[IATCB] News and updates for Fall 2025

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The International Avian Trainers Certification Board and the International Animal Trainers Certification Board, IATCB, offers you a way to gain professional credibility, increase your earnings potential, and advance your career. We live in a competitive world, and animal trainers are no different than anyone else looking for advanced knowledge and skill in their profession.  IATCB endorses voluntary certification by examination for all professionals involved with animals, including trainers, educators, handlers, veterinarians, and all others involved in the care and handling of animals. 

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We’re looking for passionate, insightful, and inspiring contributions from professionals like you!  If you have a story, experience, or idea that could benefit your colleagues, we’d love to feature it in our upcoming newsletter.

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Topics may include - but aren’t limited to:

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Whether you’re a season professional or just starting out, your perspective matters.  Help us build a newsletter that reflects the diversity, creativity, and dedication of our community.  Authors of submissions that are selected for our newsletter will receive 1 CEU per 500 words up to 2 CEUs total.

CEUs:

Still looking for ways to get CEUs?  We are looking for content for future exams!  One CEU is awarded for every 5 test items accepted. Test items are questions and four "answers" to the question. Only one answer should be correct, with the other three answers being distractors. Distractors should seem plausible and not obviously incorrect.

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IATCB Certification Grant Program

The purpose of the IATCB Certification Exam Grant is to remove financial barriers to certification for applicants volunteering or working in the field of animal/bird training who are interested in pursuing or furthering a training-related career.

IATCB will offer one bird trainer (CPBT-KA) and one animal trainer (CPAT-KA) grant per testing cycle. Please download the application form for more details. The form, when completed should be emailed to grant@iatcb.org.

This information is also on the web site, International Avian Trainers Certification Board - News (iatcb.org)

https://www.iatcb.org/newhome

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To find the list of recommended reading material go to International Avian Trainers Certification Board - Home (iatcb.org) and go to “Get Certified”

2024/25 Testing Dates

*Applications will not be accepted after 11:59pm Eastern on this date

To find the list of recommended reading material go to International Avian Trainers Certification Board - Home (iatcb.org) and click on “Get Certified”

Behavioral and Goal-Oriented Enrichment, and Their Role In Captive Avian Management ___ 

John Simcox, CPBT-KA 

President | Executive Director, Talon Ridge Raptor Institute 

Abstract 

Behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment are the acts of stimulating an animal physically, mentally, or socially by encouraging them to use and develop species-specific behaviors or by identifying a specific outcome that may be achieved by the individual or group. This type of enrichment is foundational to captive avian management to preserve the health, welfare, and quality of life of birds under human care. By developing enrichment opportunities that use strategic planning methods that promote individual or species-specific behavior, have clear direction in their implementation, and have achievable perceived outcomes, avian caretakers can create a holistic care plan that provides a dynamic and diverse enriching experience. The use of these methods, along with positive reinforcement training, allows caretakers to mitigate behavioral inconsistencies amongst their ambassadors by diverting undesirable actions through the expression of species-appropriate behavior within focused enrichment opportunities. At Talon Ridge Raptor Institute, we implement these types of experiences, along with novel opportunities, to build confidence and resilience amongst our resident non-releasable avian ambassadors. Through implementation of behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment, we can positively affect the quality of life of birds under our care, increase a bird’s expression of choice, and continue building strong relationships while promoting appropriate behavior.

Introduction 

Enrichment is a vital component in creating meaningful experiences and shaping the lives of the birds that we care for daily. Through a well thought out enrichment program, we can positively affect the welfare and quality of life of our birds by providing them with opportunities to express natural or species-specific behaviors, thus allowing them to live a life as closely to what they would experience in the wild as possible. However, we, as the caretakers, sometimes have a habit of falling into a one-dimensional approach to our enrichment programs and its implementation. There are many reasons we may find ourselves stuck in this habit. It could be because we are busy and the enrichment activity is easy to make or set-up, maybe we believe that our bird really loves a specific enrichment item, or it could just be that we are facing logistical issues with the execution of a type of enrichment. All are valid reasons for falling into this hole, but how do we dig ourselves out in order to provide our birds with the stimulation they require? The first step is by understanding exactly what enrichment is. 

