance. But for our normal routine I can tell much more by just observing her carefully inside and on her first flight outdoors.

The next items I tried all had to do with the recall reward, or in terms of behavior analysis, working with the consequence: what does she get for returning to me (numbers 4-5)? I always use super-treats now, mixed in with normal ones. Her interest in food rewards is noticeably higher then, so why not? However, that alone isn’t enough, as she will still get distracted socially unless we deal with….

Antecedents. I think as a culture we are so used to thinking in terms of consequences — rewards and punishments, paychecks, fines, praise, criticism — that it’s hard to even see antecedents. But for me that’s been the key to working with Carly outdoors. Antecedents are the things in the environment that precede an animal’s behavior, both distant and near in time. Let’s look at ours, numbers 6-9.

A simple antecedent is this: lots of people at the beach. When there are lots of people at the beach (Antecedent), Carly flies to people to visit (Behavior) and people hold her and talk to her (Consequence). She finds that consequence reinforcing, as shown by the fact that she repeats the behavior over and over again. It’s not possible to change the consequence, since it depends on the actions of strangers, but it another way to change behavior is to change the antecedent. Fly on the beach when there aren’t any people! Hmmm. Good in theory. But never happens. Certainly fewer people mean fewer temptations, but when she is determined to socialize it only takes a few.

Figuring out other antecedents was tricky. I wracked my brain trying to figure out WHY she insisted on visiting people. But it’s really so obvious: it’s reinforcing! In other words, she likes it. So what to do? One way you can change antecedents is to set up the environment to decrease the value of a reinforcer. Feed me lots of cake for dinner, and I probably won’t choose it for dessert. I realized I had been giving her fewer socializing opportunities since we began freeflying, thinking that our outings were enough activity to keep her enriched. But with her it’s not just activity and exercise that are required, it’s socialization. Regularly including social activities in our routine is probably the most important factor in her behavior outdoors. We go to coffee shops, pet stores, outdoor markets, patio restaurants, anywhere she can meet and greet. If she hasn’t been doing that there is a very good chance she will go visiting when we’re out flying. By not keeping that part of the routine, I was making people on the beach a highly valuable reinforcer. Incorporating “people games” into our beach routine also created a way for her to socialize in an acceptable and safe way — flying to others on cue and returning for a treat. (She can do this for half an hour at a time.)

People games: A-B recall with beach visitors.

At the same time, Carly was coming with me to work almost every day, with Piper. I just assumed this was a good thing. But when I started paying attention, it was clear that she did not always want to be picked up to go, or be put in and out of the car. She would not offer her foot to step up, or be very slow about the process. I was learning more about environmental enrichment and foraging then also, and she would often be very eager to get into her cage when all the foraging items were there. To the point that she would try to sneak in early, and wouldn’t even notice as I left. (See foraging posts here.) When I let her stay home 2-3 days per week she steps up more readily, wants to be on my shoulder or sitting next to me more, and …. stays closer when we’re out flying. (Providing she’s also getting enough socializing!) You could think of this as changing the antecedent to increase the value of me as a reinforcer. Face it, you can get too much of just about anyone. I also had to realize that when it’s hectic and stressful at work, our interactions are not the most positive — we bother each other! — and it actually helps the relationship to have our separate places for those hours.

Sometimes her little house is more interesting than the office.

Carly will still fly to visit people if we have not been socializing very much, and I have to watch her body language carefully when she is doing a lot of nesting behaviors indoors, as that seems to be a predictor of long exploration flights outside. (Warning signs: shredding and digging inside, sight focused at long distance outside and scanning horizon.) It’s a constant process of learning and observing. But when our routine is in place, she rarely notices guys with red hair anymore, and it quite happy to play the A-B recall games on the beach.

In the end, I think much of this can be summed up by Susan Friedman’s message, empowerment through choice. Giving her a choice of opportunities to socialize reduces her need to use beach outings for that purpose. Giving her choice in our daily routine reduces the likelihood of her seeing me as someone who is forcing her to do things — i.e., someone to get away from. Barbara Heidenreich’s “no force” approach to training husbandry and other behaviors is based on the same principles: create opportunities for the bird to choose the right behavior and be rewarded for it. The more that can be done in daily life, the more our relationship with our bird is partnership, not ownership. I’m more confident of a partner returning to me on the beach than a possession.

UPDATE: Simultaneous blogging! See Sid Price’s entry today for more about using antecedents instead of punishment to reduce behavior: Reducing behavior means punishment occurred… not!

Beach photos by Grace Innemee, CityParrots.org

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!

Shiera has settled back in again after her adventures (Shiera’s Travels), but her behavior has some distinct differences since before the world tour.

Most notable at first was that she does more things independently, like playing with toys, foraging around their gyms, or just hanging out. She wanted to be on someone much of the time before, riding around, preening, singing. She didn’t hang out with Rocco all that much except when eating. Now they are usually together, and if she can’t get up to their usual bed on the rope net (sans wings) he will sleep with her in one of her “handicapped accessible” areas. Rocco also became more outgoing and interactive when she was away, and I’m happy to report that has continued! I guess the kids just needed a little time apart before they were ready to settle down. (No chicks on the horizon though. You’ll have to talk to Carly and Piper about that.)

