If you’ve ever watched noticed kestrels in the grasslands here in San Diego or other parts of the US, you might have wondered if they are more plentiful during certain times of the year. This year, our team is joining a global network of bird researchers...
For many apprentice falconers and early-career professionals, creance work can feel deceptively simple. The bird flies out. The bird comes back. The line stays untangled. Progress is measured in distance and reliability. We use the creance to give us an opportunity to layer recall with positive...
For more than a decade, our work began as a mission-driven LLC, guided first and foremost by the welfare of the birds in our care. That priority shaped how we trained, educated, and made decisions—always with the birds’ best interests at the center. In 2025, we took...
When we talk about giving animals "control" in training, we stumble into vague territory. Control is a hypothetical construct. It's abstract, unmeasurable, and it shifts the conversation away from behavior and back into feelings and intention. Let's ground ourselves in what we can observe and influence:...
If you've ever spotted a small, colorful raptor perched on a wire along a country road, bobbing its head as it scans the grasslands below, you've likely seen an American kestrel. These beautiful falcons, no bigger than a dove, are specialized hunters that help keep...
Every trainer has faced it: a behavior that should work on paper but falls apart in practice. You've done everything right: high rate of reinforcement, clear criteria, incompatible behaviors. And yet the problem persists or even worsens. This is where the constructional approach reveals something...
Is fear an action or an emotion? It's a question worth sitting with. Because how we answer it shapes everything about how we respond when a bird displays fear or aggression in training. Emotions as Contingency Descriptors Here's a reframe that might change how you think about this:...
Palm cockatoos are in trouble. In Australia, fewer than 2,000 remain in the wild. They're listed as Endangered in Queensland and have the lowest breeding success rate of any parrot, females lay one egg every two years, and on average, a breeding pair raises just one...
Choice and control are buzzy words in animal training right now. But what do we really mean when we talk about choice? And are we actually offering it? Are we really performing a functional assessment to see what true choice means? And doesn’t B.F. Skinner’s...
November in Southern California doesn't look like fall in most places. Our trees stay green, our temperatures stay mild, and you won't find snow on the ground (unless you drive up to the mountains). But just because we don't have dramatic seasonal changes doesn't mean...