According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), enrichment is identified as, “a process to ensure that the behavioral and physical needs of an animal are being met by providing opportunities for species-appropriate behaviors and choices.” In other words, enrichment should fill physiological and psychological gaps where an animal would normally utilize natural behaviors to achieve a desired goal. There are thousands of ways to enrich the lives of the birds under our care, but The Shape of Enrichment, Inc. identify five main categories of enrichment that our programs should follow: 

1) Social: Including conspecifics, other animals, trainers, etc. 

2) Cognitive: Mental stimulation such as puzzle feeders and training sessions; novel experiences 

3) Environmental/Physical Habitat: Diverse perching, substrates, nests, etc.

4) Sensory: Items that allow for the use of the senses such as tactile, olfactory, or taste-based opportunities. 

5) Food: Novel foods and food presentation 

By offering a diverse range of enrichment opportunities, we not only stimulate our birds but also increase their welfare by offering them choice in how they spend their day. However, we can take this one step further. We can use these five categories of enrichment and focus our strategies to promote specific behaviors we would like to see (typically natural/species specific behaviors) or we can utilize the enrichment to meet an end goal. These types of implementation strategies are known as behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment. 

Behavioral Enrichment 

Behavioral enrichment is a management strategy for providing mental or physical stimulation that encourages an animal to display species-specific behavior that reflects acts or instincts that they would normally exhibit in the wild. Additionally, behavioral enrichment can be implemented to help an animal express “individual behavior”, or behavior that may be unique to that specific individual, that may be prompted by the animal’s physical or mental state. This method can be utilized in a variety of ways such as providing parrots with puzzle feeders to promote cognitive development and problem solving skills or by providing raptors with tactile enrichment that they can grip with their feet and shred with their beak. Additionally, many birds will experience instinctual responses to environmental cues such as nesting season, and we can provide nesting material like sticks, grasses, etc. to allow the bird to express this natural behavior. By utilizing behavioral enrichment planning in our programs, we empower our birds with the opportunities to be birds. While we may never be able to fully replicate the kinds of stimulation they would experience in their natural habitat, we can provide them with a diverse range of opportunities to express behavior that can positively affect their welfare and quality of life under human care.

Goal-Oriented Enrichment 

Goal-oriented enrichment is a strategy in which enrichment is provided to encourage a specific goal or outcome. This strategy, while sounding similar to behavioral enrichment, focuses on structured, measurable activities that have more defined measurable progress and does not focus on general opportunities for behavioral expression in the way that behavioral enrichment does. This strategy can be implemented in a variety of ways depending on the specific outcome desired. For example, we can utilize this strategy to manage behavioral inconsistencies amongst an individual or in a group by offering enrichment that is incompatible with undesirable behavior, or we can implement this type of enrichment to increase specifically targeted behavior such as exploration within a bird’s direct environment. Utilizing this method of implementation allows us as caretakers to manage effective outcomes that have a direct impact on a bird’s life and can help proactively mitigate issues that may develop future detrimental consequences to the bird’s welfare and quality of life. 

Role of Behavioral and Goal-Oriented Enrichment in Captive Avian Management 

Behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment are foundational management strategies within a well developed enrichment program. It is with these methods that avian caretakers should begin their respective programs, building off this foundation with other common opportunities such as novel experiences. However, while these enrichment methods lay the groundwork for new opportunities, we must first understand why they are the fundamental “blueprint” for enrichment programs. 

At Talon Ridge Raptor Institute (TRRI), our primary goal for enriching raptors is to make sure that we have developed a holistic, all encompassing, program that will focus on each individual. Our structure will not group any bird together regardless of their species, ability, etc. We believe that enrichment is highly individualized in the same way that we believe that training and husbandry are dependent on the bird as well. Due to this ideology, our enrichment program is set up to be able to address the needs of each individual, and because we plan to employ methods of behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment as our baseline, it will allow us to better track key points of emphasis such as health, welfare, and quality of life. 

