Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

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.

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.

The building where I work has a floor plan like a rectangular ring: offices (36) along the outside walls, labs on the inside, and a wide corridor in between. 422 feet of corridor in fact, in a big loop. Yeah, wow. And by the time I leave at night I’m the only one on the floor.

So the last two nights I’ve started flying Piper there — it’s fantastic! We can do 150 ft straight line recalls, big loops where he’s out of sight 3/4 of the time, and loop around as many times as we want for stamina building. I hadn’t thought about it much because Carly never wanted to fly in the building (except to go visiting neighboring labs); she’s always preferred being outdoors, even as a youngster on walks. But for Piper it’s perfect. He’s already very good at flying down; the very first time he attempted it from a tall eucalyptus tree he did it like a champ. And he’s fearless with maneuvering tight turns. But he still spooks far too often outdoors for my comfort (or his) and his body language can go from relaxed to tense very quickly; it’s a danger that I want to take my time with to avoid, especially in a young flyer. His recall inside and outside is great, but that doesn’t help if there’s a panic flight. So getting lots of flying practice inside, while continuing to mature with handling unfamiliar things outdoors, is a very good combination right now. I have a feeling it will increase his confidence level in general too.

He was panting after two laps last night, so it will be fun to monitor changes in that.

That’s longer than the Infiite Corridor (825 ft)

For most birds — clipped, flighted, or even ones who freefly outdoors — a good deal of their day is spent on their own, whether in their cage, in an aviary, or alongside us as we’re busy doing other things. Enrichment is necessary for all companion birds. In the wild a great deal of their time is spent foraging through trees, bushes and for some species on the ground. As part of making connections to excellent parrot resources, this new feature will showcase some favorite sources for enrichment ideas, examples of interesting foraging setups, and visits to cool aviaries.

The first is Kris Porter’s site, ParrotEnrichment.com. Kris is the author of the enrichment bible, The Parrot Enrichment Activity Book (1st and 2nd editions) which is available there as a free download. Her web site gives many other ideas, both simple and involved, as well as short videos and tips on starting foraging activities with birds.

Enrichment doesn’t have to be complicated or costly, but providing places to climb around and search for food or other things to chew on or explore can occupy parrots happily for hours. I could not believe the difference that including food foraging in my birds’ cages and gyms made in their behavior. Not only are they busier with activities that are not destructive to my own things, but they are also much calmer overall. And it has made keeping them with me in the office at work a more relaxing experience for all involved (including my neighbors along the hall!)

Some previous foraging posts show examples of some of my birds’ favorite items. The more you think like a forager, the more you will find yourself stopping mid-toss to the trash can. Throw-away no-no’s at my house: bottle caps, small plastic bottles, small cardboard boxes, small paper bags, little hardware bags, broken toy bits, paper from the shredder. Some essential items from our local 99-Cent Store or Michael’s: tiny plastic zip-ties, sisal twine, and wooden clothespins for attaching things to toys; coffee filters for hiding things; miniature wooden boxes ($1.00!), mini ziplock bags (used for beads), unpainted wooden ornaments, and many more.

In addition, when you find yourself saying “don’t chew that!” to your little devil, is that another enrichment possibility? Your bird likes your toothbrush but you prefer to keep it to yourself? How about getting a pack of bright colored kids’ toothbrushes (make sure no metal under bristles). Always rushing to save that pen or pencil from certain death? How about saving old pens and removing the innards. Do your birds have a taste for fine literature? Phone books are quite tasteful too.

One of the main principles of applied behavior analysis is to show birds what TO do, instead of telling them what not to do. Providing an enriching environment is one of the most basic pro-active ways to prevent undesirable behaviors and keep both you and your birds more sane.

