Mr. Bird's Neighbourhood

B flew off again yesterday, this time toward the neighbours whose yard backs onto our yard. He got excited and flew off farther than usual, since he usually curves back around so that he never strays too far from the edge of our yard. Far enough so that I couldn't see him. Hate when that happens.

So I grab my shoes, keys and C to trek off to the next street to find him. The scary part is that I have to walk (really, I was shuffling as fast as I could, but smoothly enough so that C wouldn't fall) to the cross-street in order to get to the parallel street that the other houses are on. When I go that far from the house, I can't hear B anymore, so I get worried he can't hear us either. Then I worry that he might think we disappeared, fly around in a panic looking for us, and by the time I get there, it's impossible to find him since he's already moved.

Well, thankfully that didn't happen. I finally get to the next street, and go down listening house by house until I figure which house his calls sound closest to, but I still can't see him. I figure he's in the neighbour's backyard. So I go to their front door to ring the bell and while I'm waiting for them to answer the door, B comes flying out around to the front of the house!!

I couldn't believe it! He was so smart to know to fly around to us, even when he was probably worried, not having seen us for 5 whole minutes. He lands on an upstairs window ledge, so from there, I just ask B to fly on down to us so we can walk back home. He got a bit of a lecture about not going so far next time, a bit of a lesson about what street we were on in case it happened again, and a bit more praise for being so smart to fly around the house to the front even though he couldn't see us, for being so good to come so quickly and staying put the whole time in between. C was also very well-behaved and calm the whole time, sitting on my hand and making contact calls to B once in a while to help. Some passersby commented on the birds, how beautiful they were, with some curious questions about whether they could fly, fly away, and so on. I'm thinking about taking them for more walks while it's seasonable.

B seems to be getting more and more independent, and I'm getting the sense that he wants to explore the neighbourhood and venture into the world beyond. He also seems more responsible, being less stubborn about sitting somewhere unreachable just because he can, while me and C are waiting and worrying. Maybe he listened the last time I lectured him about not making his mummy worry, and about how much better it was to come back sooner so that everyone can have fun, not just him.

The photo is from the other day, but doesn't he look so incorrigible?

Flying Without Flying

All is going swimmingly in the flock this summer.

I have finally figured out how to exercise C. I was inspired by how they exercise clipped birds at Parrot Island Sanctuary, which I read about in Companion Parrot Quarterly: they hold his body and let him flap around the room while being held. They really seem to think they're flying! Here's the video I watched from their website of a woman flying an Amazon parrot this way.

A couple days ago, I tried it just like on the video, cupping C's body in my two hands and letting him fly, but I couldn't really get his body, so he'd often end up flapping out of my hands and landing on the ground, as I tried to run behind him at the same rate as his flapping. A lot of stop and start. He gets very excited when he's outside and desperately wants to fly. So when we were outside today, I decided to hold his body with just one hand and started running around the yard. Well, he did it! He started flapping his wings and kept going like he was flying! He even held his little feet back in a flight position! I was so proud of him. We did that a few times, then I realized he was looking pretty spent so we figured that's enough for one day. That's why he looks so sleepy in the photo.

I plan for us to do more flapping like this for as long as we can. I hope the summer's long -- I figured this out so late! Of course I will still do the flapping on hand but he can't sustain that very long because of his weak legs and feet and/or excitement, which means he often flaps/falls off my hand. Besides, this seems like much more fun for him, and better exercise for me too.

B has taken to the branch I set up outside as home base, and will often fly straight there when I say "Fly to perch". I'm also now able to encourage him to fly from my hand, to get exercise flying around a bit outside. Today was the first day where he's been able to launch from my hand, fly up, loop around, and land back on my hand. He seems to turn back around as soon as he's gone anywhere; that's how devoted he is to us (not really "us", of course, but just Bird C, really). When he lands elsewhere, on the roof, or in a spruce, he comes back almost immediately (within 1-2 minutes). Those were both today; he was very cute, hopping from branch to branch on a spruce until he had a clear shot back over to us. I couldn't actually see him, but I was circling counterclockwise around the spruce to see him, and he was hopping to circle in the same direction on the opposite side of the trunk, so I'd hear him and see the branches shake a bit with a flash of grey-black tail every now and then.

B loves the camera. When I'm shooting, he looks right at it and will even start serenading it sometimes. Today, I took a series of closeups from a high angle, and he was very agreeable, tilting his head up to eye the camera whenever I asked him to look up for the shot. What a star. He's even got the moody hooded brow.