Enrichment is a science steeped in observation, and these observations are what allow us to take a peek into the world of our avian ambassadors. However, birds can be cryptic, and they don't always tell us when something is going on or going wrong. Even while we are working up close and personal with our birds, sometimes they mask issues, we can miss cues, or our birds enjoy our sessions so much that they seem to work normally for their trainer. All the while, there are underlying issues that are brewing that can potentially wreak havoc on our birds physical or mental state. However, having a well developed enrichment program that focuses on behavioral and goal-oriented strategies can be critical in analyzing and identifying potential issues thus positively affecting the lives of our birds. But how can enrichment identify potential issues? It comes down to how birds interact with enrichment versus how they may interact with their trainers. Often when we are training our birds, we are asking them to do something that is somewhat unnatural - flying/landing/sitting on a glove or hand of a human, asking them to present a foot, vocalizing on cue, etc. While there may be equivalents to these behaviors in nature, executing these behaviors in the presence of a human, oftentimes, goes against instinctual reasoning. However, when we employ enrichment opportunities, free of humans, that focus on natural behaviors or behavioral goals, it allows us to take a look inside the world of the individual. We can see their thought process, how they move, their reactions, and their strategies; these methods offer up critical insight into our birds' lives in the least intrusive manner possible. Since we are observing our birds in this “raw” state (seeing them interact without the direct presence of humans), we are watching them unaltered. We may be able to see the limp when they walk on a leg that was previously injured. We may be able to see that they are having trouble making certain types of flight patterns. We may notice that they aren't interacting with their environment at all. These behaviors that we are able to see while interacting with their enrichment are critical to building and maintaining their health plan. Additionally, these observations allow for the development of behavioral baselines that can be tracked in welfare or quality of life assessments, especially when receiving new individuals into the collection. 

By employing behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment strategies, avian caretakers have the opportunity to take a step forward and provide their birds with autonomy and more opportunity for choice expression. Developing complex and intriguing scenarios with higher degrees of freedom that challenge our birds to use instinctual skills and abilities allows for the opportunity for our birds to engage with their enrichment and participate more. We see this same concept in training; when we allow for higher degrees of freedom during training sessions, we tend to see increased engagement and concept retention. Why would it be any different during enrichment sessions? This increase in choice and engagement can lead to more confident birds, building trust between both the bird and the trainer thus helping settle behavioral inconsistencies or even unwanted behavior. 

By utilizing these methods, we have the opportunity to positively affect the lives of our birds. Whether it is increasing choice and control, managing unwanted behavior, or identifying detrimental health issues, we can implement these types of enrichment strategies to aid our efforts in providing the highest standard of care for the birds that we manage. Behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment strategies are the foundation of successful enrichment programs, and they play a critical role in the overall management of captive avian collections. 

Implementation 

If behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment are foundational to enrichment programs, how do we develop and apply these methods to our programs? The simple answer is you are most likely already doing so and maybe just not realizing it. However, the first step will always be observation. Whether it's through planned time to sit outside the aviary and watch your bird, watching via cleverly placed cameras, or even taking notes from volunteers or docents, there are plenty of ways to collect observational data. This data provides critical insight into the needs of your birds and serves as the starting point in developing your enrichment strategies. 

