Training Korppi

Korppi's first day at Wolf Ridge

At the beginning of the school-year, a new education animal joined the team at Wolf Ridge, a common raven we named "Korppi" (the Finnish word for "raven").  Working with Korppi quickly proved to be an entirely different situation than working with the education raptors.  Ravens are significantly smarter than raptors and require daily enrichment.

Korppi's enrichment comes in a number of forms.  Every day, we try to present her with a different challenge for obtaining her food, whether that involves hiding it somewhere in her enclosure, putting inside of some sort of puzzle-container, or simply giving her something that is challenging to eat (like an apple or a pumpkin).  Enrichment also comes in the form of training, which is something that I've been working with her on a daily basis.

When she first arrived, Korppi needed to simply become comfortable with me and learn to associate me with positive experiences.  So, I sat in the corner of her mew and threw raisins for her to eat.  Eventually, she would come closer and closer to me until she was eating raisins right next to me.  Then, she spent a couple of days eating raisins off of my shoes before she finally worked up the courage to take them right out of my fingers.

Korppi tentatively investigating a pine-cone full of raisins

My next project was to crate-train her; that is, train her to voluntarily go into a travel crate so we can take her in and out of her enclosure.  This started off pretty good, but we reached a point where Korppi was refusing to enter the crate (even though she clearly knew what I wanted) and was beginning to get aggressive with me.  I figured out that we hadn't built up enough trust together yet, especially since her only experience with crates up to this point was being involuntarily stuffed into and out of one before she arrived at Wolf Ridge.  Her negative association with crates coupled with our quickly fading trust with each other created a situation that was not working for either of us.

At this point, it was time to focus on building trust together, so I spent the next month training her to perch on a scale perch during which I fed her lots of raisins.  Throughout the course of the month, I began to notice a change in our sessions as Korppi became more relaxed with me, nipping at my fingers less and less.  I also became more relaxed and I think my awareness of my body language contributed to our progress.

And then, today happened.  As Korppi was perched on her scale perch, I had my arm extended just below the perch and without any prompting, she stepped onto my arm.  I was completely caught off guard and made sure to reward her immediately.  It was an exciting moment - a testament to the trust we've finally built with each other.  She stepped up on my arm five or six more times today without any hesitation.

A moment I'm always going to remember

Now that she trusts me enough to step up onto my arm, we can move forward with some other training activities when I get back from Christmas break.  Where will our training sessions go from here?  Sometimes, it seems like that is more Korppi's decision than mine.