How to cure screaming?

[goshawkr]

Interesting discussion with some good tips that I will incorporate. What has worked well for my longwings and a couple of gos for over 45 years is "aversion" training. This works best when done with big downies, but has worked with feathered birds as well. When a bird screams, while being raised on a table top type nest/pan, around the house, I tickle the back of its throat with the soft end of a molted primary. There is no food "reward" for the screaming, just the opposite. This can work with older birds but they should be on the fist. Otherwise, they might bate upon approach. I have yet to have this happen, but I do not want to test them or set them up for a bad habit. I also use the feather (or the old chopstick trick) to stroke a bird in order to get it used to hand movements around the head without putting the feather in its mouth. After having its throat "tickled" a few times over several days, the bird will try to scream with its beak closed - the result is a sort of "bird whimper". When you see that, you know you nearly done. Some birds I have not used this method on have talked more than the others but outgrew the talking after being flown regularly. (And don't worry, they will still preen -haha!). Be slow and gentle. Good luck, Bob

Bob,

The antithesis to reward training is aversion training. Their is a similar antithesis to operant conditioning but the term escapes me at the moment.

Reward training has become completely in vogue over the last several years to the point that anyone who suggests punishing an animal during training is viewed as a barbarian or worse. But those methods do work. And they do not have to be used with malice or cruelty - in fact they never should be.

Operant conditioning is really a one syllable language that means "YES!". It lets you tag a moment in time, and indicate that this is the behavior that led to the reward.

Several years ago it occurred to me that while this communication is very powerful, its much more powerful to add one other element to the communication - making a two syllable language. One means yes, the other no.

Classical Reward training and OC methods advocate that if you just ignore behaviors you don't want they will go away. But this is a very naïve view. Without a real motivation to stop a behavior, an animal (or person) may keep doing just for the heck of it.

I am really reluctant to advocate any sort of aversion or punishment training for raptors because I am concerned that they get misused. But having some way to say "knock it off!" really helps. Hawks don't respond well at all to a rolled up newspaper, but more subtle and gentle forms of pleasantries they certainly get.

[nebli]

I think that it is better to get as close as possible to nature , the hawks are already in an artificial situation:

that is being in contact with some other creature in a relationship different than eating it , being eaten by it ,being indiferent to it, breeding with it or defending it .these are basically the 5 types of relationship that a goshawk has with its environment

here we ask them to build a relation of cooperation and trust only found in a few occasions during breeding season.

one answer easily found by imprints is to stay in a "eyass attitude" in that way it just stick much longer than normaly in a dependence mentality.
if it has been fed when screaming it just inforces the natural trend.

independence is achieved by exploring ( that we can emulate) and hunting that is fine as we actually look for that, so hunting , full crop , than nothing for a day , rehunt , full crop again, then 2 games a day fed on the last full crop , and so each bird will evolved following its own experience , personality and how much we are able to properly interpret its reactions, in that way we try to keep as close as possible to its natural behavior, we are becoming a game provider first then it can evolve into partnership.

older hawks ,like haggards can be a complete different story but that is something else .

[MrBill]

Geoff,

I want to apologize for pinning you down on your contentions. I should have just kept my mouth shut. But so many times on this list I see people make categorical statements with no real basis, other than their own experiences with "individual" hawks, statement that folks might very well take as gospel. I guess I am just a little too sensitive to these sort of statements without any sort of qualifies. Sorry.

As to using a newspaper to get a bird's attention--I have said before that years ago a falconer did this with a HH that was aggressive towards her in the mews, and it ended the aggression. Now, please understand, she did not beat the hell out of bird with the newspaper, or harm the bird in any way; in fact, she felt it was the sound of the newspaper more than impact that did the trick.