Wondering what the birds are sitting on today in these photos? Me too! In the Spring, I collected some of the birdseed husks that they'd finished eating and scattered them in the garden, hoping it'd help break up the soil and keep it from impacting. Over the past few months, these grassy things have started growing. At first, I just thought they were grass and let them be. Then they started getting really tall really fast, and growing these seed heads that don't look like anything else I've ever seen in the wilderness of the yard. They're starting to mature from fresh green to seedy brown, and I think I can recognize the little seeds coming in. I'm wondering if they might be millet. Or if not millet, whatever those long pointy seeds in birdseed, that come with the round millet, are. Does anyone know?

Do I dare think I finally have a source of organically grown bird seed? I pulled up a clump of it to transplant to a pot with some flowering spinach, so that they can play with some living greens indoors, assuming they survive the transplant.

Verbal Birds

After a couple weeks with the N. hollandicus research on operant conditioning with target stick, both subjects were doing quite well. On July 3, we had Bird C giving 91% success rate at 21/1 (#Successful Repetitions/Errors) and Bird B at 87% success with 15/2. I thought they might be getting bored with touching the rocks, so I decided to move on to training with verbal cues only after one normal session each -- that means no target sticks to give them the answer.

Results were less successful. In general, there was much more trial and error, although I think the subjects have "favourites" where they often get the right rock on the first try with certain colours. I say "Touch green" or "Touch green rock" and B almost always gets it. Bird C seems better with "Touch pink". I started with 4 targets (green, clear, shiny, pink) then reduced to 2 targets (clear, pink) then added 1 more target (green) and sometimes another target (rust). Perhaps I should be more consistent. I realized 4 was too many to start with, so I just concentrated on teaching "pink" and "clear" until they seemed to get it. Data was not collected for these sessions, which went on several days, since I haven't figured out how to make pretty charts and graphs with the data yet. Sometimes, I'd pull out the target stick to help them learn the answer. Sometimes I'd hold the correct rock up to their beak so that they would learn that touching that green rock when I said "Touch green" would get a click and treat. Then we took a break from training for a few days and just started again today.

B's flying is becoming much more confident. Scary incident last week: We're outside on the back deck and B is getting more and more excited. Suddenly he launches himself off, flies straight down the driveway at the side of the house, and toward the front. We've spent most of our time in the back, where it's quiet and safe, without pedestrians, cars or other vehicles, so I'm nervous and frantically running off to the street in my slippers and pajama pants with C on my hand. I can hear B calling and calling, regular screams, but I can't spot him no matter how much I search the trees and roofs of the neighbouring houses. Usually, he won't fly back towards us unless he can see us. And often, he doesn't unless I see him first and get his attention off his screaming long enough to attempt a flight back.

Suddenly, I see a grey blur zoom from my side of the street across to the other side of the street. I can barely see what it is, but it's not moving like a normal wild bird, so I start screaming his name and waving my arm wildly from the end of the driveway. He must have seen or heard me because the grey blur then takes a sharp turn and veers straight toward me, fast. Then, B lands past me on the driveway. He must have been flying too hard to aim for my hand, because when I pick him up, he's completely out of breath and looks all panicky.

Thank goodness I was there to call out to him so that he could fly back to our driveway instead of getting more lost from a panicked flight. I'm guessing he must have come across a cat, and took off like the devil then. Otherwise, I don't think he would have been flying when he was already tired -- usually he takes his sweet time up on some choice perch while C and I are calling and begging him to come back down for 20 minutes. Plus, we've seen a cat in the area, and I think the house a few doors down has one -- right around where I sawthe grey blur emerge.

B's been a very good bird lately though. Today I took him outside for a flight, and he flew around the backyard twice before landing in the garden, then came right back to us as soon as he could. He's not very good at aiming for a landing on my hand. Sometimes he ends up on my shoulder or the top of my head, or more painfully, scrabbling off my forehead, and sometimes he misses me altogether. I'm not sure if he's landing in low spots (driveway, garden) on purpose these days, so that I can pick him up easier, or if he just runs out of steam at the last minute.

Or maybe he doesn't like the roof any more. A couple of days ago, it was sunny and I took them outside; as usual, he flew and landed on the roof. Sunny day and the black shingles must have been hot. As usual, he likes to run to the edge of the roof before flying, the lazy thing. He'd try running down towards us, but then he'd stop to pick up one of his feet. I tried yelling at him to just fly over, so that he could be off the hot roof, but he'd just take a few steps, then stand there on one foot, beaking the lifted foot. I'm starting to question how clever B really is. He may be too much in the moment to be able to do any of the thinking and planning ahead that would require higher intelligence. I felt pretty helpless, since I knew it must have been really hot, yet I couldn't just get him off that hot roof. When I finally got him back, his feet were baking hot all right, so I took him inside and ran his feet under cold tap water. I hope he didn't get too burned.

