Companion Parrot Foundation Skills Training with Steve Martin of Natural Encounters

Part 2 of 4

Posted: 2007-04-26

Sunday Icebreaker

At the Chalet Suzanne restaurant the 18 students were ushered into a quaint meeting room with a peaked wooden ceiling and what might be described as romantic balcony cove tables. This is a well known (historic landmark) restaurant that has its own private airstrip. (One of their soups was taken on an Apollo Lunar mission.) My fellow students came from from places such as Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Wisconsin, Washington state, the US Virgin Islands, Alaska and Ireland. What geographical diversity! Some of the students already knew one another from other training, interactions on Yahoo Groups, and/or because they were part of a group named "Phoenix Landing". Name tags and student course binders were distributed, then Steve introduced himself and his staff, giving us the plan of activities for the week and laying out the ground rules for the course. Did I write "ground rules"? Somehow that implies some rigidity and rigid is not a word that I would apply to Steve Martin, flexible is a better word. He welcomed us with charm and a very open and engaging manner. There was plenty of food, beer, wine and other beverages provided (free) for a relaxed meeting. He asked each one of us to get up and tell the group what we were expecting from the course. It was very interesting to hear the different expectations held by the 18 participants.

Steve asked us to let him or his staff know of anything we needed. He told us that all the facilities of the Ranch were available to us; the washer and dryer, the beverages and snacks, the locations of the restrooms, and how not to disturb the finches in the poolside aviary after dark when using that bathroom. He asked us not to pet the dogs unless they were sitting, not to stand or sit on fire ant nests (warning us of this widespread pest in Florida), asked us not to pet the birds so as not to upset their relationships with other trainers. He gave us permission to get up and adjust the classroom thermostats if we were uncomfortable. He asked us not to record the lectures but to feel free to tape any other activity and explained his reasons for the request -mainly that fiddling with the camcorder can get in the way of participating (I agreed with that) and that he would be marketing DVDs of the lectures in the future. He told us that breakfast and lunch were going to be provided by NEI every day, we were only responsible for our evening meal. Two vehicles were provided to us to drive to and from the motel, or to take ourselves out to dinner or shopping; as well as two portable GPS units so we wouldn't get lost. Each day would end at 5PM with a wrap-up session, with beer, wine and other beverages for a relaxed review of what we found to be the highlights of our training.

Course Syllabus

The course syllabus covered the following:

1. Behavior Basics
2. Training
3. Shaping
4. Parrot Behavior

 

Without going into any detail, the following topics were presented, explained and video examples often provided for discussion:

• What are behaviors? Anything which can be observed
• What are reinforcers? Anything which increases the future likelihood of a behavior
• What are Aversive? Conditioned stimulus and fear
• What are punishers? Anything which decreases the future likelihood of a behavior
• The basics are not so simple: Negative Reinforcement - Positive Punishment - Aversive stimulus - Removing an Aversive
• Lures, Baiting, and when to use them - hiding the reinforcer in the hand
• Honesty with the bird: making good on the promise of a reinforcer
• Reading bird behavior, recognizing aggression, respecting the birds "space", soliciting and waiting for an invitation into the bird's space
• Relationship Trust Account: building up a positive balance of trust with the bird so that the occasional small withdrawal can be made without jeopardizing the relationship with the trainer
  
• Capturing behavior - interrupting an existing behavior such as a launch to flight in order to train a wingspread
• Behavioral momentum, using success to drive the training pace, how that works with reverse chaining
• How Frustration can lead to a breakthrough (referencing Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker) for the bird
• Aversive training / Punishment may train much faster - but at what cost of the longevity of the training
• Window of opportunity for reinforcing behavior, how it exists in nature and can be aversive training for the bird to lean the consequences of inaction or slow response
• Responsibility for the birds behavior: the trainer should always accept responsibility for the birds behavior ("The rat is always right!")
• Using self-video of training to improve techniques and discover training flaws, timing issues, or misreading the bird's behavior

Although there was a lot of lecture time we still fell behind in the schedule because there was so much interaction from the students. Steve welcomed the questions and viewpoints offered by the class. However all of the material was covered by the end of the week, the course was well paced.

Pete's Parrots and Wicker Emporium

A regular "commercial" was presented in Steve's videos. These were a series of humorous "commercials" of various ways birds are misunderstood, abused and the misconceptions of some "trainers". They were hilarious, and kept us engaged, even though they pointed out the tragic misconceptions and barbaric birdkeeping practices which are being marketed to the public.