Bill Boni

[goshawkr]

Geoff,

Your examples of self rewarding behaviour, I think, areally more superstious behaviour. A behaviour occurs, an event happens, unrelated to the behaviour and a superstious connection is made. I think a better example would be a bored dog paceing in a run. The pacing burns off restless energy and is thus rewarded. Running, for people who get a runners high, is a self reenforceing behaivour. Eating. Things like that

Jacob,

After I responded to this yesterday, something was just prickling in the back of my head about my earlier response not quite being right. Then It hit me after I did a bit of sleeping on some reading I had done yesterday related to this discussion.

Speaking strictly from the current standards of definition that the psychologists who study animal behavior are using, what you cite as examples here are actually called "primary enforcers". I guess its also not in-accurate to call them self reinforcing, because they are.

You are definitely correct that the examples I initially used for self-reinforcing are based on superstitions, at least some of the time.

[goshawkr]

Geoff,

I want to apologize for pinning you down on your contentions. I should have just kept my mouth shut. But so many times on this list I see people make categorical statements with no real basis, other than their own experiences with "individual" hawks, statement that folks might very well take as gospel. I guess I am just a little too sensitive to these sort of statements without any sort of qualifies. Sorry.

No worries Bill. I also have seen the same thing, and I like it when blowhards are kept honest. I do hope I didn't cross the line into blowhardome though.

As to using a newspaper to get a bird's attention--I have said before that years ago a falconer did this with a HH that was aggressive towards her in the mews, and it ended the aggression. Now, please understand, she did not beat the hell out of bird with the newspaper, or harm the bird in any way; in fact, she felt it was the sound of the newspaper more than impact that did the trick.

Bill Boni

I don't doubt that worked. Its just so easy to misuse that though.

[jal4470]

Geoff,

I think you are correct re the current terminology. I prefer the term 'self reinforcing' though as I think it conveys the point more intuitively. But that may be because I am more familiar with it. No mater what you name the behavior type though, they are a bear to deal with.

[Cuz]

Bob,

The antithesis to reward training is aversion training. Their is a similar antithesis to operant conditioning but the term escapes me at the moment.

Reward training has become completely in vogue over the last several years to the point that anyone who suggests punishing an animal during training is viewed as a barbarian or worse. But those methods do work. And they do not have to be used with malice or cruelty - in fact they never should be.

Operant conditioning is really a one syllable language that means "YES!". It lets you tag a moment in time, and indicate that this is the behavior that led to the reward.

Several years ago it occurred to me that while this communication is very powerful, its much more powerful to add one other element to the communication - making a two syllable language. One means yes, the other no.

Classical Reward training and OC methods advocate that if you just ignore behaviors you don't want they will go away. But this is a very naïve view. Without a real motivation to stop a behavior, an animal (or person) may keep doing just for the heck of it.

I am really reluctant to advocate any sort of aversion or punishment training for raptors because I am concerned that they get misused. But having some way to say "knock it off!" really helps. Hawks don't respond well at all to a rolled up newspaper, but more subtle and gentle forms of pleasantries they certainly get.

Geoff and by association, the rest of the thread,

What the gent is doing by using the feather is not punishment, but negative reinforcement, which is not a form of punishment. With your knowledge and skill, I am surprised by your response to this action. If we are going to talk OC, then lets get down to what it actually is, was and shall be.

Operant conditioning does not mean YES. Positive reinforcement training does. Those who truly know OC know this is not true. I hope those that do use it, realize what OC is and what it is not. Aversion training is something completely different than OC, but does share some of the same philosophy.

Operant conditioning is based on four basic tenants:

1. Positive reinforcement:used for most if not all of falconry training. Animal does what you want, you reward the behavior. Animal repeats what makes the reward appear, and it becomes ingrained and part of routine, to get what it likes. Catching the bird not screaming and using the tenant must be very tough, time consuming and ultimately, not worth the effort. Positive reinforcement actually encourages the behavior. Falconer shows up, bird screams and the food arrives. Bird screams for ten hours, and the falconer shows up with the food. This goes on and on and on. Hunting shows to the hawk that food comes from somewhere else, and if screaming does not precede the kill, the screaming loses it's reinforcement. Since the food is not coming from the falconer, but from wild or bagged game, the screaming is not conducive to the reward. Repeated hunting can eliminate this problem, but as I have seen, it can take quite a bit of time, and only when in the field.

