ABC's of Behavior

A few weeks ago, Jenny and Heaven let me know that Aldo the American Kestrel was giving them a hard time. Whenever they tried to enter the mew, Aldo flew to the perch in front of the door. They couldn't get in while he blocked the entrance. Normally I would toss out a few suggestions for Jenny and Heaven to try and see what happens, like throwing spaghetti at the wall. But this time I wanted to try a more structured approach. 

A functional assessment is a detailed process that analyzes a behavior within the environmental factors that surround it. The structure is based in the ABC's of behavior:

• Antecedent: This is the "stage," everything in the environment that happens before the behavior. It can be broken down into the Distant Antecedent (relevant background conditions) and Immediate Antecedent (what immediately triggers the behavior). 
• Behavior: What does the animal do? 
• Consequence: What happens after the behavior? Does the animal gain something they wanted, like food? Or do they avoid something they were afraid of, like a scary person?

The animal care staff sat down together to parse out Aldo's challenging behavior. To address the antecedent, we looked at who was present, the season, the time of day, the trainer's routine, and what immediately triggered the behavior. Then we filled in the consequences that happened right after Aldo flew to the door:

The next step was to make a hypothesis for why we thought the behavior was happening. It seemed like there were two consequences that could have been driving the behavior. Was he flying to the door to get the scary trainers to close the door and leave? Or was he trying to access his food quicker?

What's your guess? Next week I'll share the hypothesis we landed on and how we created a plan!