Come when called

[outhawkn]

In order to take full advantage of OC when I have a newly trapped hawk on the fist. Do I want to use my whistle/voice whatever, every time the bird takes a bite? Or just the first time?

[Keith Denman]

When I have a fresh trapped bird I use tapping the toe of the bird and clicking my tomgue. I just want to draw the bird's attention down to the glove to the tidbit. Some birds you may have to take a bigger piece and get them to bite it and slowly pull it down to the glove. It usually takes only one or two times and the bird comes around pretty quick.

[andy hall]

I guess I don't understand the question or your goal. What part of OC are you trying to take advantage of?

Andy

[FredFogg]

In order to take full advantage of OC when I have a newly trapped hawk on the fist. Do I want to use my whistle/voice whatever, every time the bird takes a bite? Or just the first time?

Bill you crack me up! LOL clappclappclapp

[outhawkn]

Bill you crack me up! LOL clappclappclapp


No Problem Fred...............toungeout:D

But seriously, if I'm teaching a new bird, say a sharpy for example to come when called do I want to whistle each and every bite. Or do I want to give the bird a bite and whistle once?

What do you do and why?

[AK Rev]

Just the first time. That not only covers this hawk but also the next one also. peacee

[goshawks00]

I think it depends on the hawkideaa

[outhawkn]

Obviously I didnt word this question properly..................confusedd:eek::D

[FredFogg]

Bill, with any new bird, I whistle every time they reach down and take a bite. Eventually, I back off and only whistle once in a while. When I can whistle and they immediately look down to the glove to see what is there, is when I start just doing the whistle periodically. By the way, I whistle with my mouth, I only use a mechanical whistle for the lure. I can whistle as loud with my mouth as most mechanical whistles.

[andy hall]

Bill,

Are you talking about conditioning the whistle as a cue to fly back or as a secondary reinforcer/bridge/clicker to use once they come back? Either way the whistle would need to come before the food. As for the number of pairings, that may depend on what you are working on.

Andy

[outhawkn]

Hi Andy

I want to get the best response possible when calling a bird to the glove. Does that mean during training I should whistle each time the bird takes a bite? Or whistle once and allow the bird to feed?

[goshawkr]

Hi Andy

I want to get the best response possible when calling a bird to the glove. Does that mean during training I should whistle each time the bird takes a bite? Or whistle once and allow the bird to feed?

Bill,

Your getting a few things mixed up - and while some of the teasing responses you have gotten are amusing, they are not helping at all clear up the mental muck. :D

First - there are to concepts to sort out.

The Conditioned Reinforcer (the click, the whistle) is a quick, as instantanous as possible, signal that is used to indicate food is on the way.

The Cue is a signal - quick or long, dosnt matter - that means you want something to happen.

Your asking about how to establish a CR, but linking it in your question how to use that CR for recall. The recall is a behavior that you can train with the CR, or in any of several ways. The recall will be on cue - your going to have some sort of signal that indicates you want the hawk to return, but how/when you get that cue estabilished is completely irrelevant when your establishing a CR.

The simplest way to think of the CR is to think of it as a one syllable language. It means "YES!" Now the actual power of that is easy to overlooks, especially since we have an extremely complex language at our disposal to communicate with each other. But with that one word, and some patience, and some careful observation, you can get any message delievered that you want. The only limit is physical and mental ability on the part of your student and creativity (and patience!!) on your part. Especially when you link that word to a reward that is given as a 'thank you', and have a student that is really interested in your thank you gift.

Also, you dont have to have a fresh hawk to begin using OC. Contrary to the myth, you can teach an old dog (or hawk, or spouse :eek:) new tricks.

Enough babble.... on to the meat of your question.

It is possible to just jump into training, and use the OC as if the hawk understands it, and it will catch on fairly quickly. But its generally simpler to spend some time introducing the CR and doing nothing else until the link is made.

When your doing this, you give the CR just before offering a tidbit. Let the hawk eat the tidbit, and then pause a few seconds. The CR should come before the hawk gets the food. The idea is that the CR means that food (or a reward in general) for something that just occured.

If you give the CR while the hawk is eating bites off of a chunck of food that it already has, the message is getting diluted. Like anything else, with practice you may find several examples to call BS on that last statement, but in general it holds up. :D

Once the hawk jerks hard to attention when you give the CR and looks anxiously in anticipation for the tidbit, then you know the link is made, and you can begin to use it for some practicle usage, like making recall rock solid. To do so, you come up with a series of goals, and the hawk gets you to give the the CR by achieving those goals. The real trick to training using OC is to break down your ulitmate goal, and come up with these goal list recipies.

An example of a recipie for achieving fist recall with CR with a fresh hawk might be something like this:

1) Look in my general direction
2) Look towards me
3) Look directly at me
4) Look intently at me
5) Lean towards me
6) Come towards me
7) Come towards me at a greater distance than you have before
8) Come towards me with a quicker response time than you have before
9) Come to me outside among distractions.
10) come to me outside at a greater distance/with a very quick response time

Once you have the goal list down, put the hawk on a bow perch with plenty of leash, and wait for it to achieve a goal. The instant it does, give the CR and deliver a tidbit. Once the hawk is getting the joke, and knows what you want, move on to the next goal (notice that the recipie is a graduated list). If the hawk skips a step, catch the moment with a CR and deliver a large reward (several tidbits) to reinforce that it did extremely well. If the hawk seems stuck and to not be making progress, back down the list until it gets the idea again or put it up and try later.