2.Negative punishment: the act of taking something away that the animal likes. Removing food, toys, self or whatever the animal likes. When you take it away, the animal associates the previous act, that was unwanted, with the removal of the enjoyable item/food/toy/person/sight/etc. Repeated exposure to this punishment can eliminate many unwanted behaviors. Screaming is a tough one with this approach, as your presence is not very rewarding to most birds and removing the food will just make them scream more. This tenant works very well with social and pack animals. They respond very well to it and it is used predominately and with excellent success with canines.

3. Negative reinforcement: the act of doing something to an animal that they do not like, but does not physically harm them. The gentlemen in the previous discussion referred to tickling a feather in the back of the throat. I really like this type of treatment for a screaming bird, but have not personally done it. As far as animals go, this is what I would try, as it does not harm the bird, but they do not like it. With dogs that bark innocuously, banging pots together is something they do not like, and when associated with the barking, stops said barking, as they do not like sharp, loud noises. Since hawks and falcons are not primarily social animals, this would be an excellent way of stopping screaming. Sounds they do not like would also be an excellent way of stopping the behavior, but it would have to be consistent with each and every time they screamed in order for them to associate the screaming with something they do not like. In the wild, I would bet a screaming hawk or falcon would bring in another predator. Said predator would teach them that each time they scream, they are bringing the heat of possible death to them. Repeated exposure to this action would eliminate the screaming, or contribute to their death. To the predator, the screaming would be a positive reinforcement, as it leads to a young, dumb, piece of meat at the end of the scream.

4. Positive punishment: this is the rolled newspaper and hitting the bird with it. I do not condone this practice for any hawk or falcon. I have had to use it, albeit very infrequently with dogs professionally. Many people use this as the first line of training with many animals, with many bad side effects. It does work for many people, but I would much rather use the first tenant, then the second, then the third. If there is no success, and much patience with the first three, I would use the last one on a social or pack animal, with constraint and much deliberation. I have seen a Harris breeder smack a bird that was attacking the breeder, and stop the attacking from occurring once again. I do not condone smacking a Harris, but have seen it work for that person.

B. F. Skinner and others came up with Operant Conditioning quite a few decades ago. As stated previously, it does work with any and all animals on this planet, including us as human beings. Depending upon the animal, some, if not all of the tenants work. Also depending upon the animal, some have bad consequences for relationships and who is passing out and receiving the punishment.

The gent who came up with the feather technique and the conditioning before applying it, needs to be applauded. I read this thread and could not come up with a solution, but I sure like his.

Negative reinforcement is a solution to this issue. What needs to be discovered, is what the hawk or falcon does not like, but causes no physical harm. Once that has been discovered, a concerted effort needs to be made to induce the non-likable event to take place as many times as the bird screams. Repeated exposure should lead the animal to stop the unwanted behavior. If the repeated exposure does not stop the animal from the unwanted act, the negative reinforcement needs to be changed to another strategy.

A fellow falconer had Gos hawks that screamed something awful for the first year. I could hardly stand it, and could not understand why or how he could. Turned me off the imprint Gos. Kudos to the gent with the feather. I would have done it myself to his hawks, just to get some peace in the car from field to field, or just enjoying food and a beverage without that awful noise.

The ultimate way to get rid of the screaming, get a chamber raised Gos. I have one right now, and he has screamed a total of three times in the past eight weeks. Each and every time it has occurred when called to the fist, but it is very minor, and not worth consideration.

I hope you find the answer to your screaming Gos hawk. It is a problem of epic proportions.