The other thing is that after being out and around the whole town for a couple days, instead of being afraid of the outdoors she is much more relaxed in new environments in general. (Piper, by contrast, was very reluctant to be outside after his first adventure; his included crow chases.) She was antsy in the office before and now she goes with me when I don’t have the big guys. She is great in the car and in public places. Shiera has always been unafraid of new people or animals, and was bold when she was first learning to fly. She adapts to new things very rapidly. So I guess it should be no surprise that she took this adventure in stride.

Her clip is so severe that she drops right down to the ground, and she can’t take off again. I have tall ladders propped up so she can get around. She will jump off of just about anything in order to travel by the land route. She doesn’t appear to be stressed by the change. She’s unafraid to hop from place to place if it’s a foot or less.

I realized today that we now have a perfect setup for doing some outdoor work to make sure if this happens again, she will be better equipped to handle it. First, I’m taking her out with me often. Conditions: no wind, sheltered locations, no traffic (if she’s outside her carrier). She’s already quite composed outdoors — she goes on alert when she sees something unusual, but relaxes back again fairly quickly.

Second, we’re going to do treecrawls! I hadn’t started them with her before because I hadn’t had time to train her with a harness. For a couple of months, before her flights start to molt in, a harness won’t be necessary under the trees. So we’re going to start doing targeting along the branches (walk over and touch a stick, get a treat), then along branches with obstacles like sticks or leaves in the way, then down from higher to lower branches. We’ll also do very short flying recalls (she can only stay in the air for less than a foot). The goal is to give her some confidence outdoors and in trees, practice coming when called in different environments, and an exit strategy for getting down if needed.

I’m looking forward to it, and I think she’ll enjoy it too. And it’s the perfect enrichment for the totally land-bound bird!

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!

Time to tawwk

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!

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.

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?

…
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.

I am training Piper for recall with the same general methods as I did with Carly, but whereas with Carly I had to take quite a lot of time training flight skills because she was never fledged, Piper came ready to launch. However his disposition is entirely different than hers and he spooks very easily and often outdoors (and indoors some also). It has taken time to acclimate him to specific locations so his behavior is relaxed, but he still becomes alarmed by a variety of things. Carly is an extremely calm bird outdoors, so spook flights were never an issue. Her alarm response is typically just an alert posture, or at most flying up and doing a short loop (5-15 feet) then back down to me. Having seen several losses and near-losses of free flighted Greys after spooking, it’s a very high priority of mine to ensure Piper is confident and secure outside before flying with Carly.

This puts us in a bit of a catch-22 however: the biggest reinforcer, normally, for wearing a harness is not there. Going outside isn’t a reinforcer but instead needs to be trained systematically. But he needs to wear a harness for that acclimation. (I don’t think th experience of being outdoors in a carrier or aviary is the same at all; they are quite protected spaces. Piper does fine on our enclosed balcony that is up in the trees with an open view of the sky.)

Piper puts on a harness well, but does not like to keep it on long. I just can’t seem to find reinforcers big enough, and can’t use going outside as a reward. When reading one of ShanLung’s recent blog posts I was reminded how his Grey Tinkerbell was so prone to spooks, indoors as well as outdoors, which was his main motivation for flying her on a harness with a long line (with a controlled recall). To do that he designed his own harness that is very soft, light, and a bit stretchy, so it can be felt as little as possible when on. I already use a hand made custom design, but it is still more bulky than the Tink harness.

When emailing about some of our experiences with acclimation and spook flights, ShanLung generously offered to make me a nice comfy Tink harness for Piper. I’m hoping the Tinkerbell UltraLite will be more comfortable and make the acclimation process easier. I’m also going to begin training flying up in a small loop (like Carly does) so he may perhaps learn there is a controlled way to respond to something startling.

The Tinkerbell UltraLite

So when our package from Oman arrives, we will try the Tinkerbell UltraLite model of harness (sans the long line). And I think I owe a parrot conservation organization a nice donation

More thoughts on the subject of outdoor acclimation, as well as weight management and training ethics are in the next post, The Right Training Tool.

The Part with the Caveats:

ShanLung and I are always stressing ATTACH THE HARNESS TO YOUR BODY, and that the bird must be well trained in staying with you and recalling before using a harness. I was amused by this post of his, which he calls the Cargo Cult Rant, comparing people who don’t consider the bonding and training part of it to indigenous south Pacific islanders who thought it was the landing strip itself that caused food cargo planes to land during WWII:

‘using’ harness without the understanding and training is like South Pacific islanders building airstrip and wondering why planes do not land with cargo for them.

(The history of cargo cults is a rather fascinating example of magical thinking.)

So to reiterate, harnesses must only be used on birds who are trained to ride on your hand or shoulder, and who have a good trained recall, and have been acclimated on wearing the harness indoors or another familiar place.

See the complete Harness Training series of blog posts and the Recall Training page for more details.