Splish Splash!

Sophia has learned to REALLY enjoy her daily bath time!  I so enjoy watching her.  She has so much fun!  Splish Splash!  

 

 

Leaving The Nest

What an exciting time when a baby bird leaves its nest!  It begins by learning to coordinate its movements in order to fly, to learn to control those movements in order to turn and land, and to actually get where it wants to go.  But very soon, it begins exploring farther and farther from the nest as its confidence increases.  It tries out new foods that can be found as it goes farther from the security of home.  The baby meets other birds outside its family unit, and it learns skills to live sociably with them.  It finds all sorts of new things to explore and play with. 

 

Just like other baby animals, a bird is very impressionable during its formative months.  Now is the time for learning about new places, people and animals.  Now is the time to try new foods and toys, to learn to climb and fly and flip.  Anything a pet bird might be exposed to later in life should be introduced while it’s still young.  Baby animals are programmed to explore and try new things and to learn from each of those interactions.  Adult animals are programmed to be cautious of new things, so if it’s something they haven’t been exposed to, they are normally cautious about it.  This is a survival mechanism. 

Something new in a wild bird’s environment could be dangerous to them, so caution is a good thing.  Being cautious might just keep that bird alive!  But to a baby, everything is new, so they need some time when they are young to explore and learn about their environment, to see what is safe and what’s not.  They will learn by trial and error, but birds are also very good at learning by watching others and mimicking their behavior. 

A baby bird leaving its breeder’s home is leaving its nest - that known security where it has been since it hatched.  Sophia had to learn a whole new environment.  Everything was new to her – our home, her cage and toys, and me.  In the first week, she was exploring her cage and her toys, and was learning about me and spending a lot of time with me.  During the second week, she began to branch out (no pun intended!) and explore the areas surrounding her cage, and surrounding me wherever I was at the time.  This week has been full of long-range flying and exploring all around the house. 

I must admit that it was easier when she would sit with me contentedly, or would play on her cage or play gym for longer periods of time.  Now when she is out of her cage, I am constantly going to fetch her from trouble and return her to where I want her to be.  But this is natural exploratory behavior for her.  If she was living in the wild, she would be venturing ever farther from her nest and her parents, exploring and trying out new things.  Of course, if I get out of Sophia’s sight, she will come right away looking for me … it’s not safe for a baby bird to be on its own completely in the wild, you know!  But once she satisfies herself that I am nearby, she is off exploring once again. 

Sophia has been with me for only three short weeks.  She has learned so much during that time.  Some of these things she has learned on her own.  Some of them, I have introduced her to.  She’s a very cuddly bird, so I’m doing a lot of work with her so she will allow me to touch her all over her body.  This is important to continue as she gets older.  There will be times when she needs to be examined by a veterinarian and restrained for me to groom her – clipping wings and nails mostly.  The more familiar I can make these actions for her now, the calmer and more accepting she will be for them later.

Sophia has learned several tricks.  She is beginning to potty on cue, which is very important toward keeping my shirts and house clean!  I make sure she goes potty before picking her up or letting her explore.  She's learning quickly.  Sometimes she gets distracted when it's time for training.  In this case, I do whatever it takes to make her successful.  If she is very distracted or not in the mood to train with me, I help her to end on a successful note, even if that means giving her an easier behavior to do instead, and then I give her a break.  There's no need to push her.  She will learn better later once she has calmed down.  Sometimes she needs to go exploring or to play a bit to get some excitement out of her system.  Sometimes she just needs a cuddle.  By giving her what she needs first, she will then be in a better mood to do what I want to teach her. 

Take a look at some of the things Sophia has learned in her last few weeks with me –

 

 

 

Clicking Continued

Had I continued for very long with clicking every time Sophia turned around, I may have ended up with a bird that only turned in circles on her perch, hoping for a bite of millet.  But at the same time, at other training sessions, I was also teaching other behaviors with the clicker.  And I was using the perch for other things as well, not just training time, but also fun and foraging time, and for potty training.  Birds are very smart and can easily learn that a certain behavior is always expected in a certain place in the environment.  I didn’t want that to happen.  But I kept the different behaviors I worked on separate for now.  She is just a baby and doesn’t know the behaviors well enough yet to ask for them together during the same session.

