A Good Week, a Short Update

Things went well last week, for the most part! Without breaking it down by bird, everyone made an improvement. The star of this week was definitely Kohl, who went from reluctantly hopping to the feeding platform five minutes after offering a large chunk of food at the beginning of the week, to instantly jumping to the glove when offered the tiniest piece of meat by the end. She is very calm on glove, although everything the right hand does must mean food— this means touching toes or keel is out of the question, as she would much rather try to eat you.

One-eye is still sending mixed signals, but I’m keeping an eye on him. Hopefully we’ll start to make some progress this week. Twist did extremely well all week, and Blinky, although thoroughly uninterested in me for the most part, started to show a bit more interest in training.

To make this short update slightly more palatable, enjoy this image of Big Girl:

Cheers!

Training Days (are here again)!

Today was great! I had a blast getting right back into training, but the birds were not quite as gung-ho as I was about it. Fair enough, since most of them have had  big shifts since I last worked them regularly, and poor One-eye recently had an accident that involved him getting wedged in a wall. For these (and other) reasons, I took it slowly.

Big Girl:

Awesome, but bored. Some very nice step-ups and hops to the glove, but it didn’t last long. She was not particularly interested in food. What I’d like to work on with her is a hand signal (a rotation of the index finger) to get her to turn around on the perch and face me. She already got the foundation of the behaviour today, but I think I’ll need her a bit more keen to make more progress. I gave her a few ‘toys’ as enrichment and underestimated her urge to destroy things– by the time I got back, I found a smug eagle sitting in a pile of stuffing and shredded leather. I’m glad she enjoyed it, but we need to find enrichment tools that last longer and make less of a mess! Decoy ducks apparently work well, so I may grab her a few.

Blinky and Kohl:

The troublesome twosome are doing very well! Both are being managed sans equipment (no anklets or jesses) at the moment.  They’ve come a long way since I last wrote about them, and have ‘switched’ behaviours– a few months ago, Kohl was flighty, nervous, and slightly aggressive, while Blinky was fairly calm. Kohl is now sweet-tempered and calm, while Blinky is far more high strung and surprisingly aggressive towards the glove. I didn’t make much progress with Blinky today (dropped her food to see what it does to her behaviour overnight), but Kohl ate her food daintily from glove, stepped up, and let me walk her around (again, without equipment on). She also returned to her pen as nicely as could be. Looking forward to getting her flying this year!

Twist:

She hasn’t lost much since I’ve worked with her, and she was very well-behaved today, although she needs to be lured now on returning to the perch. That’s frustrating, as she did it automatically before. I also need to switch my focus from asking her to hop and move towards basic reinforcement on glove and good crating behaviour. Her vision is too far gone to ever fly in a show, but the more solid she is on glove, the more education programs she’ll be able to take part in. I love this bird.

One-eye:

I have to admit I’m quite depressed about how One-eye’s behaviours have broken down during our training gap. That said, I have a sneaking suspicion it isn’t due to lack of time spent– I think he may be masking an illness. There’s a pulse to his sinuses that he didn’t have before, and a very subtle click from his nares that could be usual moisture or something more dangerous. While he’s bright, alert, of normal weight, has good mutes, and in general seems perfectly healthy, there’s something about him that seems ‘off’, and I’m uncomfortable with his reduced interest in food, even though he’s at working weight.

To be fair, it may be residual stress from his accident last week, but I doubt if he even remembers it. A trip to the vet may be in order in the next few days just to be sure. All we did today were some step-ups and short flights, but he was distracted and reluctant, and ended the session ahead of schedule by refusing food. That alone tells me there’s probably something wrong… who ever heard of a RTHA being full? They’re the labrador retrievers of the bird world (ie, bottomless pits).

Wish him luck at the vet!

Day Off, Day On

Yesterday, Big Girl and One-eye got the day to themselves– when last we left off, we’d fed them up in the hopes they’d be ready to work. Unfortunately, I massively underestimated the power of Metabolism(tm)– despite the increase in intake, they both barely held even weight-wise. In order to avoid repeating previous mistakes, I did what I should have done the day before: they both got a truly ridiculous amount of food (more than twice the usual amount) and took the day off from training. Apparently One-eye’s reaction to the unexpected pile of food was to mantle over it and then look suspiciously at the handler, with a sort of “…I really don’t have to do anything for this?” expression.

