OC articles on reducing Aggression??

Hi there
I was wondering if there are any available articles that show how to reduce aggression through OC?
I bought a secondhand imprint female Goshawk who was previously owned by a novice falconer.
The Goshawk is very aggressive on picking up from her mews and can also be aggressive on a kill.
She has left a kill and nailed me on two occasions before I learned how much space I had to give her.
I work around her aggression and can pick her up and deal with her on a kill pretty well now.
I was just wondering if there are any good articles that will help change her demeanour?

Thanks

There are not any articles that I am aware of.

However its a fairly simple problem to work up a plan to resolve. Not so simple to implement that plan, but its not particularly tough.

Aggressive goshawks are not fun, and can be a handful. However, the silk lining on that proverbial sows ear is that an aggressive goshawk is never acting out of unadulterated meanness. Its very rare to see sadisim in any non human creature. An aggressive goshawk wants something from you, and they come around fairly well if you consistently show them that they will get what they want if they use their manners. And of course, never give them what they want if they do not use their manners.

The simplest approach to dealing with the aggression on the kill is to figure out how much space she is allowing you before she gets defensive. This will generally be an exact distance. You want to find the distance where she is not showing any aggressive posturing beyond mantling. Stay just beyond this distance, then cross it briefly and then give the Conditioned Reinforcer if she does not act overtly aggressive and then immediately retreat. The act of you retreating is the reward, but if you can toss a tidbit to where she can easily reach it that will not be a bad way to further reinforce the reward. This works without bringing any of the OC toolset into the mix, but using the CR helps solidify the communication.

Another even more powerful way to work on this is to let her train you to back off. For example, if she gives you the stink eye you might take that as a signal that she wants you to go away. Once she learns how to pull your puppet strings the need to bully you will usually fade very quickly. Fighting is very risky in the wild, and only resorted to as a last resort.

Its not really clear to me on what kind of aggression you are seeing in the mew, so I cannot give some specific examples on how to work through that.

See if you can glean anything from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dft9dGjy8Jg

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Originally Posted by frigginchi

See if you can glean anything from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dft9dGjy8Jg

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Thanks a lot.
I'll study the video later this evening.

Hi Geoff

Thanks for the information.
I kind of do what you have suggested when approaching her on a kill. It took me a couple of lessons though to get the measure of her.
She actually seems worse on a Carrion Crow, which is a mighty customer to deal with. I presume her adrenaline is elevated somewhat.

I should point out that her previous owner had never had a hawk before and bought her at a few months old from the breeder who had imprinted her.
I saw on a video the new owner posted that he would call her to the fist and then pocket the Day old chick without giving her a reward.
No doubt there were other mistakes made!!!

As for her behaviour in the mews, when I went to pick her up she would row her wings at me and threaten me. I would then turn around and walk away.
I did this throughout the day and eventually she figured if she was going to get fed that she had to let me approach.
Now I can approach her and pick her up but sometimes she gets the hump with me and stamps down on my arm and leans over to bite the hell out of my forearm.
Once she comes out the mews she is still aggressive but she settles and stops biting and footing me. I'm guessing she is trying to bully me into feeding her and is aggressive due to frustration at not getting fed.
When we are out hunting she isn't aggressive until she is on a kill.
I was hoping that she would have calmed down now that we are out hunting and she has been catching stuff.

Thanks again.

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Originally Posted by goshawkr

There are not any articles that I am aware of.

However its a fairly simple problem to work up a plan to resolve. Not so simple to implement that plan, but its not particularly tough.

Aggressive goshawks are not fun, and can be a handful. However, the silk lining on that proverbial sows ear is that an aggressive goshawk is never acting out of unadulterated meanness. Its very rare to see sadisim in any non human creature. An aggressive goshawk wants something from you, and they come around fairly well if you consistently show them that they will get what they want if they use their manners. And of course, never give them what they want if they do not use their manners.

The simplest approach to dealing with the aggression on the kill is to figure out how much space she is allowing you before she gets defensive. This will generally be an exact distance. You want to find the distance where she is not showing any aggressive posturing beyond mantling. Stay just beyond this distance, then cross it briefly and then give the Conditioned Reinforcer if she does not act overtly aggressive and then immediately retreat. The act of you retreating is the reward, but if you can toss a tidbit to where she can easily reach it that will not be a bad way to further reinforce the reward. This works without bringing any of the OC toolset into the mix, but using the CR helps solidify the communication.

Another even more powerful way to work on this is to let her train you to back off. For example, if she gives you the stink eye you might take that as a signal that she wants you to go away. Once she learns how to pull your puppet strings the need to bully you will usually fade very quickly. Fighting is very risky in the wild, and only resorted to as a last resort.

Its not really clear to me on what kind of aggression you are seeing in the mew, so I cannot give some specific examples on how to work through that.

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Originally Posted by davids

I kind of do what you have suggested when approaching her on a kill. It took me a couple of lessons though to get the measure of her.
She actually seems worse on a Carrion Crow, which is a mighty customer to deal with. I presume her adrenaline is elevated somewhat.

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I had meant to point out that as you establish trust in her that she can manage your behavior, the distance will decrease that you will need to stay away from her without a serious reaction.