I began to add a cue “turn around” to Sophia’s circle trick, as well as a hand signal.  While she was offering the behavior over and over, I would inject the cue right before she would turn around, so it appeared as if she was doing it in response to my cue.  At this stage, she was not, but the cue needs to be given immediately before the bird offers the behavior in order for her to learn that they belong together.  I only clicked for the circles that were after my cue “turn around” or my hand signal.  The other circles were fine, they just did not earn a click and a bite of millet.
 

Very quickly she learned to wait for my cue and then she would turn in a circle to the right.  At the same time that I was teaching her this cue, at other lessons I was teaching her to spin in a circle the other way.  This was harder because she had already learned that turning in one direction got the treat, so she wanted to turn in that same direction each time.  I knew this was going to be harder for her, but also knew it’s important not to let your bird get one-sided and always turn in one direction.

By feeding her very slowly to her left side, I was able to get her to take one step at a time in the other direction, clicking and feeding for each step.  Soon I had her spinning in the other direction and I was ready to begin adding the new cue for going to her left, “spin” along with a hand signal in the other direction.  The next step was to only reward the spins that were done after my cue. 
 

Then I began helping Sophia learn to generalize her tricks.  I was still doing them during separate lessons to help her keep them clear in her head.  But I began to ask her to do them on other perches, on my knee, on my hand, on a flat surface, and in different rooms.  I want her to really know the cue and the behavior in all sorts of environments.  I continue to do this daily, and I am even beginning to add distractions such as a toy near her perch or a person walking through the room. 

At this point, I have begun to practice “turn around” and “spin” during the same training session.  If she makes a mistake, that is ok.  We all make mistakes when we are learning something new.  I know she is trying to figure it out, so there is never a correction.  She just doesn’t get a reward.  I tell her to try again and we go on with the lesson.  After the first initial confusion, she is really beginning to respond well to me mixing up the direction I ask her to turn.  I don’t want her to learn a pattern of turning one way and then the other, so sometimes I ask for two or three turns in the same direction before going the other way.  I also practice more of “spin” at this point, because “turn around” was the first one she learned, making spin the weaker direction.  By practicing it more, it will become stronger.  
 

I don’t think there is anything wrong with clicker training a young bird or any other baby animal.  But I am being careful not to stay at one stage of training too long.  While I want Sophia to be creative and be able to offer behaviors during training sessions, I’m not allowing her to get stuck on only knowing and offering one behavior.  If I had allowed her to just turn in a circle in one direction over many lessons, yes, it would probably be difficult to get her to offer me anything else.  But I knew that going into this process.
 

Teaching behaviors with props is much easier if you always want the bird to do the same behavior with that particular prop.  The prop then becomes the cue for that behavior and as soon as the bird sees that prop, it wants to do that behavior.  I am also beginning some prop behaviors at separate lessons during this time.  In addition, I am teaching other behaviors without the clicker and just using praise and scratching as rewards. 

Do I need to use a clicker to teach Sophia new things and tricks?  No.  But I enjoy using a clicker and watching my animals think and figure out what causes the click to happen.  I also enjoy the quickness and precision with which they can learn new things by using a conditioned reinforcer, like the clicker.  But I also teach new behaviors with other training methods.  I think each trainer needs to figure out what works best for him/her and that particular animal.  Giving blanket statements about not using clicker training (or other methods) with baby animals can be very discouraging and off-putting.  Not every method should be used in every situation, with every animal, or by every trainer.  That’s why it’s best to have many training tools in your toolbox.
 

Sophia says - Happy Clicking - Squawk!

 

 

To Click or Not To Click

 

 

I was reprimanded recently for beginning to use a clicker to train a baby bird.  I was told that the first behavior I taught her would become her favorite and she would never do any different behaviors for me.  I was told that 9 weeks old was much too young to start using a conditioned reinforcer like the clicker.  Wow, I was surprised, as I've been clicker training other animals for years and I've never heard anyone say that an animal was too young to begin using the clicker.