Today, they were back up to a comfortable weight and ready to work! Perfect!

Big Girl:

We took it slow today — I used her in a short presentation, in which she was excellent, and then followed it up by a session of step-ups. She was very well-behaved. Nothing special to note… just that she was receptive and seemed happy! She got half a rat to work on back in her mew.

One-eye:

The cue/no-cue issue is perhaps at 70% now… he (nearly) always comes when cued, and definitely ignores the glove’s movement when not cued much more frequently. He checked himself today a few times, although he came a few times without the cue as well. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a secondary cue I’m not seeing or if it’s just that he’s having trouble with it after ten years of coming to the glove when raised.

We did point-to-perch for a while, then jump-ups from the ground (he did much better this time and only missed the perch once), then long flights glove-to-glove with a volunteer — he was awesome. A little sticky-footed, but his weight is back where I need it, so I think he may just have been overly excited by working again after a break.

Rooster:

This is not a new raptor– it’s a sick bantam chicken I brought home from the barn at work, who has needed some supportive care to get over an illness complicated by a high parasite load. Tonight, the stinky thing needed a bath, which then progressed into a shower once I realized he seemed to enjoy being rinsed off. Then I spent 30 minutes carefully blow-drying him until fluffy so that he wouldn’t catch a chill. The rooster seemed to enjoy the attention.

Oddly, nobody who knows me is surprised by this. If anything, I am surprised by its normalcy.

C’est la vie.

A Sticking Point

Today was a wash on all fronts. The cold overnight dropped One-eye and Big Girl’s weight faster than expected. I thought I’d fed them both up yesterday and was expecting them to have gained weight, but instead they were ravenous and had either held even or dropped. This is mostly a psychological hunger rather than a physical one, but it doesn’t make it any less ‘real’ to the birds or to their trainers. It just means that even though they are healthy and in good shape (nowhere near to being ‘lean’ let alone starving), their brains are evaluating the temperature and how much they got to eat yesterday, calculating the difference, and are reporting back with “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE IF YOU DO NOT EAT MORE”. I should have given them a day off and fed them both up. Hindsight is 20/20.

I did a session with Big Girl in the morning that went nicely, so I thought I could leave her be for a few hours. Long story short, the result of that decision is three punctures/scrapes and associated bruises on my upper arm. My fault, again– but the result is that I fed her up so much she could barely swallow. I hope that takes the edge off for her, and puts her back into ‘work mode’ without stuffing her all the way up to ‘bored and disinterested’.

One-eye was the same, if not worse. A frustrated, frantic ball of feathers. He wasn’t listening well enough to get rewarded, and that was making him offer progressively more uncontrolled behaviours (which also didn’t get him rewarded) until it culimated in him bumping into a window and having the closest thing to a honest-to-god teenaged hissy fit that I have ever witnessed in a raptor. With a coworker’s help, we switched gears to some long glove-to-glove flights down the indoor hallway to work out some of his energy and ensure enough rewards to calm him down. By the end of the session he was tired, full, and much more reasonable to handle.

Live and learn– and I will make it up to them later. Luckily for me, raptors live in the moment and rarely hold grudges!

Frustration

Despite the title, today was a good day. Even with the depressing amount of paperwork I needed to attend to and the fact that I was teaching all morning, I got quite a few training sessions in.

Blinky and Kohl:

Approach-retreat (also called ‘pressure and release’) is not having much of an impact on Kohl, but Blinky is showing progress. Kohl is very food oriented, so we may change her training style in the near future and focus on food response. Blinky let us touch her toes today, which is great– and both of them are getting multiple sessions a day from multiple trainers. I am hoping to see some marked progress in the next week or two.

Twist:

Because of the progress Twist made yesterday, her trainer and I did a session together. She was very nicely behaved and continued to show improvement from yesterday, but we’d like to see her stop ‘stabbing’ at the food with her beak, and hope that will come in time as she realizes that the food is a constant that won’t be taken away from her once presented. Her first ‘step-up’ was actually footing the glove and trying to pull it closer so that she could get the food (bad manners!), but by the end of the session she was stepping up nicely without being too keen.

Her trainer took over in the afternoon, and from the notes in the training log, it sounds like they had a good session!  It’s going to be great to watch this bird’s progress.