Simple enough, but the tricky thing is to add the cue into the mix. This is as simple as adding the cue when you expect the hawk to do something on your goal list, and then only tagging the behavior with CR if it performs the behavior you want within a short period of time after the cue was given. With a few repetions, the message will sink in that the cue you gave is a signal to the hawk to do something.

An example to this might be to start raising the glove at about step 5 above when you see the hawk is about to lean towards you. The raised glove being the cue that the hawk should lean towards you. Then for all subsequent steps, it only gets rewarded if it performs the goal within a short window of time after the cue is given. In the begining, this window can and should be pretty broad, but once understanding has settled in tighten it up so that the hawk either comes comes right away when called or it dosnt get the CR, and also dosnt get the reward that comes after the CR. It lost the opportunity, but a few minutes later give it another chance.

The key underlying concept in CR is to ignore behaviors you dont like, and only reward what you want to see more of. If the hawk is goofing off, thats ok. Take away its chance to earn a reward (for now) and come back later and see if its changed its mind.

[BrianD]

Geoff, that is a very good and detailed explaination.

[outhawkn]

Bill,

Your getting a few things mixed up - and while some of the teasing responses you have gotten are amusing, they are not helping at all clear up the mental muck. :D

First - there are to concepts to sort out.

The Conditioned Reinforcer (the click, the whistle) is a quick, as instantanous as possible, signal that is used to indicate food is on the way.

The Cue is a signal - quick or long, dosnt matter - that means you want something to happen.

Your asking about how to establish a CR, but linking it in your question how to use that CR for recall. The recall is a behavior that you can train with the CR, or in any of several ways. The recall will be on cue - your going to have some sort of signal that indicates you want the hawk to return, but how/when you get that cue estabilished is completely irrelevant when your establishing a CR.

The simplest way to think of the CR is to think of it as a one syllable language. It means "YES!" Now the actual power of that is easy to overlooks, especially since we have an extremely complex language at our disposal to communicate with each other. But with that one word, and some patience, and some careful observation, you can get any message delievered that you want. The only limit is physical and mental ability on the part of your student and creativity (and patience!!) on your part. Especially when you link that word to a reward that is given as a 'thank you', and have a student that is really interested in your thank you gift.

Also, you dont have to have a fresh hawk to begin using OC. Contrary to the myth, you can teach an old dog (or hawk, or spouse :eek:) new tricks.

Enough babble.... on to the meat of your question.

It is possible to just jump into training, and use the OC as if the hawk understands it, and it will catch on fairly quickly. But its generally simpler to spend some time introducing the CR and doing nothing else until the link is made.

When your doing this, you give the CR just before offering a tidbit. Let the hawk eat the tidbit, and then pause a few seconds. The CR should come before the hawk gets the food. The idea is that the CR means that food (or a reward in general) for something that just occured.

If you give the CR while the hawk is eating bites off of a chunck of food that it already has, the message is getting diluted. Like anything else, with practice you may find several examples to call BS on that last statement, but in general it holds up. :D

Once the hawk jerks hard to attention when you give the CR and looks anxiously in anticipation for the tidbit, then you know the link is made, and you can begin to use it for some practicle usage, like making recall rock solid. To do so, you come up with a series of goals, and the hawk gets you to give the the CR by achieving those goals. The real trick to training using OC is to break down your ulitmate goal, and come up with these goal list recipies.

An example of a recipie for achieving fist recall with CR with a fresh hawk might be something like this:

1) Look in my general direction
2) Look towards me
3) Look directly at me
4) Look intently at me
5) Lean towards me
6) Come towards me
7) Come towards me at a greater distance than you have before
8) Come towards me with a quicker response time than you have before
9) Come to me outside among distractions.
10) come to me outside at a greater distance/with a very quick response time

Once you have the goal list down, put the hawk on a bow perch with plenty of leash, and wait for it to achieve a goal. The instant it does, give the CR and deliver a tidbit. Once the hawk is getting the joke, and knows what you want, move on to the next goal (notice that the recipie is a graduated list). If the hawk skips a step, catch the moment with a CR and deliver a large reward (several tidbits) to reinforce that it did extremely well. If the hawk seems stuck and to not be making progress, back down the list until it gets the idea again or put it up and try later.

Simple enough, but the tricky thing is to add the cue into the mix. This is as simple as adding the cue when you expect the hawk to do something on your goal list, and then only tagging the behavior with CR if it performs the behavior you want within a short period of time after the cue was given. With a few repetions, the message will sink in that the cue you gave is a signal to the hawk to do something.