Since this blog is one of those places that makes flying outdoors look fun, I want to point out, again, that in addition to having a good recall, it’s critical to have good flight skills as well. If you want a bird that can stay alive that is. Good flight skills include: can maneuver well and turn sharply, can fly down from heights, has been flying indoors or in a controlled environment long enough to have developed some muscle strength, and does not have partially clipped or damaged wings. Things a predator will have a field day with (”predators” including dogs, cats, raptors, and cars, not to mention birds like seagulls, ravens and crows who can just be intent on chasing an intruder away): a bird who is not acclimated to being outdoors, has little to no ability to turn or maneuver, has never flown down from heights before, has wings that physically impair its ability to turn or fly fast, has never flown in wind, has little stamina.

No matter what position one takes on training recall, or the method used to train it, it is just supremely irresponsible to put a bird at risk by rushing the move outdoors when basic flight skills are not in place. And yet I see people doing just that, and encouraging others to do so.

I would really like to find a single serious trainer who believes this isn’t true. All it takes is one surprise stiff breeze or startle flight. Even with a bird who is ready with these skills the transition outdoors is a very risky time because it’s a totally new environment. Adding the handicap of poor skills is terribly unfair to the bird.

(Oh, gee, there I go being “negative” again!)

Update:
First, for those who are not familiar with free flight lingo, any flight outdoors without restraints is “free flight.” Just because you’re only asking for 2-4 feet does not mean that’s “recall training” and not free flight. If a bird has a spook flight or gets caught in an unexpected wind, that 4 foot recall you were asking for becomes completely irrelevant. I believe flight skills and recall should be trained together; that doesn’t mean you do the most rudimentary recall with a completely inexperienced, partially clipped bird outdoors. As much as possible should be done indoors — learning how to land, turn, make sharp maneuvers, fly down. The bigger the indoor location (or aviary) the better. For flying in wind I personally like using a harness for that on a windy day so the bird can get the feel of how to deal with it without being blown away. (Here’s Carly on an extremely windy day practicing.)

Secondly, those who want to comment under the guise of a false identity may want to consider methods other than pseudonyms and fake email addresses. The odds that three different commenters on this blog site (say, for example, “Dave,” “Ron,” and “Joe”) would randomly have the same address, even if they were all on AOL and all in the same region of the country, are more than 4 billion to one, going by the way AOL assigns addresses. When you add in the fact that IP addresses are generally recycled back to the same computer whenever possible, the odds are even slimmer. But then I guess 4 billion in one things do happen once every 4 billion times or so.

Comments have been closed on this thread since they are getting very off topic and rambly.

Carly made a new friend flying today, a Willet. They’re about 16″ high with long legs. She called to him repeatedly with a dog-calling type whistle while they were flying.

By the way, there are some amazing photographs of birds, especially shorebirds, at Morris’ site, Birds As Art

How do you find a source of training advice you can trust? Is the bird training world really as brutal as some make it out to be, wrought with conspiracies against individuals, professional jealousy, and continual arguing over methods? Who do you believe?

No one. That’s right, no one. All the highly respected trainers I have met or seen in action do not work in isolation. It’s not a huge community, and most bird trainers from zoos and shows know each other — the “degree of separation” probably averages 1 or 2. Attending the IAATE meeting in Cincinnati this year, the collegiality among trainers from different parts of the country — and the world — was even greater than I expected, and I learned as much from talking to people as I did from the talks. If there’s a conspiracy out there to shut out particular trainers, it must be super secret, because no one I’ve ever met knows about it. Or perhaps more likely is that you reap what you sow, and those who cultivate sound training practices, professional friendships and sharing of information earn that respect.

Avoid: Sites [trainers] that lack any references or affiliation to other materials and professionals known in the field. Established professionals usually work together in a cooperative and/or collaborative way with other recognized professionals. This usually includes references to other sources of information and products on their sites in addition to their own. — Barbara Heidenreich, Good Bird Blog

Observing the trainers I have learned the most from, it’s also striking that they rarely toot their own horns, claim to be “the best,” or that they are the only one to ever do this or that. They do not make promises about training outcomes, or take ownership of established methods by branding them as their own. Training is a science, and like other sciences, is built on what has come before. Good practitioners recognize this. “Revolutionary” is pretty much reserved for those exercise machines advertised late at night on infomercials. The art and science of training is an ongoing learning process that takes patience. It really is true that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” Anyone who believes they don’t need to learn more is only at the outer layer of a very large onion. (To paraphrase Donkey.)