Big Girl:

Poor Big Girl. She was used twice in program this morning, which doesn’t happen frequently, and she tolerated it with good grace… but when I put her back in her mew the second time with no sign of food reward or clicking, she gave me a “SERIOUSLY, IT IS TIME FOR TRAINING NOW” look.  Well… to be fair, it was probably more of a “where the hell is my food, pathetic human slave” sort of thing, but still.

Morning session went nicely. She started offering step-ups halfway through, which was great– we did about 25 repetitions. The afternoon session was really an ‘evening’ session, and by the time I got her inside and ready to go, she was beside herself.  I should have let another staff member do her session earlier, mea culpa. Still, we made the best of it– when I realized she was too hungry to work rationally, I gave her a decent hunk of chicken and let her rip it apart. She ate every scrap, including all the bone, and when she had finished feaking she was ready to work. A few of her step-ups were a little hackled and grabby, but for the most part she was very good and went back like an angel.

Tomorrow, I’ll make sure she gets worked earlier in the day.

“Food now?”

One-eye:

Today was interesting with One-eye– in our morning session, I took him out into the lunchroom to try and work him over longer distances. At longer distances, however, his poor vision became more of an issue. He missed perches left, right, and centre– skittered on to the floor, nearly landed on my head, and popped onto the window sill once. I should have started with shorter jumps to get him used to the new place. Luckily, he learned fast, and midway through the session he was much better. Unfortunately, we got interrupted by some incoming staff who wanted to observe and chat, and as soon as my attention was off One-eye, One-eye’s attention was completely off me. He was bored and irritable by the end of the session, and quite frustrated by the cue/no-cue thing.

Our evening session was quick and dirty, and entirely based on only rewarding a flight to the glove when cued. He is, I think, about 65% of the way there. We had a few more ‘visible checks’, when he starts to initiate flight when I raise the glove, doesn’t see the cue, and checks himself. Usually, he comes instantly when cued. Every so often, though, he has a fit– he comes repeatedly to the glove when I haven’t cued, and ignores me when I cue. I think (I hope) that it’s an extinction burst, and that it will be followed by him cementing the behaviour firmly in his brain.

Considering he’s been trained for years to come to a raised glove with no cue, extinguishing this behaviour is probably taking longer than it otherwise would. I’m really proud of him, even when he has his ‘hissy fits’!

Wee One was displeased that I was training so late, and tried to eat my finger. Little duck.

Blinky’s Pantaloons

Although I was supervising an event elsewhere in the park for the morning, I got a chance to spend a good amount of time with the birds in the afternoon. I did a training session with an especially beloved volunteer using Wee One’s older brother, which went very well. One-eye came down nicely from free-loft, and doesn’t seem to have gotten too big for his britches considering his unexpected overnight freedom. The two new owls were a study in contrasts….

Kohl:

Kohl is a difficult bird to read. Compared to Blinky, she seems more ‘well adjusted’ to the hustle and bustle of her new surroundings… but she’s also the more flighty of the two. Today’s session involved opening the door to her pen and waiting until the count of three, then clicking on retreat. The first time, she was excellent. The next time, her ‘flight’ response tripped– and she didn’t calm down until I’d left for a while. I think I moved too quickly, based on an assumption that she was the calmer of the two birds. I will take a step backwards for the next session, and perhaps work only on opening the door a tiny amount– or perhaps even standing in front of her pen.

Blinky:

Blinky, on the other hand, showed more progress than I was expecting. I was able to open the pen door and lift the glove up to the platform she was sitting on. I could get about 6 inches away before her ‘pantaloons’ (our nickname for their lower belly and leg feathers) puffed out in alarm. For the record, raptor pantaloons are utterly adorable. When a red-tail’s pantaloons get wind-blown or the down layer underneath pops out, I always inform them that their underwear is showing.

Anyway, just like with Kohl, I held for three seconds and then clicked on retreat. After five or six repetitions, she stopped lifting her feathers on approach and was content to just stay still. For a brand new owl, that’s pretty amazing progress! We’ll see what she does next time!

Big Girl:

One of my coworkers did Big Girl’s morning session, and I did a quick afternoon follow-up. Her weight is back up, but she’s still fairly responsive. Just a session full of bridging on presentation of food, and Mrs. Picky deigned to eat most of what she was offered. She does not like legs, but she seems to be getting over her dislike of chick heads. Thank god.