One method that can be used to help build structure to your enrichment plan is by developing a behavioral inventory, otherwise known as an ethogram, of natural behaviors of the species of bird you’re observing. Of course, it's best if you can get out and see these behaviors in person, but you can even utilize the internet to your advantage! Either way, by cataloging these behavioral patterns, we can begin to build up potential behavioral repertoire for our birds as these natural behaviors we observe in wild counterparts serve as the building blocks of what we hope to achieve with our flocks. For example, at a previous facility, a colleague, Andrea McCravy - CPBT-KA, worked with a Crested Caracara (Caracara plancus) who was notoriously shy and could be a challenging bird to work with due to his innate grievances towards humans. However, like many before, Andrea initially struggled working with this bird because of the challenges he presented; however, being the talented bird trainer she is, Andrea employed the use of behavioral enrichment to build her relationship with this bird. Andrea knew that Crested Caracaras are primarily ground hunters, meaning that the they usually hunt or forage for food on foot, and because of this, Andrea employed two methods of enrichment that allowed her to interact more effectively with this bird, thus building a better relationship with this bird than any trainer before her. So what were the methods she used? An egg carton, some paper, a laser pointer, and good ole fashioned ingenuity. The first method Andrea employed was by taking an egg carton and tearing off the cups, folding paper almost in rose pattern and placing it inside the cup, and placing tidbits of the bird’s diet within the folds of the paper. She then entered the bird’s aviary and partially buried the cardboard cups in various locations throughout the aviary which allowed for the caracara to flex its foraging skills to find all of the “prey”. Lastly, Andrea wanted to train a targeting behavior for this bird, but she knew that he wouldn’t likely respond to traditional targeting methods. So once again, Andrea called upon her knowledge of caracara’s natural foraging behavior and utilized a laser pointer, the bird’s natural inquisitive behavior of seeing movement on the ground (this also being a novel enrichment experience), and positive reinforcement training to begin working this behavior. By utilizing these behavioral enrichment strategies, Andrea was able to effectively change her relationship with this bird by allowing the bird to open up more and express positive species-appropriate behavior. Ultimately, she positively affected his welfare and quality of life in the process. 

Additionally, not only should we be identifying species-specific natural behaviors, but we should also develop ethograms for behavior expressed by our individual birds. This allows us to identify behavioral patterns that may be unique to the individual and not indicative of the entire species. By identifying these individualized behavioral habits, we may be able to develop goal-oriented enrichment strategies to increase patterns of behavior that are desired or to mitigate behavior that is unwanted or dangerous. At a previous facility, there was a bald eagle who was non-flighted and consistently showed behavior that may indicate fear or aggression towards humans. We tried many different training methods, made modifications to the entry door, etc. to try and cull this behavior towards her trainers; however, we were unsuccessful and we even began informal quality of life discussions and assessing her place within our collection policy. However, in an effort to exhaust all options, we began assessing the specific behavior that she was exhibiting, and we found that when we entered her aviary and she was on a “high” (no more than 4ft in height due to her flight capabilities), she did not present aggressive behavior toward trainers (i.e. charging and attempting to grab with her feet); although, when we entered and she was on the ground, she immediately charged us almost every time we entered. That is when we had an epiphany. The predator walls of her aviary rose to about 3-4ft in height. Maybe she isn't able to see us approaching when she is on the ground, and when we enter, we are catching her off guard resulting in a defensive response. Now, we know our approach within our enrichment strategy. Our goal was to reduce aggressive and defensive behavior, but how do we get there? The solution was pretty simple. We changed her aviary to a location that allowed her to view her surroundings completely. She could see us approaching, and even when she was on the ground, she allowed us to enter without issue. Not only that, but her training took off. Even the simplest behaviors that she struggled with in her previous aviary, she was learning at a surprising rate. She was even kenneling voluntarily, something I had not seen her do in my entire time at the facility. By changing her environment and providing a new aviary that allowed her to be more engaged by environmental stimuli allowed us as her caretakers to achieve our goal of reducing unwanted behavior. It wasn't complicated or challenging, it was a matter of observational learning, identifying behavior, and working towards achieving a common goal or outcome. 

Implementing these strategies can sometimes feel daunting or overwhelming. Identifying behavior or even changing behavior can be really difficult. However, it's a team effort, and we all must be on the same page to see successful results. By enabling behavioral and goal-oriented strategies, we are creating profound impacts on our birds’ lives, allowing them the freedom to express themselves how they want, but more importantly, allowing them the freedom to communicate with us how best to interact with them. 

