Come when called

[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.

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 ) 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.

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.

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 ) 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.

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.

[goshawkr]

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

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.

[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.