[Zarafia]

I suck at everything and am no trainer. But I did "cure" a hardcore screaming HH of screaming.
Yes, screaming is a contact call. I used that. My bird was given to me because even though she was a proven hunter, she screamed her darling lungs out at the sight of any human, neighbors very much included.
I picked her up, and having been a cockatoo owner, I thought I was ready. She screamed the whole 5 hours home. Out loud, in Technicolor.
So when I got home I tried to figure out what was wrong?

[Zarafia]

She desired interaction. One on one, every day, several times a day. She was a harris hawk in every possible way. She needed to be needed. She needed to be wanted. So I wanted her. I took her on in every way.
Still a screamer, she hunted quiet and caught a friggin fox!
Brilliant young girl. Still she called.
So I just decided to spend time with her. A lot of time. I taught her tricks!
OC stuff, harris hawks learn so fast!
My kiddo learned to take perches as ordered by voice command and visual cue. And she became silent.
Brilliant, beautiful and perfect.
It was a great thing that I taught her visual cues for feeding because I got hurt bad. I had to have just regular people feed her. And she was perfect for them.
She was perfect. She is with another falconer now and she is silent and perfect.
No hawk is "incurable". Only falconers are.

[Zarafia]

Oh yeah, on the contact calling. I kept that up. I'd scream to her and she replies. And vice versa. If she calls I always call her name. Every time. She never needs to worry. She is a vital part of a family now. Her new Dad knows this too. She is treasured at her new home.

[dboyrollz76]

My new hh started to scream a bit. Every time she would scream a bit I would go pick her up and walk her on the glove without tid bits or food. It seemed to me the screaming was starting when she started to develope the food association with me and the glove.
She started thinking every time she seen me she would get food. So I threw a random card at her and pick her up with no food and did not give her any on the glove. She learned that if I scream I get picked up and held with no food. So she stopped, she still peeps a bit but no a all out scream.
If I walk out and she screams, I pick her up and walk her for a hour. It worked I have a silent 2015 FHH.

[rkumetz]

I pick her up and walk her for a hour. It worked I have a silent 2015 FHH.

And worn out shoes!

[Dillon]

There is a lot of confusion in this thread, which is common, because behaviorism is not clear-cut and easy. Mark did a great summarization.

There are a couple of things that I want to add to help those who are interested in OC wrap their heads around it a little better.

First, in behavior analysis, there are three quadrants: Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence. Antecedents are anything that occurs before the behavior and they "set the stage" for behaviors to potentially occur. Cues are antecedents. You raise your glove and that is the cue (antecedent) for the bird that if she flies to you (the behavior) she will likely get a food reward (the consequence).

Falconers don't "choose" to use operant conditioning; instead, he or she can choose to learn about the underlying theories to help manage his or her interactions with the hawk, but he bird itself is learning and modifying its behavior at all times. The falconer is just one of many stimuli in the environment. Animals are always going towards things that they want and avoiding things they perceive as aversive; if they didn't, they wouldn't survive at all in the wild. By "using operant conditioning," all a falconer is saying is that they are being conscious of the way they are manipulating behavior-consequence patterns and are actively analyzing the cause and effect. It doesn't matter if the falconer isn't analyzing these things or not, because the hawk is going to modify its behavior based on the consequences in the environment regardless of the falconer's intentions.

"Aversion training" (or aversion therapy, as it is used clinically with humans) is classical conditioning. There are no consequence contingencies in classical conditioning, and the animal behaves reflexively (without "choice). There is no real need to get too deep into this, but I bring it up only because habituation training, flooding, and counterconditioning, which falconers do use to tame birds, are technically not Operant Conditioning because there are no consequences involved.

