Originally Posted by
kitana
There are many ways to train a behavior using operant conditionning, mainly capturing, free-shaping, luring and targeting. You already use OC without knowing it, and classical conditionning as well.
Typically in OC, the animal does a behavior that is reinforced by a reward, thus being called positive (you add a consequence, positive in the mathematical sense) reinforcement (to make the behavior occur more frequently) or R+. There are other quadrants to this but they aren't used as much as positive reinforcement.
To be more efficient, you can pair a signal with the R+ to tell the bird precisely which behavior is reinforced. By doing so you eliminate the need to give the R+ at the exact moment the hawk does the behavior, you gain about 3-5 seconds to deliver the reward. The clicker and whistles are the traditionnal signals, but a Yes or cluck of the tongue can be used.
So back to training a behavior. The first way to train a behavior is called capturing: you capture the whole, finished behavior as it is. You click/treat when everything is perfect. It can be used for very fast behaviors such as eye wink, tongue flick, etc. The conditions to use capturing is that the behavior needs to naturally happen very often. It's almost a waste of time to use capturing with complex behaviors that the hawk won't do spontaneously often enough for you to reinforce it.
For complex behaviors there is shaping, or free shaping. You will click/treat a tiny step that will lead to the desired, finished behavior. Example; you want your hawk to look away from you, over its left shoulder, for 5 seconds. Good luck if you try to capture that!! But by reinforcing the hawk for looking a little bit on the left, and then waiting for him to look a little bit further, and further, and then maintain the position for half a second, one second, etc, you'll obtain the desired behavior.
One can also use luring. Luring means using food as a lure (not in the falconry sense) to induce a behavior. It is very commonly used in falconry: place food on glove and the hawk goes upon glove, place food on perch and the hawk goes on the perch, etc. However luring can become a problem if the animal learns to do the behavior only when seeing the lure... Typically trainers will try never to lure more than 3 times, they will fade the lure very quickly, but it can quickly become a problem.
Then there is targeting. With targeting, the animal learns to touch or follow an object called a target. It can be a laser pointer also. then you use the target to teach new behaviors, and you fade your target so it is not needed with the final behavior. As an example, one could use a laser pointer or a target glued in the back of the giant hood to teach the hawk to enter the giant hood. Or teach a hawk to hood itself by targeting the hood and using free shaping to shape a "enter your head in the target" behavior.
My answer was probably too long or too in depth for what you wanted, but that's a recapitulation of the basis of OC training. I would not suggest to read Don't shoot the dog or Ken Blanchard if you wanted to start training that way: they are excellent books, but more focused on the philosophy/inner workings of OC. I'd go directly to a practical book like any Karen Pryor/Morgan Spector books on clicker training, even one for dogs. The principles are illustrated in exercises that can easily be modified to fit a hawk.
Oh yeah: it's primordial to have a very high rate of reinforcement of you don't want the animal to become frustrated and either give up or even attack out of frustration! You have to choose your criterions in a way that garantees success to the animal, and work your way from that in tiny increments. It is what gives most people difficulties, that and the timing of the marker signal.