Operant Conditioning of the Gray Starling, Sturnus cineraceus

Abstract

Gray Starlings Sturnus cineraceus are one of the most notorious agricultural pests in Japan. We trained three Gray Starlings by operant conditioning to peck a response key to obtain a piece of mealworm. Birds were carefully trained to get used to the experimental situation and new schedules were gradually introduced. All the birds were successfully trained to peck the key. Two of them were further trained by an intermittent reinforcement schedule. The techniques developed here to condition the Gray Starling should be useful for further research aimed to measure aversiveness of visual or auditory stimuli for bird scaring.