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 ...
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