#clicker ask

A clicker serves to make a sound that marks when the correct behaviour has been completed.  Through clicker recognition training you can teach a bird to associate the clicker’s noise with a reward which in turn ends up telling them that when it’s been clicked a treat is going to come.  This understanding is important because it allows the bird to know exactly when they did the right thing, if you don’t give any sort of audible cue there will be a delay between the time the bird did the right action and the time you were able to deliver the reward, this click acts to bridge that gap to make learning easier and faster.

How you do clicker recognition training is super simple, just click the clicker and immediately reward, that’s it! This helps develop that association that the click = treat which is key to the whole use of a clicker, if they don’t know what the click means it’s not going to be very helpful.  You’ll know the bird understands what the click means by their body language, initially they may not show much interest in the sound, maybe a bit of curiosity but not much aside from that. When a bird does understand that the click = reward they’ll start getting ready for a treat, turning their attention to you, maybe reaching out for a treat, bobbing for one, there’s an obvious change in behaviour from just sitting to actively waiting for you to give them that treat. The more you work with a clicker the more they understand it and eventually you can end up with responses like this where the sound of you picking up the clicker gets them to come running on over because they know a training session is about to happen.

When using the clicker to make behavioural alterations it’s important to make your clicks precise, click exactly when they do the right thing and reward quickly after.  The best way to learn how to use a clicker is to grab a friend and play that game where you’d say ‘you’re getting warmer’ using only the clicker, no words, no pointing, just the clicker to help them know they’re on the right track.  The more precise your clicks are and the better you get at clicking when your friend progresses the right way the faster they’ll go the right direction and get to the end goal, exact same thing as training commands. 

One of the easiest things to train with to help you get better at using the clicker and to help your bird get better at understanding it is target training.  Use the clicker to teach them to direct their beaks towards the end of a stick until they are willingly able to walk, run, fly, and climb anywhere to try and touch it.  Again the concept here is super simple, present the bird with the stick and click whenever they make a small progression towards it.  If they look at it click and reward, take a step towards it, lean over, or touch it, any sort of progress they make in the general direction of the target stick is a step in the right direction and earns them a reward.  Over time they catch on that what’s earning them treats is going towards the stick and you can narrow it down to where they only get rewarded for touching it.

A clicker can be replaced by nearly any noise you can make but there are reasons that clickers are preferred over human noises.  A clicker is consistent, it sounds almost identical every time it clicks and it’s fast, all it takes is the press of a button and it’s done.  Using words like ‘good’ and ‘yes’ are also totally viable options but they can make learning a bit harder for the animal.  Every time you say good you say it differently, you will often use those words in sentences outside of training which can make it lose it’s meaning to the bird, rather than getting a treat every time you say good they’re only getting it sometimes and that can be confusing.  The other issue is length, a click takes as long as it takes you to press the button and let go, the words tend to take longer to say which then makes the indication a little less precise.  Rather than clicking right when the moment happens your good is dragging on for a few moments past the completed action so the bird has a much larger gap of things they did that could have potentially been earning them the reward.

So the key to good clicker usage is precision and consistency, the better you get at clicking the moment the bird moves the right way the faster your bird will be able to catch on. If you do accidentally click the clicker do be sure to give them a treat anyways just to keep that understanding strong, when it makes a noise they know they’re getting reinforced and we don’t want to abuse that understanding by confusing them with needless clicks that warrant no reward.

she may just be startled or not like the noise, some clickers also jingle a bit which can cause aggressive responses with some birds. Perhaps try leaving the clicker around and letting them explore the device so the object itself isn’t scary.  You could then try clicking from much farther away so it’s quieter or muffling the sound a bit with a coat pocket (If you do it farther away it’s best to have multiple people so the reward comes immediately after).  There’s also the possibility that it’s your movement afterwards that’s causing the action, if the noise startles her then a hand comes launching towards her it could be interpreted as a threat, if you’re moving quickly try slowing down a bit.  The other option of course is to get another type of clicker, button clickers tend to be much quieter and better for birds who’ve never heard the sound before because it’s softer, clicking your tongue is another option for getting her used to the noise as well.