Shiera the Adventurer’s new attitude

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!

Shiera’s Travels

Shiera is home! She is in good shape, minus all those nice wing feathers she grew in last winter.

Shiera piggy-backed out of the house Saturday, Nov 7, got brushed by the screen and flew. She spent an hour in the top of a 70 ft eucalyptus tree, got scared out by a crow, then flew high across the park, calling back and forth to me, until I lost sight of her. I put up posters around the neighborhood, called, searched, contacted vets, pet stores, put ads online, in newspapers, on 911 Parrot Alert. She has the best recall indoors of all my birds, but has no experience outdoors at all, on a harness or otherwise. She called to me from the tree (including “come ‘ere! come ‘ere!”) and back and forth to the emergency recall whistle. But she had no idea how to fly down, and her last flight looked very panicky. After a few days, my best hope was that she’d made it down to someone’s yard, who knows where, and they’d taken her in.

It turns out she was found Monday, Nov 9, in downtown La Jolla, about 5 km away, when she dove down next to a coffee shop and landed among some boxes. A couple saw her and took her home. They are actors from NYC, and one is performing in a play here until mid December, so they are just temporary residents. The guy has a cockatiel back home. They went to Petsmart (where I had a poster up) and bought her a nice cage, a bunch of food, and toys. They clipped her wings a bit because she was spooking in the house and they were afraid she’d hurt herself on the windows. Two days later they took her to one of our few board certified avian vets, Dr. Jenkins (where I had left information about my lost bird also). Despite fitting the description to a T, no one there made the connection, but they gave her an exam, a psittacosis test, blood test, and nail trim. AND clipped her wings even more, and bobbed the end off her tail. AND told the couple she was probably a male. This vet has a reputation for being good, but is not well liked. I’m stunned that he — or someone on hs staff — clipped her tail and couldn’t even recognize the difference between a male and female cockatiel!

The couple were considering taking her back to New York, or giving her to his sister who lives in town. For some reason today he thought to check Craigslist. He called and said she looked exactly like the bird in the picture. I’m very grateful they called after falling in love and taking very good care of her.

Here’s where she was found (she was heading east, very high and fast when we lost contact):

[oops -- cancelled idisk, picture back soon!]

So, my little house bird has travelled further than either of the Greys ever has! The biggest distance Carly has ever gone is less than a mile (1.6 km) down the beach. The furthest away she has been when she was missing (i.e., taken in by someone) is about a quarter mile from where we were on the beach.

So we are all happy now. But this winter, instead of learning how to fly, Shiera is having to learn how NOT to fly. She’s done quite a few take-offs and clunks down to the ground. But I have all her ladders back up, and she just walked across the floor and climbed the ladder up to her little house where she’s sitting with Rocco now.

It’s terribly bad timing to be unflighted (and not really knowing it) since we have a 4 month old very hyper kitten in the house. More remodeling on the horizon I think!

BTW, Shiera is named after the woman I adopted her from, and also the DC comic action hero, Shiera, Hawkgirl!

Observing: Let’s tawk

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!

Aiding Flight Skills Interpretation

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

Acclimation adventures, cont.

I don’t always take Piper into stores like I do with Carly, because of his tendency to freak out at things.  I try to pick times when it’s not too busy.   But late last night, making a quick stop at the neighborhood liquor store (greeting: “Hi Bird!” — whether I have a bird with me or not) I took both kiddos in with me.  The 5 police cars in the parking lot should have been a tip-off.  There were not just MEN in the store, in a tight space (recipe for freakout), but Many. Big. Loud. MEN. With guns.

Which according to Piper is fine.  Just no big loud men with beers please.

• other acclimation posts

“Travelling the Training Maze with Carly Lu”

Welcome new readers from West Valley Bird Society in Los Angeles county where I spoke last night about my journeys down the bird training maze. After a loonnnng maze through 4 1/2 hours of Friday afternoon traffic, followed by an uncooperative AV projector partnership, it was a fun talk to give. (Intimate, shall we say?) Always delightful to have lots of audience input and questions.

I also enjoyed seeing so many social birds (Carly approves!) and especially enjoyed meeting Francis, the friendly Fancy Fan-tailed pigeon. What a beauty, and an expert beak wrestler. I’m sure I will have another pigeon again someday!

I will post a link to the presentation on this page when I have it uploaded.

(I also got the cool October poster )

Exotic Middle Eastern Garments

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.

The right training tool: Sid’s Balance & Flying Ethics

Continuing on from the last post, it has been a very uneven path with Piper acclimating outdoors. At times he has become very relaxed, and at one point was flying to the door when I was getting ready to go out, so he could come along. But it takes very little to cause a setback — anything from a new spook outdoors to not having had the opportunity to take excursions for a week or so.

I have heard comments from some that the reason I was not freeflying Piper sooner is because I don’t use weight management (although you are never supposed to control weight on a bird under 1 year old!) Piper’s recall is excellent indoors, as well as outdoors in our routine locations when he is on a harness (short 8-10 ft recalls). His focus is usually better than Carly’s, and as with her we time training sessions before meals to optimize food motivation. (Actually, I’ve rarely seen Piper NOT motivated by food, dinner or not!)

Acclimation is one part of training, and for us this is the hardest part. One of his early freeflights resulted in an extended chase by crows (off and on for hours) and that didn’t set us up for quick success for sure. His manner of flying after that was not relaxed, and seeing him flying with Carly was a huge contrast; one was a bird relaxed and aware of her surroundings, the other was a bird in a state of fear, flying straight and fast with unpredictable turns. Increasing his comfort level outdoors became a primary concern.

I’m reminded of a list that Sid Price presented once, in a talk entitled “It’s Not the Scale, It’s the Balance.” It’s also in his blog article on Food and Weight Management. On one side you have a training challenge, things that work against a bird’s motivation. On the other side you have a set of tools you can use to accomplish the goal, that increase a bird’s motivation.

Things that affect the motivation of the bird include not only its desire for food (its degree of hunger) but also:

• The reinforcement history of the bird.

– Does the bird fully understand that the executing the cued behavior will result in a desired reward?

— Has the trainer always been honest in their reinforcement of behavior in the past or for example was a large visible reward offered by the trainer to elicit a behavior switched out for a small treat when the behavior was completed?

• What is the relationship like between the trainer and the bird?
• Does the trainer have a history of positive rewarding experiences with the bird?

…
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.

Piper’s Outdoor Acclimation

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.

New “Infinite Flight Cage”!

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)

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