 

Group Assignments and Bird Selection

We were assigned to our groups and the group leaders from Steve's staff were introduced. Then we got down to the business of selecting who got to work with the which of the 46 available birds. NEI provides a pool of birds to be selected by the students and groups based on the goals of the students for the course. Some of the birds are experienced with prior training, others are naive and have not been trained previously. Each student would have one bird to train during the week, and each group would have one or two additional birds to train with a group project. I was assigned to the group led by Cassie, who has been on Steve's staff for over ten years. Wanting to expand my experience with cockatoos, I requested a Black Palm or Umbrella Cockatoo, but someone else in another group got to work with those birds and I was assigned a two year old Blue Throated Macaw named "Anna". In our group Susan (from Seattle) was assigned a Galah (Rose Breasted Cockatoo) named "Julio", Kate (from Wisconsin) was assigned a Greenwing Macaw named "Linus", and Neesie (from N. Carolina) was assigned a Toco Toucan (and I've forgotten the name of the bird.) As a group we had an Umbrella Cockatoo named "Kaya" who was already trained as a show bird, and a Kea Parrot named "Ike" (yes, just like the Ikea store.) At some point I remember that Steve mentioned that there were about 407 birds on the property, not including the birds at the separate Disneyworld show facility. The trainers were aware of what behaviors the "experienced" birds had been trained to do and the cues used for them to avoid conflicts with our training efforts.

Monday - Friday Class Days

The days began at 8:00AM with the short 10 minute drive to the ranch. The ranch is a farmhouse on a large rural property with a number of outbuildings, tents, and aviary enclosures. A nondescript dirt road leads to the property with a small sign. On arrival we began with a breakfast of bagels, donuts, fruit, juices, flavored and plain coffee, tea, etc., in the classroom. Small bowls of candy adorned the table tops of the classroom. We were told to help ourselves, not to be shy about getting up anytime to get coffee, juice, water, etc., during the morning lecture.

That's right, each morning has a lively two hour lecture presented by Steve Martin up front in the classroom, using a large projection television and his Apple Laptop using the Keynote software to present the text, pictures and video. The lecture is preceded by a short quiz, and then a review of the questions and answers. The quiz results go to Steve and the training staff so they can see how well they were doing teaching us the content. The quiz forms are returned to us, sometimes with comments on our answers. I annotated my own answers with any points I had missed.

Whirlwind Tour of the Facility

However, Monday being the first day, instead of a quiz, we began the morning by receiving a "goody bag" containing a NEI coffee mug, a pen, a copy of Karen Pryors book "Don't Shoot the Dog", an NEI "clicker" on a lanyard and an NEI pouch belt for holding the seeds and peanuts that we would be using. The binder given to us the night before contained a note pad and printed copies of all of the slides in the presentations with room for our own notes. That was followed by a whirlwind tour of the facility and birds. There was no time to stop and gawk at the wonders that they have in the facility: hawks, eagles, vultures, crows, ravens, storks, hornbills, cockatoos, black palm cockatoos, keas, toucans, amazons, finches, cockatiels, loris, macaws, hyacinth macaws, greenwing macaws, scarlet macaws, red something macaws! Oh my and tigers too! (No, there were no Tigers, that was just for dramatic effect.)

They also have two dogs, several Burros, and rehabilitated Sandhill Crane wandering about. Did I mention that they had macaws? The purpose was to show us the layout, there was no time to take it all in, but what a wonder of birds we saw! I heard my fellow students vocalizing "Oohs", "Did you see that?", and "Aahs" as we zipped through the aviaries. The ranch also has breeding facilities, including some special birds of the World Parrot Trust, but they were not on the tour.

Lecture

Every day after the short morning quiz from 8:30 to 10:30 Steve would review the quiz and discuss the questions. Then he would give us a lecture covering learning theory and concepts with an emphasis about how they form the foundation for the positive reinforcement techniques. It helps if you have a done a little reading of Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning and Learning Theory(especially those of B.F. Skinner,) but Steve does a good job covering the basic principles in class with real videos demonstrating what he teaches. There were frequent references to his colleague, Susan Friedman of the University of Utah, and her LLP course, as well as the book by Karen Pryor "Don't Shoot the Dog". Steve encouraged the students to ask questions and bring up opposing ideas. He would not be baited into condemning different viewpoints or contradictory approaches by other trainers, but he would share his opinions about them and explain why he had a different view. He makes liberal use of photos and videos of parrots in the wild (he has been on several expeditions around the world to meet with ornithologists in the field) and from his shows to expand upon his presentation. These are not dry boring presentations, they are lively and interesting, sprinkled with his humor and stories. He can tell such entertaining stories about his experiences working with other trainers and zoo staff around the world! He is very passionate about his approach to training and his ire could be raised when the topic of "the bird whisperer" was brought up, but even that was tempered with an explanation of "learned helplessness" and the drawbacks of such an approach. Even though I was tired from not sleeping very well during the first few days, he kept me awake and interested all the time.

