Gandalf the Crow Retrieves Objects (Pictures)

[NiRD]

This evening we working on a behavior we are trying to perfect. The ultimate goal is for Gandalf to be able to fly out into an audience, land on a targeted arm, and take an object from the hand. Gandalf must be able to then fly back to me with the object in his beak and release it gently.

We're working on generalizing, so here we're playing some tug to build desire for a brand new object.


Taking the object from the hand.


Flying to the hand to retrieve the object.

 

[pycthedragon]

Oh my goodness, he's such a beautiful bird. I love him! I hope he gets really good at it - well trained birds are awesome to watch.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

He's beautiful! Is he a pied crow?

Surprisingly my friends doing similar training with his white neck x brown headed raven. It will be hard to get him to let go willingly, whatever he has is a toy right, so what my friend did is use perch and cash box. Corvids naturally want to cash, this utilizes their natural behavior. So instead of handing it to you he'll put it in a box. My friend got this idea from a friend of his who does ren fair shows, and has a brown headed raven doing the same thing successfully

 

[NiRD]

Thanks! Yes, Gandalf is a pied crow.

Gandalf has no issues with give and take, however if he grabs and object as a reward (the reward for flying to a hand is to get the object, he loves playing with objects), he wants to keep his prize.

I have a box for him, actually. He mastered that in two sessions flat. I'm working on having him deliver it to the hand, so I can work with the object.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

That's awesome, sounds like his training is going awesome!

Do you free fly him?

 

[NiRD]

I do. He's reliable indoors right now on short distances. We're working on increasing the three Ds right now, distance, duration, distraction. He's still really young so he is still very easily distracted.

 

[kq_fan]

He is so beautiful! That is so cool you got him to retrieve things like that. I wish I had a crow! I love crows

 

[Featheredsamurai]

I do. He's reliable indoors right now on short distances. We're working on increasing the three Ds right now, distance, duration, distraction. He's still really young so he is still very easily distracted.

Awesome! Indoors is great for training at first. They really do get distracted lol Sir francis(my friends raven) gets distracted too XD one time it took 3 hours for him to come back because roofs are way to interesting

 

[NiRD]

That's a bit nerve wracking.

 

[Kiwibird]

Well isn't he just a smart thing Is that a bit of leather he's after?

 

[NiRD]

It is. We've worked with business cards and invoices so far. We are working on being able to do this with any object offered, so we generalize behaviors with different objects, in different locations, during different times of day.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

Haha yeah, it is a little nerve wracking, especially when the wild crows mob him and we hope he doesn't get scared away. But he's also a strong flier, and sticks close because he's imprinted. He went straight to free flying, without any indoor training. Definitely risky, personally I would have done it differently with more indoor training like you did. It's sometimes fun to take the risk though, I've found my self in situations where I just say whatever, let's see what happens, and put my bird in the air. Luckily I'm working with a imprint hawk, who sticks around.

 

[NiRD]

Do you do falconry, also? Falconry is what started my interest in birds, though when I worked with raptors in college they were all rescues.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

Yup, I'm only a apprentice though.