She was calm and attentive throughout. I think it’s time to start testing her to see if she understands the bridge. When she was finished, she feaked all over the glove. She’s such a good girl now, after her period of randomly-directed aggression earlier in the fall. Big doof.

One-eye:

One-eye, as I said, came down to the glove pretty nicely from being freelofted– I was worried I’d either have to chase him around, or that he’d be so eager that he’d nail me in the face as soon as I walked in. It’s always nice to avoid extremes! Luckily, he was lean today and ready to work. We worked on the ‘point’ cue today, which he is getting very good at now– he is getting a little more prone to anticipating my point, which leads to some interesting mid-air corrections when he realizes I didn’t cue to the perch he expected me to. Still, I am finding I can point from further and further away, and he quite deliberately follows the line of my arm to the nearest perch and goes there.

Two new things: one, I tried to work some jump-ups from a perch on the ground to my glove held above my head. He was quick to come up, but his missing eye gave him some trouble and he seemed to avoid the perch he was supposed to land on more often than not. He ended up on buckets, a chair, and a leaning perch that was drying after being washed. The second new thing is that he may finally be getting the picture in regards to cues– that I want him to stay where he is unless he’s cued to the glove. He ignored a lifted glove three times in a row, twice, and then came immediately when I cued him. That said, he also came to the lifted glove repeatedly without being cued earlier in the session, so it may just be coincidence. We’ll keep working on it.

I flew him in the hallway at the end of the session, since he seems to enjoy it. Four 75′ flights, and he wasn’t winded. Not bad for a one-eyed, “retired” and massively out-of-shape hawk. I hope he’s enjoying his new life as a Genius Bird as much as we’re enjoying having him here!

Break:

I’m off work for three days, because it is my birthday weekend. I may go in on Monday to train– or not, depending on timing. Regardless, enjoy your weekends, and updates shall resume when training does!

Restructuring

Today, we went on a road-trip to meet a potential new education bird, and ended up bringing her home with us. Another RTHA– I’m almost regretting One-eye’s nickname now, as the new bird is also missing the same eye! She’s gorgeous, despite her injury, and is lucky to be alive after being hit by a truck on the highway. She’s pale compared to the rest of our red-tails, and built sturdily. She has one behavioural issue we’ll need to work on pretty quickly– spinning on the glove– but I think that will sort itself out as quickly. I think she’ll be very responsive to training, but, alas, we have rearranged who is training who, and she is not on my list! Perhaps down the road I’ll get to write about her in more detail.

Big Girl:

She was great today, and got to go for a big, long walk with a co-worker while we were on our way to pick up the new RTHA. I managed to get a session in before I left, and she was absolutely perfect. By the time we got the new RTHA home, coped, jessed, and settled, it was dark– Big Girl had to be brought inside to do her session, and she was pretty hungry. Much more controlled than yesterday, though, and we got a full session with great responses in.

• Big Girl is now a jointly-trained bird, so I may not get daily sessions with her, but I will still be taking a lead role in her training and will write about her often.

One-eye:

One-eye did very well today. We worked on targetting, and on reinforcing the cue. He definitely doesn’t ‘get it’, yet– I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t understand what the bridge means as well as I thought he does, or whether the lightbulb hasn’t come on yet.

Today’s neat moment was actually a miscommunication–  I cued when he wasn’t looking at me. The cue is a sharp, double-tap. He heard the cue but didn’t see it, so as he took off he started towards my glove. I’d given the cue on a perch to my left, however, and my hand was in the process of retreating from that perch when, in mid-air, he realized his mistake and tried to correct his aim from glove to perch at the last minute. It was too little, too late, and he bumped into the side of the perch and scrabbled on the table before recovering himself.

Obviously he didn’t get a reward, but it was interesting to see the mental “oops!” and his attempt to fix it. Good, if belated, communication!

• One-eye is still ‘my bird’ after the training reorganization, so I’ll continue to update regularly with his progress!

Twitch:

Twitch got two sessions today, and was good for both — it was busy this morning, though, and she definitely has trouble with outside noise and confusion interrupting the training session. Her progress is slow, but she goes a little further every day. Today, she did quite a few nice step-ups and some hops to the glove, and lots of repetitions. It was bitter-sweet for me, because:

• Twitch is no longer a bird I will be actively training– I am reluctant in regards to this, but the staff member who is taking over for me is extremely patient and sensitive, and will be perfect for Twitch’s issues. I will still handle Twitch and keep an eye on her progress, but won’t be doing regular daily sessions with her.

