Goodbye Blondie...

Unfortunately Blondie has passed away. When the lid was off of her cage last week, my feet startled her and she flushed up and hit her head on the underside of the desk. I am very angry at myself for letting this happen because this is something I should have anticipated - I have seen many quail do the same thing over the years. I took a weeks' break from the bird training and even wondered if I wanted to continue it. I have decided that I will continue to work with Brita. I have done a few sessions with her now and she is indeed a very different bird to work with - she is more wary or indifferent of new things and definitely more wary of what's going on around her. She burns out faster than Blondie and is not as fast, and always tries to cheat by trying to find out where the food went. She also insists on picking up a lot of the little granules of food that she spills. She is coming along, though. As a matter of fact, I got her to the point where Blondie was in half the time (but this may be because I too am learning!). What happened to Blondie was a terrible reminder for me to think about things. I had a quail once named Barbara who did the same thing. She didn't die but did damage to her inner ear as her ear was bleeding afterwards. A few months later she started to fall over and eventually could not get back up and I chose to put her down. Hard roofs kill quail. I take every precaution to build their cages appropriately but didn't think about the environmental factors. Under the desk, the desk itself is like a big roof. With animals, a lot of learning has a lot to do with context. I suppose it is the same for people too.

Video 8 - Blondie owns the target

Blondie has been catching on to stepping on the red target to get her food, and when she finally offers the behavior of pecking it, I get very excited and give her a few extra pecks. After a few tries she really catches on and I narrow my criteria - I still click for stepping on it, but she must have most of her foot on it - no grazing. Another session or so of this and she will only be pecking it. I move the target around to force her to actively look for it, and she does! I'm very happy with the progress after only one week. My next challenge will be putting the target on a stick to see if she will peck it off the ground.

Video 7 - Brita gets her chance

Brita finally gets some one-on-one attention. This is a super short session with her very own "clicker" which is an app I downloaded on my phone called Dog Whistle. It has a variety of different settings and I picked a fairly low one for Brita, since bird's ears are quite sensitive to sound. Because she hears the sound of the clicker all the time and gets nothing for it, the sound of the clicker means nothing to her. This new noise will be hers and hers alone. I just have to be careful to hold the button down for the same length of time every time to keep the sound consistent. Sometimes I tap it too lightly and the sound is too short. With a real clicker you don't have to worry about this much.Also, it is very easy to start moving the feeding hand at the same time the sound goes off. Ideally the sound should be first and the movement of the feeding hand after. After watching this video a couple times I realise this is something i am going to have to work on, especially when using my phone instead of the clicker.

Brita is not as "driven" as Blondie but once she gets the hang of it, she might get to be just as good. Her sessions are very short and so far she hasn't shown as much enthusiasm as Blondie. The different personalities of the two birds are interesting to observe!

Video 6 - Blondie narrows it down

Getting Blondie to start putting more or her foot down on the target. Thankfully I have figured out a solution to the "Where's Brita?" problem. When Blondie is having a session, Brita goes into the insulated box that I use to transport my fish. I put a soft towel on the bottom for her to rummage in. The box is light-proof and almost sound-proof, so whichever quail is inside can call all she wants and won't be heard. After 3 minutes, Blondie switches places with Brita and I can start training Brita. When they are both done they go back to their cage to eat their meal. It works great. Without the distraction of the other bird, both of them focus a lot better.

You can see Blondie start to think about pecking the target - the fact that she is offering new behaviours suggests that whatever logic a quail has is starting to kick in, and she is experimenting with new ways to try to get the food.

Video 5 - Blondie gets a target

This is Blondie's second session with a red paper target. I wish I would have filmed the first one. On her first session, I started out with a red circle that was about 8 inches in diameter. It was so big that she was bound to step on it occasionally, and I clicked her for those times. After about four or five clicks she caught on, so I wittled the circle down to 6 inches and tried again. Again, after 5 or 6 clicks, she had it. In this video I have the red target wittled down to about 4 inches. I click her whenever her foot touches it at first, and gradually increase my criteria by making her have more and more of her foot on it. If you watch carefully, you will start to see her actually look down at the target to see where it is and meaningfully put her foot on it. She still does not want to work long without Brita with her, but I have come up with a solution for that! (more later!)

Video 4 - Blondie gets fast

Blondie has learned to eat from the cup and anticipates getting the chance to eat. Both she and Brita have their food witheld about 8 hours overnight and 10 hours during the day. In the morning after each training session they get to eat until they are full and resting, and after each session at night they get a full dish of food for about four hours. In the paper by Ellen and T.W. Reese, "The Quail, Coturnix coturnix, as a Laboratory Animal" the authors found that the optimal time to fast the quail before conditioning a new behaviour was 17 hours. Once the behaviour was conditioned, however, the birds would perform them without any fasting at all. Brita and Blondie are on a similar feeding schedule to most pet dogs, which I think is fair.

I try a couple different things in this video. The first is to try to get Blondie working faster and longer by only giving her one peck at the dish. After a while she learns to make that first peck count. She is still wondering where Brita is when I have her on the table by herself. When Blondie loses focus I trade spots with Brita, but Brita doesn't even know how to get food from the cup and since she has been listening to the clicker for days and not getting anything out of it, the sound means nothing to her. Once I bring Blondie back, however, she starts mimicking Blondie and going for the food. Blondie is once again eager for the food and no longer distressed now that Brita is back. I watched this session several times and did some brainstorming about how to fix these little setbacks. Blondie has to be able to work on her own and must get used to not having Brita beside her all the time. Brita has to be be able to work uninterrupted if she is to learn anything at all.

Video 3: Charging the clicker with Blondie

Blondie seems to be the bird who gets it. She's curious and not afraid to check things out and experiment with her surroundings. I decide to start charging the clicker with her to teach her what the sound means - but there is a hang-up. Blondie gets very upset whenever she is separated from Brita. She starts to call for her friend and ignore the food. In order to get Blondie to focus, Brita has to be with her. I can only work with one bird at a time, however. For the time being I focus on Blondie, but I know I will have to work on separating them in the future. If I only end up training one quail, then that's fine too.

To charge the clicker, I hold the cup out of sight - either behind my hand or under the table - then I click and put the food right in front of Blondie's face where she can see it and be tempted to eat. At first I let her have a few pecks at the food since she misses the morsels with the first couple pecks. My next step will be getting her to work faster. She was completely full/bored by 6 minutes into the session, so I will aim to keep my sessions shorter - other trainers have suggested 2 minutes so that's what I'm going to go with.

Brita has a little slip when I move her away from the camera lens and it seems to startle her. Her body language suggests to me that she is a little anxious about her surroundings. Could there be something up above that's freaking her out a little? The sound of the wind rattling the window cover seems to irk her a little. I might need to work with Brita on her own a bit to get her more comfortable being out on the desk, and get both birds more comfortable being on their own.

I am using finely chopped hard boiled egg with some of their regular crumbles as a food reward.