Training Demonstration and Guided Practice

After the lecture, at 10:30 AM Steve would provide a live demonstration of a training session with a bird. Sometimes it was in the classroom, but more often it was in one of the large aviaries. After the demonstration we would break into smaller groups of 3-4 students for the remainder of the 2 hours before lunch with one of the NEI Trainers, Steve would move from group to group observing, taking pictures and sometimes contributing suggestions and explanations. So what were we doing in those small groups?

Group and Individual Projects

We were asked to define a set of training behaviors that we would train our individual birds during the week. In addition, as a group we were to define a set of training behaviors to train the group birds, if time allowed. On Monday morning, right after Steve's first lecture and demonstration about animal learning and reinforcement we went off as small groups to meet our birds for the first time and start training right away with 3 small behaviors. One by one, the four of us were introduced to the birds we would train and were asked right there on the spot, what are three small behaviors we would train right then and there with the bird inside the cage and us outside. This put me on the spot and I immediately had trouble getting the gears going. I could not use the behaviors used by the students who had gone before me because the physical layout of the cage was different. But I went for the obvious. The macaw, "Anna" was sitting on a horizontal perch about half of the cage depth away from the door, so I decided that the first behavior was to come to the door, the second was to climb down the inside of the door, and the third (which demonstrated my ignorance of things macaw) was for Anna to sit on the floor at the bottom of the door. The first two behaviors went by really fast, the bird did not need much prompting to fly over to the door. Shaping the bird's behavior to climb down the door was easy. But the third took some work, because I'm told, that Macaws do not like to be on the ground. Here the floor was poured concrete. Anna was very reluctant to step off the door onto the floor. But with some careful shaping, this reluctance was quickly overcome and Anna sat on the floor... and received her reinforcer. Wow! That was fast and simple. Too simple you say? Well, we had to start somewhere, keeping it simple sets everyone, trainer and trainee up for success.

Meeting Anna the Blue Throated Macaw

Meeting "Anna" the blue throated macaw was thrilling. Although I have been around macaws in local bird stores for decades now, I had never handled one and I find them very intimidating. You might argue with me that Cockatoo beaks are no less intimidating, but I had some trepidation about handling a macaw. Anna may not have been the biggest macaw there, but she seemed larger than my boys at home. But I learned that she was a gentle bird, and very curious about me. She was not aggressive and did not try to bite me. Some of the other students, who were more familiar with macaws, pointed out how she was ruffling her head feathers when I was with her and that was a sign that she liked me. She certainly enjoyed the sunflower seeds I offered her as rewards and I was amazed at how quickly she caught on to what I was trying to train her, the communication between us seemed to be working. Getting her in and out of cages was quite different from how I handle my cockatoo boys and the eclectus. With macaws the trainer must be very conscious of the length of their tails because they don't like them to be brushed on the doorway opening.

As the week went on, my feelings of intimidation slowly decreased and I became more comfortable around her, but it would take a bit longer I think to become completely relaxed with her.

Lunch

Each day a hot lunch was provided at 12:30. The menu was different every day and appeared to have been prepared by some local restaurants. There were usually 4 different selections. The challenge was not to eat so much that it would put me to sleep during the afternoon. Sodas, juices, water, coffees and teas were available. A well stocked refrigerator was there for our needs so we could keep the lunch short and get back to learning.

Afternoon Lecture followed by Training Demonstration and Guided Practice

Following the same pattern as the morning, after lunch from 1 - 3 PM Steve would lecture for two hours. After the lecture from 3 to 5 PM there was another demonstration by Steve, then we would break into our groups again to work with our individual and group birds. On Monday each one of us decided on the training behavior goals for the week for our bird and then the group decided on the training for the two group birds.

Previous: Part 1 or Next: Basics for Trainer and Trainee in Part 3 ...

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