 

I started introducing Sophia to the clicker as a conditioned reinforcer several days after she came home, after I could see that she was settled in and was not stressed.  To condition any sound as a reward marker, you make the sound and then immediately give the reward, usually a food reward to begin with.  I knew that Sophia liked millet seed, but it isn't something I leave in her cage all the time.  So, to her, it was a special treat.  I held the clicker behind my back in the beginning.  I didn't want to have it too close to her making a loud noise that might startle her.  Holding it behind my back kept it farther from her ears so it was not as loud.

 

I clicked the clicker once, then offered her a bite of millet from my hand.  After doing this for a couple short sessions, she began to look expectantly for the millet when she heard the click noise.  Now she understood that the click meant the millet was coming.

 

Then I had to teach her that she had the power to make the click happen, which would bring her the millet.  I put Sophia on her perch facing away from me, because I knew that she would then turn around to face me.  As she turned around to face me, I clicked the clicker and offered her the millet.  Being new to the game, and having just learned to step up onto my hand, she ate the millet but also stepped up onto my hand.  While this was not the result I wanted as a final behavior, it did allow me more opportunities to put her back on the perch facing away from me.  Each time she turned around to face me, I clicked and offered her millet.

 

I also began strategically placing the millet reward to get Sophia to turn around again, so we could start the behavior with her facing away from me again.  She would turn to face me, click, and then I would feed the millet to her along the side of her body and eventually behind her, so she was turning around to face away from me to get her treat.  Then she was already in position facing away from me to begin the behavior again.

 

Being the smart bird that she is, she quickly learned to go all the way around in a circle on her perch to get the click.  I just withheld the click for a  nano-second after she turned to face me.  She knew the next step was to turn around more, so any movement that turned her more in a circle, I would click, and then feed behind her.

 

Soon I had a cute baby bird spinning to the right on her perch to get her click and reward.  And, yes, she did offer the behavior to me over and over again to get more reward.  That's what I wanted at this stage of training.  I continued to click her for turning around until I felt it was a good time to end the session.  Then I removed her from the perch and distracted her with other things to do.  Had I left her on the perch, she would have continued to turn in circles, wondering why I was no longer rewarding her. I didn't want to undo the training I had just done, so moving her to a different spot and giving her something else to do was important.  Always end the session on a good note!

 

To be continued ...



Introducing Sophia

Here's my beautiful Sophia.  She is a turquoise green-cheeked conure (GCC).  Sophia was hatched on May 7, 2013, so that makes her 11 weeks old now.  She's been home with me for two weeks. 

 

It has been a long time since I've had a baby bird!  I had a GCC many years ago, but I got her as an adult bird from a pet store.  She was not in the best of health and I only had her for four short years.  But I fell in love with her intelligence, playfulness, cuddliness, and her sense of humor.  I knew when I started looking for another bird this time around, that I wanted the same thing.  For me, a smaller conure is the perfect size.  And the fact that they are quieter than other conures is also a plus for me!

 

For a few years now, I would see and fall in love with various conures in the pet store windows.  I would ask to hold them and they would snuggle into me and I would long to bring them home with me.  But for whatever reason, the time was just not right.  How I missed having a bird!

 

Then, recently, I decided that it was the right time to bring home a new bird.  I found myself standing outside of a cage window in a pet store, looking in at the most beautiful bird.  It was a GCC, but it was more beautiful than the normal coloring I was used to.  I had only seen this coloring in pictures, but it was so much more impressive in person.  I asked to hold him.  He was so very sweet, and he was still so young.  My heart melted.  But for various reasons, I chose not to take him home that day.

 

Instead, I went home and did my research.  I definitely wanted a bird of that beautiful color - turquoise.  I looked up a few breeders online.  I figured I would need to get on a waiting list to get a baby.  But I found a breeder not too far from me who had just-weaned turquoise babies!  So, off on a road trip I went. And, home with me she came!