Training During Breeding Season

It's that time of year again and last week marked the first puffy dance of the season for my Lilac Crowned Amazon Lucha. The recipient was my African Grey Marnie, who as usual looked blankly at this dancing amazon and walked away when he started regurgitating for her.
Of course Marnie is not the only recipient of puffy dances. Toes and feet are also displayed for regularly if he can get close enough, no matter if you have socks on or are hiding your feet in your pants leg, Lucha dances away before giving them a present.

With Lucha's crate up training this is causing a problem. I don't have a dining table (the birds cages take up the dining area), so I had been setting the crate on the floor (tile, he has problems walking on carpet or bedding) and sitting on the floor to target Lucha into the crate... which worked well until last week. Unfortunately I have not worked out a way of sitting on the floor which completely hides my feet. So now while I am attempting to target Lucha, he is far more interested in serenading my feet... and as reinforcement is in the eye of the bird, he finds my feet of infinitely higher value than even an almond in the shell.

So how does everyone else deal with training their hormonal bird?

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of an Amazon puffy dance then I have a little photo story below. You'll have to imagine the growling, clucking whine he makes.

First you puff up all over, but paying special attention to the cheeks and trousers. Begin flipping wings and waddling back and forwards...


With a flip of the head change direction...


And the other way...


One more repetition...


And REGURGITATE!

Training Update 01/20/2009

Training has been a little slow the past couple of days, but there are still updates!

Marnie has been learning to target to an acrylic wand. I have been bridging and rewarding her for touching the target and so far she's doing pretty good. She does have a few moments where she fixes me with one eye and stares for a second before touching the target... I think she's just trying to work out why I want her to touch the target. The targeting behavior is going to be step one of teaching her to "Crate Up"

Lucha has also been learning to target. He has learned to target to the syringe for his last medical behavior, but now I have replaced the syringe with the acrylic wand. Lucha really gets into this behavior and will move all along the T-stand to touch the target. Interestingly during the last target session I failed to notice I was holding the pecan (from which I was breaking his reinforcer) in plain view, in the hand with the target wand and within reach of his beak. But Lucha being a good boy who loves to train would glance at the pecan, before reaching out and touching the target anyway. So rather than go straight for the pecan, he preferred to perform the behavior for a smaller reinforcer!
Yesterday I introduced the carrier. Lucha has been in this carrier before to the vet, so is familiar with it. Handily it has a door on the top as well as the end, so I was able to to open that to get a better angle. Lucha was happy to follow the target as far as perching in the open doorway before he showed signs of nervousness in his body language. So a good start from which to build on.

Darwin has been working well on his recall and has recalled from across the room on a number of occasions. I will continue to work on recalling from a variety of locations around the house. Although we may have a problem in the future as I have recently heard Marnie saying "Come Here" in my voice, which is Darwin's recall cue LOL

On a slight aside: Things are still moving forwards for the Austin Parrot Society. We now have a blog set up at http://www.austinparrotsociety.blogspot.com for updates on the planning processes and for information on meetings.