Wee One:

Great, but adorably clueless! Two sessions today, and she’s taking the rewards reliably. I’m worried we’re developing a superstitious behaviour, as she always lifts one of her tiny feet and places it on the glove when she takes the food– it’s cute, but I don’t want it interfering with anything later. We’ll have to monitor it. She definitely doesn’t associate the bridge with the reward yet.

• Wee One is also off my training list for active duty. That leaves me with only One-eye as a solo bird and Big Girl as a shared priority.

Why?

Because tomorrow, we’re road-tripping up north to pick up two new, untrained owls– a long-eared and a short-eared. I don’t know what state they’re going to be in, but the restructuring of the training birds will leave me with the time I need to devote myself to the two new arrivals.

Wish us luck!

 

Volunteer Day

Today was not a normal day to begin with, and my attention– admittedly– wasn’t on the birds. We had a crew of volunteers in from another centre for training, which was going to take up most of the day. I did a restraint demonstration, and we did health checks on all the birds in the outdoor pens.

Unfortunately I only had about three hours of sleep last night, and I hadn’t eaten. I was fumbly and muzzy-headed, and manipulating raptor beaks and talons when you’re not feeling well is about as smart as juggling knives when drunk. I have a modest number of punctures and bruises to serve as an abject lesson to myself in the future. That said, I am happy to report that everyone out in the pens is fat and happy, despite the snow and cold.

Due to the heavy workload and the extra bodies, training was hit or miss today.  Still good for the most part, though!

Big Girl:

We definitely crossed a line overnight. The cold weather may have done it– she went from keen to aggressive, and was snappy this morning when I went to weigh her. She did step up nicely, and was good to weigh. I figured the aggression was due to her weight dropping a bit too much overnight, and did a session with her right there on the scale to get some food in her. She was great. No hesitation! But as I knew I’d be busy and wouldn’t be able to get to her again until late in the afternoon, and the food I’d given her wouldn’t last her through the day, I took her for a short walk and then– once she was back in her mew– I wrapped up a food reward in a tube of newspaper and tied it into a knot.

Big Girl is a bird that needs a lot of environmental enrichment in general, but this ‘toy’ was new to her and sometimes she ignores food rewards even when they’re hidden, so I wasn’t sure if she’d go for it. I should probably trust the eagle: when I checked on her a few moments later, a snowstorm of finely shredded newspaper had exploded all over her mew, and the food reward (judging by the content squint she gave me) was eaten.

Unfortunately, by the time I got to her in the afternoon, her patience was long gone. She was far too keen for food, and she met me at the very end of her tether, lunging when she saw the food bag. Although I did get in some hand feeding, it was pretty obvious that she was too irritable and hungry to be in the game. I left her with a large hunk of rat and some chicken, and we’ll see what she’s like tomorrow morning. There’s a pretty narrow line for her between “I will flick this to the ground, because it doesn’t interest me and neither do you” and “GIVE ME THE FOOD I WILL DIE I AM DYING RIGHT NOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU GET OVER HERE IMMEDIATELY!” Obviously, neither of these extremes is conducive to learning.

Tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully the larger meal will take the edge off and we’ll be ready to try again.

Twitch:

The champion of today! Twitch was great. She sat on the perch and took food rewards very nicely. I had to do a few at chest height, but mostly she ate them from foot-level. She took quite a few on presentation after hiding (the movement of the glove on reveal scared her yesterday, so I was very slow today and she managed much better). Better, the two step-ups I got yesterday were leveled-up to ten nice step-ups and one good hop.

She did get ‘stuck’ staring twice– I don’t know what else to call her strange shell-shocked behaviour– but she seemed to snap out of it a bit faster than before. I saved some food to reinforce on the way back to her mew (through the scary hallway), which worked well enough that I will continue to do it in future sessions. My food held out all the way through the scary hallway, and she was calm on glove the whole way… but I ran out of food rewards just as I got to her mew, and the anticipation of being free and away from me was too much for her to sit quietly.  Ah well, live and learn– I’ll work on that tomorrow.

For a few seconds today, when she had stepped up nicely and settled on glove, I got a glimpse of the bird I hope she’ll soon be– the one behind all this blank staring and wariness of everything and everyone. Maybe I imagined it, but she seemed entirely different for just that moment in time. I am eager to see that again.

