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Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Discuss topics associated with teaching birds to fly. Training parrots recall flight, target flying, and other flying exercises.

Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby pionus » Tue Nov 27, 2012 7:13 pm

Your posts are very helpful!

Also, that last picture you posted with the rainbow lorikeet was hilarious! My dad is always saying stuff like "multiply by zero", and the resemblance to what it said underneath made me laugh!

Keep up the good training!
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
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Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby charlieandkiwi » Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:57 am

pionus wrote:Your posts are very helpful!

Also, that last picture you posted with the rainbow lorikeet was hilarious! My dad is always saying stuff like "multiply by zero", and the resemblance to what it said underneath made me laugh!

Keep up the good training!


Haha thank you for the comment! I try to keep it interesting in here.

Unfortunately, the last couple days have not been so interesting. I've done way too much studying, haven't scored as good as I'd hoped on some things, and felt like shit as a result.

My "bad" score on school related stuff is technically a decent score :? (I consider B's as bad) and it's hard to rectify how I feel about getting those kinds of grades with what it actually means for me. I need to learn to get over it and focus on being excited about my long term goals. :roll:

Bird training in the last week has been brief. Kiwi stopped extending his flight distance at about 2 feet. I'm trying to get him to transfer the trick from the end of his cage door to other surfaces before working on going any farther. But I think, based on what's happened with Charlie in the last week, that it would be beneficial to also put kiwi on a variable schedule of reinforcement before I do that.

:hatched: Charlie finally figured out that he has to fly to me on command at least two times before he gets a treat and it really did serve to speed up the response time when I give the signal. I've just been rewarding him every second time, but over the next couple days I'm going to try switching it up to every three or four times and, after he gets that, turn it into a random number of times. I expect that once we get to random, it-could-be-five-or-six-times, he will be extremely consistent and fast at the trick.

It took him about two days to switch to the every-other-time pattern of reinforcement. I expect that switching him up to three will take less time because he's learned that treats are sometimes delayed. But for others on here reading this, just know that switching the pattern of reinforcement seems to take the bird longer to figure out than the actual trick when you do it for the first time. :thumbsup:
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Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby charlieandkiwi » Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:58 pm

This is a good idea that I need to start doing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-yBPEikn1U

Also, this morning Charlie woke up in an incredibly excited mood. He's been displaying and making all of his favorite noises since the second he was uncovered. I did a short training session with him and Kiwi before I left for school and they both did great. Charlie got a bit distracted at the end because Evan woke up and walked into the room. Evan is Charlie's favorite person, so instead of doing flight recalls, he sat on Evan's shoulder and tried to get him to do head bobs with him. I'm going to have to start training charlie to fly to me when he's on Evan.

Kiwi flew twice today toward or onto us without a cue! :hatched: I took him into the bathroom when I was going to take my shower and put him on the towel holder where he normally stands. He flew onto the counter and crawled onto me while I was brushing my hair. I praised him a bunch and let him sit on my shoulder until he started getting defensive towards my hair brush. I ignored it until he lightly nipped my hand, at which point I told him no, put him on the ground for about a minute, and then put him back on the towel rack. He sat there until Evan came into the bathroom to brush his teeth and then he flew onto me. Once again I praised him and held him for a little while before getting in the shower (we live in a trailer and there isn't really enough room in the shower to bring him into it with me, so he always stands on the towel rack while I'm showering).

I have seen a ton of advice to just ignore parrot biting and I disagree with this. I think that if you have a parrot who is doing it out of fear, ignoring it will probably work. I also think that if you have a parrot who doesn't like you or is little and doing it because he doesn't know his own strength, ignoring it will probably work. But if you have a parrot who enjoys biting and sees it as a game that he can actually play with himself for hours with his toys in his own cage, ignoring it will not work. Kiwi is one of these birds. Kiwi loves chasing and biting things just for the fun of chasing and biting. He does it with pens, with toys in his cage, with shoe strings, and if you ignore it, he will up the anti indefinitely because he thinks attacking things is fun. When I first got him, this meant that he would rip open skin on a regular basis if you weren't watching him.

