by Michael » Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:14 pm
I kind of tried to address this issue tonight and it worked for the most part. However, the problem is that this was during training. Lately it's been impossible to leave the birds out for unsupervised time near me without Kili doing this.
I think the big issue right now is that Kili got her full flight back. Around when I got Truman, she broke several primaries till she only had one left. Now she's back up to three and getting stronger. She's been flying an awful lot lately and doing complex maneuvers she'd never done before. She seems to be really excited about being able to fly and wants to show off. She has probably been jealous of Truman being so good at flying and now wants to show what she can do. We've been doing an enormous amount of flight recalls lately because that seems to be all she wants to do.
When I just got Truman and Kili was still able to fly, she would dive bomb him. But quite soon after she lost her feathers and the amount of effort to fly at him didn't justify the sadistic pleasure. Now that flight is easier for her again, she's doing it all over again. As long as it drives Truman away, it rewards her. Setting things up differently isn't really an option. She just targets him and flies by him to drive him off. I still cannot figure out for sure if it is out of aggression, play, or flock flying. They do fly around my place a bit together but I can't exactly decipher who is chasing whom or whatnot.
During training, if I am very quick, I can play/train one bird while the other eats a treat. Then I reward the other bird and do a trick with the other, etc. I go back and forth between birds and work with whoever is most ready/motivated. This rivalry definitely does spike motivation to new levels! But at the same time I'm trying to avoid this rivalry during non training time.
This last training sessions, Truman was having a bad start. He wasn't recalling to me. My suspicions were correct. He is nervous about getting knocked off by Kili, so he is not paying attention to me. When I got Kili out of the picture by rewarding her and protecting Truman from her, he got much better at his flight recalls too.
All of this may be partly my fault because of two things. One I set up a little training rivalry on purpose. Second is that I've been chasing Truman off of places I don't want him to go. Perhaps Kili has taken it upon herself to finish the job and chase him off of everywhere he's SUPPOSED to be!!!!! That is the most aggravating part. I'll chase Truman off the fridge and he lands on his training perch. I think to myself "wonderful! he's learning where he belongs." And then Kili flies out of nowhere just to chase him off of there and all my work goes to waste! I try to punish Truman for landing on my things and then Kili punishes him for landing on her things which just sends him back to landing on mine! It's not a safe/positive environment I want to enforce and certainly Truman's training/confidence has been suffering from this. I'm going to need to reevaluate my strategies and figure out new methods to apply. This is a dilemma/study in progress and I'll report my findings.