One-eye:

I was a complete jerk to One-eye today. I used him as an ‘example’ training lesson for the visiting volunteers. He was a trooper, targeting very nicely considering there were 16 extra bodies crammed into the room to watch him work. Obviously the extra distraction made things take a little longer, but he was pretty good at ignoring everyone. We did work a bit on trying to get him to come only when cued, and I think I saw some improvement, but it’s hard to tell with all of the other factors in play.

He was being so good and the volunteers were so interested in the training that I let a few other people try to give him his cue to come to glove. This went surprisingly well, but you could almost see the Metal Gear-style “?” pop up over his head when the first volunteer called him to glove. By the end of it, he was distracted and a little frazzled by all the new people, so I ended the session with some short basic hops. Tomorrow, it’s back to just him and I, and I’m looking forward to it.

With all the hustle and bustle, Wee One got the day off. I’ll try to double up tomorrow to make up for it. We’re off to meet a new RTHA that may be coming home with us, so it’ll all depend on timing.

Turkey (and Chicken)

Although I’m Canadian, and therefore had my Thanksgiving over a month ago, today was festive — on my way home from training today, I turned onto the long, snow-covered laneway that leads up the hill to my crooked old farmhouse only to find a large and rather sedate flock of wild turkeys congregating in the middle of the road. I drove very slowly, and they parted on either side to let me pass. I love living in the country.

The birds were very good today. Progress on all fronts! Everyone got chicken today.

One-eye:

We picked up where we left off– targeting between perch and glove, perch and perch, and glove and perch. He was great. He wasn’t fazed at the height differential I added. Quick and responsive, but not quite as over-reactive as yesterday. About midway through the session, though, I realized there wasn’t much point in continuing until he learned to only come when given the cue, and not just on presentation of the glove. Thus began part two of our session, which did not go as well as the first. I would present the glove, he would come to it. He’d get no bridge and no reward, and I’d send him back. I’d raise the glove again, and he’d come again– no bridge, no reward. Third try, he ignored the raised glove. I gave him the cue, and he came. Perfect! Well, no. The reward that time seemed to erase the reason he’d got the reward from his mind, and he came on the next presentation of the glove without cue. And again. Third try, he ignored the glove again, then came when cued. …And thus started our cycle of it working out every third time. Frustrating for both of us, so we ended the session with some short hops, always with the cue.

I don’t think either of us are going to like the next session, which is going to be entirely focused on getting him to respond only when cued and at no other time.

Big Girl:

Much better today. I continued yesterday’s trend of doing a session with Big Girl between sessions with the other birds. Her first session went perfectly. She was keen and interested, and ate each piece immediately on presentation. I walked away when she’d finished her allotment and when she was still interested, and went to train Twitch. I also corrected my previous error of putting One-eye back in the weathering yard before I was done training Big Girl, so he stayed inside for the duration of everyone’s sessions. Her second session had slight hesitation on beginning, then she did very well for about 10-15 repetitions. As soon as I saw her nibbling and starting to drop pieces, I gave her a particularly nice piece and ended the session. I tried for a third session after training Wee One, but there was no interest at all– I offered three times, got no response, and ended the session. Still, that’s a much longer attention span than she’s shown before, and she was far more engaged than I’ve seen her. Maybe next time we’ll try rat instead of chicken and see what it does to her appetite.

Twitch:

Twitch bailed on me in her mew (she’s freelofted) when I went to get her, and I had to wait for her to return to the perch– on second presentation of the glove, she stepped up nicely and we moved inside to start the session. She was only marginally more relaxed today, but she definitely was more interested in the food. Lots of repetitions at foot level, and I only had to lift it closer to her face a few times when distraction elsewhere in the room got her fixated and ‘stuck’, staring at something. By the end of the session (which was messy– she likes to pop chick heads, so there was brain on her chest, on the perch, on the table, on the floor, and down my leg) she was reaching for the food and putting a foot on the glove. Session ended with two lovely step-ups from the perch to the glove on presentation, which was very nice. She also began to take ‘hidden’ food, but the movement of the glove to reveal the tidbit frightened her, so we’ll go slower with that next session.

Her sessions will eventually have to involve reinforcement for calm behaviour when moving through hallways, doorways, etc. She’s such a stark contrast to One-eye– I hope she learns to trust more readily.