Now, when he does this he nips very lightly and he will also try to ignore the stimulus that makes him want to do it for an extended period of time. He hasn't pierced anyone's skin in over a year and I can now brush my hair and work on homework assignments in relative peace (without him obsessing over attacking the object and the hand holding it). Before, he used to immediately bite as hard as possible (this meant a lot of bleeding). I use the give-a-warning followed by praise if he stops, keeping him out of situations that trigger the behavior (that's why he sits in the towel stand while I do things in the bathroom), and immediately putting him on the ground when he does any sort of a bite. I've been consistent with this for three years and he went from ripping open skin immediately, to not as often, to learning to stop and hold back, to hard nips, to light nips, and then to where he is now, with long pauses of trying to ignore the stimulus and then a very light nip some of the time if the stimulus is within a foot of him (which he still gets put on the ground for). When I ignore the behavior (now or when I got him), he would continue it for at least 15 minutes and his behavior was very playful. He sees chasing and biting as a game.

Charlie also used to bite now and then. He has never, in the whole 8 years I've had him, bit me so hard it broke my skin. In fact, I didn't even know he was capable of breaking skin until he bit open a boyfriend. When I first started dating Evan, Charlie would bite him on occasion. We used to same method that we are using for Kiwi, and Charlie hasn't bit anyone in about 3 years (he stopped nipping me after the first year).

I imagine that some people on this forum probably disagree with this training method, but I'm going to put it out there anyway, because 1. I have seen that just ignoring biting doesn't work some of the time. 2. This method doesn't use any sort of harm to the bird and has reduced the behavior in one of my birds by a great deal and completely eliminated it in the other.

Just keep in mind that birds bite for different reasons and this wont work as well as ignoring it if your bird is biting for a reason other than it thinks chasing and biting is a fun form of play.
charlieandkiwi
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Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 108
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Types of Birds Owned: I have a 4-5 year old green cheeked conure and an 8 year old white eared conure.
Flight: Yes

Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby charlieandkiwi » Fri Nov 30, 2012 9:59 pm

This afternoon Kiwi initiated being put back on his cage so he could fly for treat! He also flew off of the couch a couple times. He also decided that he wanted to spend some time on Evan and is now sitting quietly in his cage preening.

Evan and I worked on getting Charlie to fly to the other person on command and I switched Charlie to a more variable schedule of reinforcement (up to three times now without a treat, but sometimes he gets it on two or one). That didn't take him any time to figure out. :hatched:

Tomorrow I'm planning on going down to the stream near my house and cutting down a giant willow branch to make them a bird tree out of. I'm thinking about getting an old Christmas tree stand and attaching that to a board I have in order to stabilize the tree and be able to use something huge without buying a bunch of extra screws and parts.

Kiwi and me doing a weird half smile.

Image
charlieandkiwi
Conure
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 108
Number of Birds Owned: 2
Types of Birds Owned: I have a 4-5 year old green cheeked conure and an 8 year old white eared conure.
Flight: Yes

Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby friend2parrots » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:17 pm

Hey we're waiting for the next chapter in the adventures of Charlie and Kiwi! did you get to make the bird tree?
Ringo - Green Cheek Conure
Toby - Bourke Parakeet
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Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby asymonds84 » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:29 pm

Me gusta mucho el método de aprendizaje de la educación. Este niño lo disfrutamos mucho. Con la educación, pueden aprender más fácilmente. Usted puede preparar una cantidad tan atractivo, generoso para estudiar cada tema explicación para nosotros, así como para aumentar hechos y en secuencias, sin influencia a un acuerdo.
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Re: Teaching Kiwi to Fly and Charlie to Poop

Postby marie83 » Sat Dec 15, 2012 6:28 am

Well thank you google translate, this still doesn't make a whole lot of sense..... lol. i think the above message is probably more spam.

"I really like the learning method of education. This child really enjoyed. With education, they can learn more easily. You can make a batch so attractive, generous to study each topic explanation for us, and for increasing sequences facts and without influence agreement."
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Pineapple Green Cheek Conure
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