Basically, aggression on a kill comes down to trust. She does not trust that you will not steal her prize, and she is willing to fight you to defend it.

Although I have seen a similar reaction in some of my goshawks where they were not happy with how long it was taking me to get the trade off meat ready and they decided to latch onto me as motivation to hurry things along....

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I saw on a video the new owner posted that he would call her to the fist and then pocket the Day old chick without giving her a reward.
No doubt there were other mistakes made!!!

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I do that all the time, without a negative response. Although.... I do not ever ever call to the glove for food until there are several kills that have been made and the hawk is not showing overt aggression when on the glove.

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As for her behaviour in the mews, when I went to pick her up she would row her wings at me and threaten me. I would then turn around and walk away.
I did this throughout the day and eventually she figured if she was going to get fed that she had to let me approach.
Now I can approach her and pick her up but sometimes she gets the hump with me and stamps down on my arm and leans over to bite the hell out of my forearm.
Once she comes out the mews she is still aggressive but she settles and stops biting and footing me. I'm guessing she is trying to bully me into feeding her and is aggressive due to frustration at not getting fed.
When we are out hunting she isn't aggressive until she is on a kill.
I was hoping that she would have calmed down now that we are out hunting and she has been catching stuff.

Thanks again.

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That sounds like you are right on track.

As I mentioned previously, none of this is directly tied to the theories of Operant Conditioning - but if you establish a Conditioned Reinforcer it can and will speed up the process because you can clearly communicate with her when she is doing what you want. Once established, the CR becomes a very clear "YES!!!" which is very powerful.

The myth that we all operate under is that you cannot use punishment to train a hawk, and it is very good to keep that as a base theory of operation because while goshawks are quite social creatures, they and other hawks will not respond well if you lay on hard punishment with them. The core theory of Operant Conditioning is to keep things as positive as possible, and that is by far the best. But there is still a place for punishment if very carefully thought through.

You leaving when she is acting aggressive is a clear example of that - its what would be termed a negative punishment (you punish by taking something away that they wanted - your presence). You are leaving her thinking "!@#$!@#@!! That is not what I wanted!!" as you leave, since what she really wants is for you to feed her.

I have found that establish a negative Conditioned Reinforcer can take the communication even further. It becomes a very clear "NO!!!". There are a pile of scientific papers on this concept, as it was the theory in vogue when Skinner developed Operant Conditioning. While it has been all the rage to focus on positive only training and positive only communication, the reality is that each word you add to your lexicon increases your effectiveness to communicate exponentially.

I usually establish a +CR and a -CR, and the goal is to never be using the -CR any more than 10% of the time. If I do, I figure out a way to restructure the interactions so it stays mostly positive.

One thing that I have found that can really help is to find ways to reduce the tendency for aggression and the severity of that aggression some before trying to work with the hawk.

For example, my previous goshawk had a really strong aggressive streak in her. If I knew she was going to be particularly aggressive, I would slyly slip her a small meal (15 grams or so) to take the edge off her hunger before I interacted with her. I would have to be very crafty to deliver this in a way that would not trigger aggressive posturing because I did not want to reinforce that at all.

As another example, my current goshawk has not yet been entered on game, and I have had to temporarily drop her weight down a bit to get her to focus and chase hard which has resulted in an angry edge to her behavior. This gets much much worse after the sun goes down, so when I can manage my work load so that I can get out in the field earlier in the day and end our session long before the sun goes down it is not an issue. Hard to do, because I will play the game of trying to get "....just one more slip......" until the owls come out.

[QUOTE=goshawkr;400567]I had meant to point out that as you establish trust in her that she can manage your behavior, the distance will decrease that you will need to stay away from her without a serious reaction.

Basically, aggression on a kill comes down to trust. She does not trust that you will not steal her prize, and she is willing to fight you to defend it.

Although I have seen a similar reaction in some of my goshawks where they were not happy with how long it was taking me to get the trade off meat ready and they decided to latch onto me as motivation to hurry things along....

Yes I’m convinced she doesn’t trust me yet not to steal her kill, though I’ve never gave her cause for this

As I mentioned previously, none of this is directly tied to the theories of Operant Conditioning - but if you establish a Conditioned Reinforcer it can and will speed up the process because you can clearly communicate with her when she is doing what you want. Once established, the CR becomes a very clear "YES!!!" which is very powerful.

Im quite happy to try new , to me anyway, techniques. I’m reading Karen Pryors book currently
and will carefully look at your suggestions.


You leaving when she is acting aggressive is a clear example of that - its what would be termed a negative punishment (you punish by taking something away that they wanted - your presence). You are leaving her thinking "!@#$!@#@!! That is not what I wanted!!" as you leave, since what she really wants is for you to feed her.

I have found that establish a negative Conditioned Reinforcer can take the communication even further. It becomes a very clear "NO!!!". There are a pile of scientific papers on this concept, as it was the theory in vogue when Skinner developed Operant Conditioning. While it has been all the rage to focus on positive only training and positive only communication, the reality is that each word you add to your lexicon increases your effectiveness to communicate exponentially.