For example, tethering a passage prairie falcon to a screen perch in the house to expose it to people while going about your day is NOT operant conditioning-- it is habituation. However, the subsequent bating away from the falconer as he approaches too closely DOES have an operant component to it. The antecedent is the falconer's approach, the behavior is bating away, and the consequence is being restrained by the jesses. If bating away from the falconer decreases, it can be generally speculated that bating is a positive punisher (it decreased bating frequency). However, the reduction in bating is likely also do to habituation. Once the falconer starts introducing tidbits when approaching the falconer, we can say that this conditioning paradigm is quite likely a combination of habituation, punishment, negative reinforcement, counterconditioning, and positive reinforcement. This is where falconers usually check out, because every little aspect of one's interaction must be evaluated over the course of observational data, and it seems overcomplicated and unnecessary for most of us.

One thing I've brought up before on this forum is that unfortunately, fear is generally accepted to be learned at the classical level, so the more a falconer causes a bird to bate (in general, broad terms) the more likely it is to become an ingrained habit, be negatively reinforced, or cause "sensitization" rather than habituation. Those few birds that are a bit high strung and "just aren't cut out for falconry" or are "bad birds" are products of this, in my opinion. This is one of the reasons that understanding operant conditioning can increase the number of birds that end up working out well for the falconer.

Anyway, I've probably gotten too deep already and am boring the masses, but I get private messages about this stuff all the time, so I figured I'd throw something out there for those who have the attention span for it.

Finally, the only thing I have to add to the screaming discussion is that in my opinion, intermittent schedules and boredom can have more to do with conditioned screaming than simply begging for food.

Dillon

[dboyrollz76]

And worn out shoes!

Not to bad, I may have been wrong in my thought of her screaming at me like she would her parents for food. So if she screams, I pck her up spend time with her on the glove around the kids and stuff with no food being given. After about a week she makes a few peeps but the heavy screaming stop I get a shreek here and there but that's it. All at random!
When I got her to a responsive weight, she figured out fast that when she seen me it meant food. So I broke my schedule spent more time picking her up more without giving food. It seemed to work.

[goshawkr]

Operant conditioning is really a one syllable language that means "YES!". It lets you tag a moment in time, and indicate that this is the behavior that led to the reward.

I mis-typed when I wrote this, and I realized that when I read Mark's response to this post of mine. Its not operant conditioning as a whole I was referring to here, its a key subset of OC which is the Conditioned Reinforcer which is almost always tied to a positive reward.

While I have not read about this anywhere, I guess I am also using a separate Conditioned Reinforcer which I tie to either a very mild positive punishment and/or to a mild negative reinforcement. I know there was a lot of work in the 1920s to the 40s, during the same time period Skinner was working on his theories, about how an animal would respond to a signal that had been tied to an unpleasant experience in such a way that it understood the bad thing was about to happen. Once the "Bad critter" signal is established, no other unpleasant experience is usually needed.

Animals, people included, have a much stronger motivation to learn from positive outcomes than to avoid negative ones, this is also a cornerstone to the basic theories of Operant Conditioning. But the current in vogue trend to do all work in a positive only manner is quite limiting.

For those who have been watching the thread that are not up on OC, the key element with the Conditioned Reinforcer is that it must meet these criteria:

• Be a stimulus that the subject animal can perceive
• Be very distinct so that it is not overlooked as noise (A quiet sound in a noisy room would not be good)
• Be very short in duration to prevent ambiguity in what was going on when the signal was given.

I started using these two CR (one positive, one negative) about 12 years ago with a very stuborn horse I was working with, but I quickly found it worked just as well with my goshawks. My goal is always to use more positive than negative, and I set the bar with myself that if I am using my "bad hawk" signal more than 90% of the time I need to take a step back and lower my expectations.

2.Negative punishment: the act of taking something away that the animal likes. Removing food, toys, self or whatever the animal likes. When you take it away, the animal associates the previous act, that was unwanted, with the removal of the enjoyable item/food/toy/person/sight/etc. Repeated exposure to this punishment can eliminate many unwanted behaviors. Screaming is a tough one with this approach, as your presence is not very rewarding to most birds and removing the food will just make them scream more. This tenant works very well with social and pack animals. They respond very well to it and it is used predominately and with excellent success with canines.