An example to this might be to start raising the glove at about step 5 above when you see the hawk is about to lean towards you. The raised glove being the cue that the hawk should lean towards you. Then for all subsequent steps, it only gets rewarded if it performs the goal within a short window of time after the cue is given. In the begining, this window can and should be pretty broad, but once understanding has settled in tighten it up so that the hawk either comes comes right away when called or it dosnt get the CR, and also dosnt get the reward that comes after the CR. It lost the opportunity, but a few minutes later give it another chance.

The key underlying concept in CR is to ignore behaviors you dont like, and only reward what you want to see more of. If the hawk is goofing off, thats ok. Take away its chance to earn a reward (for now) and come back later and see if its changed its mind.

Thanks Geoff

It would help if i knew the jargon of OC for sure. But you did answer my guestion and I appreciate that.clapp:D

[outhawkn]

Bill, with any new bird, I whistle every time they reach down and take a bite. Eventually, I back off and only whistle once in a while. When I can whistle and they immediately look down to the glove to see what is there, is when I start just doing the whistle periodically. By the way, I whistle with my mouth, I only use a mechanical whistle for the lure. I can whistle as loud with my mouth as most mechanical whistles.

Thats what I've been doing as well, I was just curious if it was possible to do it "better".
Now on to think of another question I can word wrong......:eek::D

[goshawkr]

Bill, with any new bird, I whistle every time they reach down and take a bite. Eventually, I back off and only whistle once in a while. When I can whistle and they immediately look down to the glove to see what is there, is when I start just doing the whistle periodically. By the way, I whistle with my mouth, I only use a mechanical whistle for the lure. I can whistle as loud with my mouth as most mechanical whistles.

Thats a good system, and its using some of the underlying principals that Operant Conditioning is hinged upon. Some of the reactions you describe are just exactly what you watch for when using OC to train an animal.

I took answering Bill's question down a purely OC methodology since it was posted on the OC sub-forum I assumed that was what he was lookin for...and even if I was wrong someone else will eventually be lookin for the info. :D

Your system is a great one Fred, and illustrates very well that OC is nothing new. Falconers have been using your formula for millenia.

What is different about using "proper" OC in training is some very detailed terminology that helps one to think, plan, understand and discuss the teaching/learning in a very detailed fashion and refine the goals and methods much more sharply.

[outhawkn]

Thats a good system, and its using some of the underlying principals that Operant Conditioning is hinged upon. Some of the reactions you describe are just exactly what you watch for when using OC to train an animal.

I took answering Bill's question down a purely OC methodology since it was posted on the OC sub-forum I assumed that was what he was lookin for...and even if I was wrong someone else will eventually be lookin for the info. :D

Your system is a great one Fred, and illustrates very well that OC is nothing new. Falconers have been using your formula for millenia.

What is different about using "proper" OC in training is some very detailed terminology that helps one to think, plan, understand and discuss the teaching/learning in a very detailed fashion and refine the goals and methods much more sharply.

It was exactly what I was looking for.....

But wait a minute, I just realized something. Were you calling me "old" or an "old dog" or both...................toungeouttoungeout:D

[goshawkr]

It would help if i knew the jargon of OC for sure. But you did answer my guestion and I appreciate that.clapp:D

No problem Bill.

Dont worry about the jargon, you pick it up as you go, just like any other jargon.

If you take a psych class you'll need to know it for sure, but since we are just a bunch of amateurs having fun with these advanced psychology concepts we can be informal about it. :D

[goshawkr]

When your doing this, you give the CR just before offering a tidbit. Let the hawk eat the tidbit, and then pause a few seconds. The CR should come before the hawk gets the food. The idea is that the CR means that food (or a reward in general) for something that just occured.


I got the basic jist across with that statement, but I want to fix it for clarity.

Here is what I was really trying to say:

When your doing this, you give the CR just before offering a tidbit. Let the hawk eat the tidbit, and then pause a few seconds. The CR should come before the hawk gets the food. The idea is that the CR means that food (or a reward in general) has been delivered for something that occured when the CR was given.

[goshawkr]

Thats what I've been doing as well, I was just curious if it was possible to do it "better".
Now on to think of another question I can word wrong......:eek::D

Bill,

I dont think one way is really better than the other.

The one thing that you do get with OC that you dont get with other methodoligies is the ability to reach out and "tag" instants in time and mark those moments as the ones you are rewarding.

Thats why it has become so very popular by professional animal trainers.

But if you look at my OC trained goshawk and compare her to my apprentice's not OC trained redtail, you wont notice much difference in actual field performance with recall. They both come when they damn well please. Sometimes that also coincides with when their falconer wants them to come, but certainly not always. :eek:

Now when we get that implantable remote control unit we will be in buisness.....

[JRedig]

Bill, with any new bird, I whistle every time they reach down and take a bite. Eventually, I back off and only whistle once in a while. When I can whistle and they immediately look down to the glove to see what is there...

I spent most of the summer doing this with my goshawk to establish a C/R. I was having difficulty being in close proximity to him to work and establish the groundwork of O/C. It was easy to sit and let him eat while clicking my tongue for each bite from 10-15 feet away. Gradually his "personal bubble" shrunk with the interaction. You could see his brain working as he started to figure out the games and such.