It’s way too early for introducing cues in this instance: capturing a novel behavior. Cues come later when trying to capture spontaneous behavior like this. Doing so now muddies the communication and prolongs the training.
Capturing starts with clicker training. Your first goal is SIMPLY to increase the desired behaviors frequency, get alone to do it often: See novel behavior, click and reward. You can’t implement a cue if the behavior is so rare.
Once the bird learns that this behavior gets rewards, he will start a “begging” phase, offering the trick up frequently In attempt to con you out of treats. It’s at this begging phase that a cue can most effectively be introduced, since you’re getting more predictable, back to back behaviors.
Depending on how quickly the bird catches on, all this can last just a couple days, or a couple weeks.
Who are you referencing in this?
My thing is- reward the second you see the behavior, whether or not you remember to say the words.
Saying a word is the same as a click as long as its the same each time. Heck- you could say "boo" or "beep" or "pop" or "yikes" and if you rewarded in association with that sound, its the same as a clicker.
The idea of saying a word and treating, vs clicking and treating is the same.
I didn't mean say the word and expect your bird to do it- I meant anticipate the behavior (clearly a begging behavior) and start saying it--- the bird is going to likely do it if the banana chips are out again. As soon as he does it, give the reward.
Obviously he doesn't know the association between the word, the action and the reward yet, but by treating the second the behaviors occurs, he will make that association.
"Good tap" vs "click" are the same if they are consistent.
For instance-- when lightly potty training my bird, the second I saw her butt lift up, I said "go poop", matter where she was (of course, she was already in the process of doing so) but I said it because I knew that she was definitely about to poop. Then I immediately said "GOOD POOPING + instant reward.
She now knows what "go poop" means because I labeled the behavior as it was happening and rewarded instantly paired with the same phrase every time "good poop".
I still say "good pooping" anytime she goes, but I faded rewards over time and transitioned to verbal praise only, as she cares most about attention anyway.
Early on, you want to reward/reinforce each time the desired behavior occurs and do so right away. After mastery, you can fade to rewarding every other time and so on, but you want to pair tangible items (like food) with verbal praise because if you fade out the food eventually, you can still use the other (as long as you have a bird that likes attention). Your bird is clearly food motivated, as that is what gave birth to this behavior, but for some other people, there might be other reinforces that would be stronger than food, so just throwing that out there for anyone else reading this.
It doesn't over-complicate to tell them to do what they are already going to do as long as you reward the behavior immediately. Over time, even if they don't get it right away, they will form the association between the words and the action. Again-- most important thing is to reward right away with some sort of consistent word...but I have never used a clicker--it's just a sound that is associated with a reward. Now, if a bird already knows clicker training, then that's fine, but you could click all day at mine and she wouldn't get it because she is trained with words, e.g., "good girl" not a click.
It's not too early to label the behavior, as long as you provide instant 1-1 reinforcement and are able to catch them doing the desired behavior--- in this case, we know banana chips worked, if it were me, I would sit there eating them and imitate the situation that cause it the first time. Then when the bird did it, I would say "good tap" and reward at the same time (good tap would become the click if comparing clicker to verbal). IF I knew the tap was coming (based on body language/begging behavior) I would say "tap" the second it started, then say "good tap" and reward simultaneously.
Again- if your bird already knows clicker training, then use that-- but if not, that is a learned skill and it all comes down to behavior + sound+ reward in rapid succession following the desired behavior.
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