I usually establish a +CR and a -CR, and the goal is to never be using the -CR any more than 10% of the time. If I do, I figure out a way to restructure the interactions so it stays mostly positive.

One thing that I have found that can really help is to find ways to reduce the tendency for aggression and the severity of that aggression some before trying to work with the hawk.

For example, my previous goshawk had a really strong aggressive streak in her. If I knew she was going to be particularly aggressive, I would slyly slip her a small meal (15 grams or so) to take the edge off her hunger before I interacted with her. I would have to be very crafty to deliver this in a way that would not trigger aggressive posturing because I did not want to reinforce that at all.

I tried this but it usually increased her behaviour. it maybe my timing was off or I did it in an incorrect way. But I’ll keep searching for a better way to do things.

Thanks again for taking the time to make these comments and suggestions.

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Originally Posted by davids

Yes I’m convinced she doesn’t trust me yet not to steal her kill, though I’ve never gave her cause for this

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I would say you are looking at that backwards. Until you prove to her that you can be trusted, she will not.

Goshawks along with most other raptors do not innately trust others around their kill. I think the accipiters are the worst of the bunch about this.

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Im quite happy to try new , to me anyway, techniques. I’m reading Karen Pryors book currently and will carefully look at your suggestions.

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I would suggest making sure you are reading her second edition or later. There is a lot of great new thinking she added after her version 1.0 book which will be particularly useful with your current project.

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I tried this but it usually increased her behaviour. it maybe my timing was off or I did it in an incorrect way. But I’ll keep searching for a better way to do things.

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My method for slipping the meal to take the edge off was to get her hooded, weigh her, and then put a small pile of tidbits on the ground. I would then crouch near them and unhood them so that was the first thing she would see. This did encourage her to hope there was a pile of tidbits in front of her nose as soon as she was unhooded, and we did have some ...ahem.... discussions when that was not the case, but they were manageable discussions. In that particular example the extra "hotness" of her temper was related to her being a bit lower in weight than normal for one reason or other. So at weigh in I would evaluate if I needed to mitigate things by boosting her blood sugar.

Does not sound like it is immediately adaptable to your scenario, but it might give ideas.

I think most all aggression in imprint accipiters can be attributed to what is colloquially referred to in America these days as "hangry" - just in case that term has not made it to your side of the pond that refers to an especially foul mood brought on by extreme hunger. I have found you can keep most of the hunger motivation but take the sharpness of it off with just a bit of food.

Best of luck David. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with this.

Just a quick update regarding the Goshawk.

I have changed a few things which seem to have helped, though I didn't use OC techniques.
First thing, I removed her from her mews where a lot of the aggression occurred and kept her on a bow perch in the house 24/7.
She never gets fed in the house and all meals she has to work for outside. I temporarily stopped hunting her, [this prevented aggression on a kill] and just did some exercise routines such as rope
work ect.
The aggression stopped fairly quickly and she stopped trying to nail me, to just an occasionally threat behaviour. This reduced as time went on.
After her behaviour had improved somewhat I then took her hunting recently, where she caught a hen pheasant. There was a fair bit of screaming and manteling on the kill but I could reach in and dispatch the quarry without issue.
I then gave her some space and left her to pluck for 10 minutes and break into the pheasant, I then transferred her to the lure, while I picked up the dead pheasant, remove a wing and breast, then called her to the fist to finish her meal as we walked back to the parked van.
Happy days so far.

Good to see you making progress.

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Originally Posted by rkumetz

Good to see you making progress.

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Thanks Ron.

Was the video of any help?

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Originally Posted by frigginchi

Was the video of any help?

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Hi Chi
Yes it was quite interesting and I have implemented a few things that I noted on it such as I always take the hawk to the fields to feed her and she has got to work for her meal.
No more feeding around the mews. [Though I'll have to figure out what to do during the moult.]
Thanks again for your help.

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Originally Posted by davids

Hi Chi
Yes it was quite interesting and I have implemented a few things that I noted on it such as I always take the hawk to the fields to feed her and she has got to work for her meal.
No more feeding around the mews. [Though I'll have to figure out what to do during the moult.]
Thanks again for your help.

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There are a few work arounds to that.

1) when up for the molt, her weight will be higher and she wont be as willing to go to war over food.

2) as you build up trust with her during the hunting season, she will not feel the need to defend her prize as intently.

3) you can train her to show some manners at home fairly easily. For example, my I have a goshawk who is freelofted that had some real serious aggression episodes during her first season. When I go to feed her, I patiently wait by the food portal until she is sitting on a perch on the other side of her chamber. In the begining, this took a lot of patience but now that she knows the game if she sees food in my hands she is usually headed over to her "Wait here to be fed" spot.

Some other answers that some friends of mine use is to just never feed at home. They will go for daily walks even during the molt and stop and have a feeding sessions somewhere. This has the added benifit of forcing them to get off their ass at least once a day.

Hi Geoff
.
That's food for thought
Obviously I have a few months to think about this, but having had some success with changing her attitude, I would hate to go back to square one.
Hopefully she will remain better mannered.
Currently she lives in the house on a bow perch, but I don't fancy all the mess throughout the moult.

Thanks.