Q: What is the victory of a bird on a hot tin roof?
A: Just staying on it I guess, long as he can.

Avians With Rivalry

I'm posting more about the birds and the research we are undertaking into Operant Conditioning and Model/Rival strategies in training. Irene Pepperberg has found the M/R much more effective than classical OC, and I definitely saw that it was effective with at least one of the birds. I originally started the conditioning, hoping to train on recall so that I would feel safer taking the birds outside, that if he flew off by mistake, he would come back. While we're not progressing on that aspect of the training, their enthusiasm has inspired me to see how much more they can learn. We'll be somewhat limited in communication since the birds don't speak English, and my Cockatiel is not exactly fluent. I'm improving, though -- I think!

An unfortunate side effect from the Model/Rival technique and my inexperience with all this:
Since B has been jumping down to compete with C during C's sessions, I have tried to be consistent, and if B touches the indicated target during C's session, I reward him accordingly before bringing him back to the perch. Well, I guess the Model/Rival now works both ways, because now C sometimes jumps down during B's sessions to compete with B back! Chaos. Without thinking, I inadvertently taught both birds to interrupt each other's sessions for rewards! It's cute that they're so excited about it, though, and I'm gratified to know that they're so smart. (The alternative -- that I am so dumb -- is considerably less gratifying.) So now I just need to pick up the interloper as soon as he starts clambering down, without giving him a chance to get the right target, in which case I will be committed to supplying the reward as I have been trained.

[By the way, the above isn't an image of their rivalry but rather the opposite. I took them outside to sit in a tree, which is something that birds like to do. It was such a nice day that C started singing to B. You can see in B's expression how excited and pleased he is to be serenaded...]

I'm still doing flight training every day with Bird B, to practice several things: i) flying from high to low; ii) angling and flying around corners; and iii) flying back to me and Bird C, especially when called (although he pretty much does it whenever he wants, which I figure is also good, as long as he's safe). The flight training seems to be helping. We were practicing outside the other day, where Bird B typically gets "blown upwards" whenever he tries to fly down to us. B was on the roof and I was on the ground with C, urging B to come to us. Suddenly, B launched himself into the air, flapping so hard and fast, fighting frantically to fly down without getting lifted up, and then in seconds, he had made a perfectly abrupt landing right onto my hand! I was so proud of him for that flight! I piled on him much praise and admiration as his little body was heaving from the effort.

Observations: 1 target added since previous session.
7 targets used: pink, clear, green, shiny, rust, purple and orange rocks.
2007/06/30
B1: 65% correct. 17/9 successful repetitions over errors. 5 errors on rust rock. 3 errors on shiny. Target to stick on clear. While target to stick is recorded as an error, I think that strictly speaking, it's the researcher's fault rather than the subject. Researcher must withdraw stick in time so that it is not in the way. 1039-1044h.

C1: 89% correct. 25/3. One error each on purple and clear. Target to stick on rust. 1044-1051h.

B2: 58% correct. 18/13. No errors on green. Extremely poor performance. B's performance deteriorating today with repeated sessions. 1052-1059h.

C2: 76% correct. 22/7. Many errors are target to stick. No errors on rust or orange. B jumps down to join C toward end of session. 1100-1108h.

C3: 79% correct. 19/5. Three errors on orange. One error each on clear and purple. No errors on pink, rust, shiny, green. 1948-1953h.

B3: 82% correct. 9/2. One error each on orange and shiny. Session interrupted by telecommunications. B eager to continue his training session and insisted on finishing training before researcher should finish telecommunications session. 1954h.

B4: 73% correct. 16/6. Three errors on orange. Two errors on purple. One error on clear. No errors on pink, rust, shiny, green. 2014-2019h.

C4: 93% correct. 14/1. Single error was target to stick on green. B jumped down during this session. 2019h.

B5: 76% correct. 13/4. Two errors on pink. One error each on purple, orange.

C5: 86% correct. 19/3. One error each on rust, orange, clear. One error due to researcher impatience as subject still masticating. 2030h.

Trends in errors: I have noticed a trend that I will call the Ultimate Indolence Effect. The birds often have errors with any targets that are at the end of the array. They almost always go for the penultimate target, too lazy to go all the way to the end to get the correct target. This appears to be ineffective, since it only delays when the subject will get the reward. Nonetheless, the UIE seems to be a factor with both birds. I have since tried to rearrange the targets so that they will be roughly equidistant to the subject in a surrounding arc, instead of in a straight line where the ends are much farther away. I hope this will negate the Ultimate Indolence Effect.

I should probably feed data into a spreadsheet for analysis, as typing up notes on each session and the errors isn't getting anywhere.