Integration of Operant Conditioning 

When we think about enrichment and operant conditioning, we sometimes have a bad habit of viewing them as two separate operations when, in fact, they are closely related, and while they can often exist without the presence of one another, in many cases they come together to work 

beautifully in tandem. In fact, both enrichment and operant conditioning are management strategies focused on behavior change modifications. The International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators (IAATE) identify operant conditioning as “a learning process in which the strength of a behavior is modified by its consequences”. Additionally, they identify enrichment as “the altering of an animal’s environment to encourage and increase species specific behavior” (IAATE 2019). Inherently, these methods are linked and if employed properly, can work together to positively impact your flock. 

Positive Reinforcement Training 

Operant conditioning with a focus in positive reinforcement training is a behavior modification method that increases the probability of a behavior reoccurring because the behavior results in the presentation of a positive reinforcement or stimulus after the response has occurred (APA 2018). Positive reinforcement methods can be utilized in a variety of ways to complement behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment opportunities. For example, positive reinforcement can be used to help encourage a bird to interact with new enrichment items. If a bird is exhibiting behavior indicating nervousness or fear, by implementing positive reinforcement training, the trainer can modify the nervous behavior by presenting positive stimuli upon the bird making small movements toward the new enrichment thus replacing that fearful behavior with positive associations with the new enrichment. Additionally, if a bird is struggling to interact with an enrichment method because it lacks the skills to properly engage, the trainer can employ positive reinforcement training techniques to bridge the gap between the skill required and the current status of the bird. By building confidence in the bird’s ability to complete new skills, positive reinforcement has effectively utilized goal-oriented enrichment strategies and has even influenced how well that bird can exhibit natural behaviors within its own environment. 

Positive reinforcement is more than just a training mechanism, it is inherently enriching! Dan Blair, CPBT-KA, of Natural Encounters Inc. describes how the five categories of enrichment can be heightened by the use of positive reinforcement training thus increasing the degrees of freedom the bird can express within its own environment. For example, a bird that has been positively reinforced and learned new behaviors are more likely to exhibit exploration behavior, whether in its environment or with a new toy. Additionally, a bird that has a more advanced training repertoire may exhibit more confidence in displaying natural behaviors which can increase mental and physical stimulation resulting in healthier birds overall (Blair 2014). 

By combining positive reinforcement training with behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment, we continue to provide our birds with more choice and expression leading to birds with great welfare and quality of life.

Conclusion 

Behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment programs are fundamental properties of a bird’s collective care plan. Implementing these strategies into our daily routines should not be a luxury but a necessity as creating confident birds that trust their trainer who can willingly choose to express appropriate behavior results in healthy individuals. Additionally, birds who have choice of behavior expression are more likely to respond positively to new external stimuli allowing for more advanced training and enrichment methods that can positively impact the birds overall health, welfare, and quality of life. Behavioral and goal-oriented enrichment strategies are foundational to a dynamic and diverse enrichment program, and their proper utilization can leave profound impacts on both the bird and the trainer.

Citations 

5 Enrichment Categories [Internet]. San Diego (CA): The Shape of Enrichment, Inc (US). [cited January 16, 2024]. Available from: 

https://theshapeofenrichmentinc.wildapricot.org/resources/Documents/five_categories.pdf. 

American Psychological Association. APA Dictionary of Psychology: Positive Reinforcement. (2018, April). https://dictionary.apa.org/positive-reinforcement 

AZA Enrichment Guiding Principles [Internet]. Silver Spring (MD): Association of Zoos and Aquariums (US). [cited January 16, 2024]. Available from: 

https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2332/aza_pdc_enrichment_principles_1.pdf. 

Blair, D. (2014a). Positive reinforcement training as an enrichment technique. Natural Encounters Inc. 

https://naturalencounters.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/DanBlairIAATE2014.pdf  

International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators. (2019, June). Position Statement - Enrichment. IAATE.org. 

https://iaate.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Position-Statement_Enrichment_2019.pdf 

International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators. (2023, July). Position Statement: Training. IAATE.org 

https://iaate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Position-Statement_Training.pdf