Wee One:

Cut the food much smaller this time, and soaked it– that definitely solved the sticky crop situation, but even the smaller pieces of food were too big. Next time I’m going to really mince them. She cropped up a lot more quickly than I wanted her to. Still, this was a much more useful session than last time. Lots of bridging, some step-ups for visible food, and then some nice step-ups for hidden food that would have gone on longer had she not already been full.

Due to other pressing responsibilities, I think there will be a struggle to find the time to do multiple sessions through the day with most of these birds (which is much better for progress and retention than one longer session, as I’m having to do now). That said, Wee One and her tiny crop will be my first priority if I can find the time to do multiple sessions!

A great day all around. Tomorrow is a big training day for folks from another facility I used to volunteer with, so there will be many extra bodies around– it will be interesting to see if tomorrow’s training sessions are affected by it.

Round One

One-eye:

One-eye is incredibly quick, in every sense of the word. I have some concerns about setting us both up for failure, but he’s raised my expectations surprisingly quickly. Today’s session picked up where we left off– he associates a food reward with a bridge (verbal click), and last session we introduced the cue– two short, sharp taps on the glove to call him to it. We did a few repetitions of this last time. We have already weeded out having the reward visible, and he’s gotten good at waiting for it to be presented. We’ve moved into variable reinforcement as well. Today we started with short hops and quickly moved to longer flights, always with the cue. He was very keen– almost too keen.

With him, it will be a challenge to train him to come only when given the cue, as I ended up with a hawk unexpectedly scrabbling at my shoulder and upper arm when he anticipated my call and came before I was ready. Neat breakthrough: I reinforced the cue with quite a few repetitions, then transferred the cue to a nearby perch. You could see him thinking about it, but he went for it after a moment’s hesitation and got rewarded. The rest of the session, he was targeting perfectly to anything I cued him to, including calling him to a perch and then to the glove for a jackpot. Great bird! Eager to see if the targeting will work to get him into the carrier…

Big Girl:

Big Girl is a picky, picky eater. We have not gone much further yet than trying to associate the bridge with presentation of food. The challenge is that she rarely wants what she’s offered– and if she does want it, she wants to eat it in large chunks. She was more interested in food bits today, however, so I took advantage of it and did two short sessions with as many repetitions as I could manage. By the end of it, she was flinging them everywhere instead of eating them, but she was looking at the glove when I clicked. We’ll have to wait and see how long it takes to get her ready to work.

The interesting thing was that although One-eye was not able to see myself or Big Girl, he could hear us perfectly well– and the repetition of the bridge was driving him bonkers! Made a note in the log to move him before training her next time.

Twitch:

Twitch is a bit of a mystery to me. She’s a big tough female, but she’s afraid of everything. Despite the nickname, it’s less a twitchy fear than a catatonic one, and she’s incredibly wary of everything. She pulls at her jesses, bates through doorways, flares her wings at the slightest provocation, and despises her carrier. Both she and One-eye came to us recently from another centre, so I’m not sure what her training history is… but for now, we have an anxious but beautiful mess on our hands.

Yesterday was Twitch’s first session — she sat on the perch with her wings out and hackles up and stared at the wall. She would not look at food, even when presented at beak-level, no matter how enticing it was. Eventually she made minor progress, but it was all-in-all disheartening enough that I wasn’t expecting much today.

I started small — she’s decently comfortable eating food from the glove while on the glove, but wouldn’t take food from the glove while on a perch. I gave her a few small pieces on the glove to get her started (using the bridge), then set her down on her perch and offered tidbits at beak level. Success! After a few repetitions of that, we went down to chest level, and then to foot level. There were a few interruptions, but she did very well all things considered, and we are quite a few steps ahead of where we were yesterday. I’m hoping this continues tomorrow!

Wee One:

This was Wee One’s first session. She very obviously had no idea at all what I wanted her to do– and I made a mistake in cutting her food pieces far too large and neglecting to wet them first. She filled up much faster than anticipated and got distracted by trying (and trying and trying) to put her crop over. She’s eager but undisciplined right now. Next session: smaller, slicker pieces, and we’ll give it another go!

Overall Challenges:

• The birds are all fat. All of them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but response will be a bit slow until the weights sort themselves out.
• New birds incoming: Two owls arriving next week, another RTHA possibly coming later in the month. I may need to cut down sessions with these guys (transfer them to other staff) to start with the new crew. We’ll have to see.