Continued education, and close mentorship with respected, well-known professionals in the field is paramount. . . . Courtesy, reliability, and accuracy are also trademarks of the “expert”, as is willingness to share freely their knowledge. — Animal Education Foundation

These are some things I ask about trainers:

• Can they give you good references? If not, run, don’t walk. Expert trainers work with others and never stop learning, whether it is through informal relationships or formal collaborations. Any good trainer should be able to provide several names of professional trainers who can vouch for their ability. Talk to them, and ask them about the other references as well. Is this trainer someone who has really made a difference?
• How do they care for their own animals? Do they know about mental and environmental enrichment, and practice it? Do they feed a balanced and varied diet that includes fresh food? A good deal of training is about relationship building and general standards of care — what happens outside the training session does matter.
• Is there a strong emphasis on fast and/or easy? This is typically an indicator of exaggeration, a shallow understanding of training principles, or over-reliance on weight management.
• Who have they learned the most from? Who has had the biggest influence on their training, and why? Can they recommend to you a few other good sources of training information? Every single trainer I know who is respected among their peers can and will refer you to others that you can learn from as well. While it’s good to work with a single trainer on specific problems to avoid giving mixed signals to your birds, any good mentor will encourage learning as much as you can from other sources they trust.

. . .

With the internet there is the possibility of sharing information now as never before, but it also opens up the door to just about anyone who wants to call themselves an expert. The cream of the crop among trainers are those that can convey more than just instructions; they demonstrate the principles they are teaching in every interaction with birds. It’s a rare gift, but well worth seeking out those who have it.

I just got back from a 6 day trip, and when Carly was younger she was so unfazed by me leaving that I seriously wondered if it mattered at all that I was gone.  But since she started seasonal feather snipping at 3 years old she has also been snipping when under stress.   Her seasonal snipping was reduced to almost nothing with the help of lots and lots of foraging (for most all her food) as well as lupron shots every 4-6 weeks during the spring.  Since then her feathers have been growing back in nicely, with just a few exceptions, all of which are stress-related: me leaving town for a week (twice), and the death of another pet in the household.

This is her at her worst, after I was away for a week at the IAATE meeting in February; she stayed at Tex’s house with a pet sitter and did a lot of feather damage, both snipping and plucking.

The next snipping event occurred in mid-April, after she had stopped for about 6 weeks. It lasted 36 hours, starting the evening my vet came to the house to put my cat to sleep (after battle with lymphoma). This was such a short duration and intense bout of snipping it’s hard to see it as coincidental.

When Grace and Roelant visited at the beginning of June, many feathers had molted out and were starting to grow back in. That continued through July and into August.

She was a velcro bird when I was packing for my last trip, and for the first time gave me an enthusiastic greeting when I arrived home (instead of the cold shoulder). The snipping is not as bad as before on the belly, but she did crunch her upper wing feathers quite a lot.

During both trips she was with Piper, with lots and lots of foraging material. The latest trip she stayed at home, with familiar people taking care of her, and her snipping started the third day, immediately upon hearing me talk to her over speaker phone. (Note to self…. ) She had already been behaving oddly, including hanging upside down rubbing her back on the cage, even with the door open; something she’s never done in front of me.

Since I’ve been home she hasn’t touched a single feather except for normal preening, and is carefully de-sheathing some newly grown feathers.

It was nice back when she didn’t notice I was gone! I’m not sure what can be done to make these trips less stressful. Perhaps a few short overnighters to break the routine that every time I leave it’s for a week. But then when it gets to be day 3, day 4 on a longer trip…? I wonder if it’s possible to train an alternate behavior for stress relief.

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.