Actually, screaming is instinctively used by raptors to summon their "provider" (in nature this is the parent) because they are communicating a need to be fed. So while the assertion that your presence is not very rewarding for most raptors is true in most cases, this is not broadly the case in most imprints and it is not the case with all screamers. Raptors are far more social than they are commonly believed to be.

Sometimes imprints scream just because they want company, or are bored. Once the behavior gets really entrenched, they scream just because it is what they do.

Removing your presence is a possible to use as a negative punishment in screaming cases, but its really tough unless it is done when screaming is infrequent. Its particularly tough because its quite common for the screaming to happen when they don't actually know you are there - its an instinctive way to make contact - to touch base. So if your hawk is in the mew and cant see you, but thinks you might be around, it will scream to summon you. It really wont do much good in this case for you to remove yourself as a punishment. Now, if, on the other hand, you are walking out to your mew and the bird gets excited and screams, turning immediately on your heels and walking the other way is something that would get the point across. Potentially anyway. I have don't this many times to ease aggression - by turning and leaving as soon as I see the aggressive glare.

[Jeff Blower]

Interesting read here, I am especially interested in the feather technique mentioned above. I don't mind a bird that screams a bit. A couple of my falcons have been a bit noisy through the years. I had an eyess RT years ago that really made some noise, but have been close to a divorce over a consistently screaming goshawk. Those of you that have had experience with a few goshawk's know how relentless they can be. This year I have a new male gos wild pulled, that is completely and totally silent. It's sort of an experiment really to see if I can fly another gos and stay married. A good friend of mine raised him at his place until hard penned with daily trips in the car, exposure to kids, cars, dogs, the works. Then I brought him home. It's been pretty hot here so I'm just now starting to bring his weight down very very slowly. So far as I said he has not made a sound and I am hoping it stays at least close to that through getting him in the field. I think if I can get him on game right away it will increase the possibility of him staying silent, or at least as silent as a gos at flying weight can be.
Not a cure for screaming but an attempt to avoid it from the start. I'm not really sure how this is all going to work out in the long run as I said it's sort of an experiment but I am hoping it works so I can keep this little guy I really like this one.

[Richard]

it is not luck in my opinion, a hawk that is giving it's full attention to hunting is in that zone and it will not scream as long as it is seeking prey. They do grow out of screaming provided they become hunters just like in the wild. When they are self actualized as they say they don't scream. Screaming is a proclamation of dependence, tid bit almost any hawk for a few days and make it dependent on you for food and it most likely will begin screaming. In pair bonding in wild adult hawks, often one of the adults will declare it is willing to become dependent and announce it by sounding some hunger screams. Signaling a desire to be presented food and signaling a willingness to copulate. IMHO

I've heard female goshawks in the wild food begging to the males. I mentioned it in my field notes and was told, "There is nothing in the literature about that, so we can't accept it...". Where does the "literature" come from!? I was a falconer on a goshawk study, and several of the others on the team just knew I was going to "taint" the study somehow.

[Tom Smith]

I've heard female goshawks in the wild food begging to the males. I mentioned it in my field notes and was told, "There is nothing in the literature about that, so we can't accept it...". Where does the "literature" come from!? I was a falconer on a goshawk study, and several of the others on the team just knew I was going to "taint" the study somehow.

I have heard adults of several different species when establishing pair bonds sounding what we call hunger screams. I don't know about the literature but I have heard similar comments made by people that were supposed to be well read but weren't in reality. If a person is really well read they probably have come across a reference to the vocalizations in the literature somewhere and haven't recognized what it is saying.

[Falconer54]

Wild hacked tiercel Peregrine, pulled with feathers. Hacked for 6 weeks, caught at least 12 things while at hack, now made gamehawk, catches most everyday, pigeons on his own at least once a week. He usually screams at least once a day at me, usually tends to scream more when his weight is up, or if he has a nice crop while sitting in yard. Can someone give me an explanation?