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Bird brain?

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 Doug 28 Feb 2016

In the garden we have one of those fat & seed filled net balls to feed the birds, its mostly used by blue & great tits, with pigeons picking at the bits which fall to the ground below.

But I've just been watching a crow, who tried to land on the ball but couldn't, but realised that food had fallen to the ground as a result so repeated this a couple of times. But then s/he perched on the branch from which the ball was hanging, hauled the ball onto the branch using beak & one foot, and once the ball was firmly wedged between foot & branch, ate the entire contents except for a few crumbs later eaten by the pigeons.

Amusing to watch, anyone seen similar behaviour ?
Post edited at 14:08
In reply to Doug:

Not quite the same thing but watching a pair of adult Nuthatches fighting off a young woodpecker to get at the fatballs, and then over time realising that the woodpecker had the biggest beak was wonderful and amusing.
 Queenie 28 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

Rooks do this in my garden too.
I've yet to see the smart bird that is sliding the lid up on the suet pellet feeder to extract from the top of the cylinder, must be a corvid.
cb294 28 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

Crows are amazingly intelligent. On my way to work crows regularly drop walnuts onto the cycle path to crack them open. Some (younger?) crows almost risk suicide to rescue their precious nuts from getting run over, dashing in right in front of you. However, quite a few birds have learned that bicycles can make excellent nutcrackers, and have started to drop their nuts into the path of oncoming bikers.
CB
KevinD 28 Feb 2016
In reply to cb294:

There is a great video of some crows, think in Japan, who not only drop nuts in front of cars to have them broken but also watch the traffic lights so they know when its safe to pick them up.
Corvids are impressively smart in general.
OP Doug 29 Feb 2016
In reply to KevinD:
Seems that the most intelligent birds are crows (including ravens etc) & parrots, see eg http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crows-understand-analogies/


 Mountain Llama 29 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

Great story!

A word of caution - The mesh bags that some fat balls and seeds come in can be dangerous to birds as they can get their feet trapped / tangled up in the mesh.

Davey
 kathrync 29 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

We get rooks, crows, jackdaws and magpies in our garden, all of which are quite intelligent.

I have fat balls in a metal feeder. The jackdaws take it in turns to perch on the feeder and flap their wings, which shakes the loose bits out while the others wait on the ground.

I also have some fat in half-coconuts, which the crows will very patiently unhook and steal - by which I mean they fly off with the whole thing.

But the best was last time it snowed - the magpies spent an hour or so sliding in the snow on the garage roof before it melted
 RyanOsborne 29 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

Yep, I think the African Grey Parrot gets the top spot of most intelligent bird, but ravens and crows must be pretty close.

The raven is such a cool bird, the flying upside down thing is amazing, and they seem to play on the wind, especially around the crags, I saw some having a great time at the Roaches on Saturday.
 deepsoup 29 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:
Slightly old news now, but check out the big brain on Betty:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0808_020808_crow.html
cb294 29 Feb 2016
In reply to RyanOsborne:

Jays clearly have a theory of mind, i.e. an idea of what another animal can know, and what the consequences of their own actions will have on the knowledge of the other.

A typical experiment would involve demonstrating the location of a hidden food item to one jay, then letting another bird enter the enclosure who either did or did not see the item and the first bird, then letting the first bird enter.

The birds will adjust their behaviour depending on whether they believe the other bird knows the location of the food item or not.

Same goes with hiding food items. They donĀ“t care whether another bird behind a blind can hear that they are given a food item, but will only hide it if they are sure they cannot be observed.

CB
 malk 29 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

and more recently their 'theory of mind' : https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076025-ravens-fear-of-unseen-snoopers...

yesterday i noticed a jackdaw flying with a small twig (tool?) to the top of a telegraph pole. my thoughts were perhaps to try and tease out some grubs or maybe even to attract a mate, but just as i was getting interested it casually dropped it as if because i was watching (why drop a twig?)
 malk 29 Feb 2016
In reply to cb294:

perhaps not only corvids? i've seen coal tits caching and retrieving sunflower seed from weeks before- it didn't notice me through the window..
cb294 29 Feb 2016
In reply to malk:

Possibly, but AFAIK mainly shown for corvids and parrots. Quite likely this is biased because these two families have been used for a long time to study animal intelligence (and of course because they are more clever than, say, a chicken).

CB
 Rob Parsons 29 Feb 2016
In reply to Doug:

A friend had a peanut feeder out for the birds, which kept being raided by *something*: he routinely found it on the opposite side of the house from where it should be, smashed up on on the concrete path.

So, to find out what was happening, he staked it out - and eventually saw two jackdaws fly in, lift the thing of its hook and, holding it with their beaks, fly off *together* (they had obviously figured out it was too heavy for either of them to lift individually), after which they dropped the thing from height onto the path, and proceeded to fang into the nuts.

A quite incredible story - but true.

For those who haven't read it, Konrad Lorenz describes sophisticated behaviour by jackdaws in his classic book 'King Solomon's Ring.'
Post edited at 21:48
 Rob Parsons 29 Feb 2016
In reply to RyanOsborne:

> Yep, I think the African Grey Parrot gets the top spot of most intelligent bird, but ravens and crows must be pretty close.

There was an excellent program about parrots on the radio a few years back. Among the things I remember was that a scientist in New York had been running a twenty year study of Grey Parrots, and had concluded that they had the same intelligence and reasoning skills as a three year old child.

KevinD 29 Feb 2016
In reply to malk:

> i've seen coal tits caching and retrieving sunflower seed from weeks before

I believe though for the coal tits its a bit hit and miss whether they find it again.
On the more cruel side apparently great tits have been known to follow them to find the stash and then tuck in.
 RyanOsborne 01 Mar 2016
In reply to KevinD:

> I believe though for the coal tits its a bit hit and miss whether they find it again.

I can't remember which nature documentary it was on (maybe Yellowstone) but there was an amazing piece on the Clark's Nutcracker, which can memorise the locations of tens of thousands of seeds.
Moley 01 Mar 2016
In reply to Doug:

This weekend we were lucky enough to see some friends captive pair of Andean condors (with nest and sitting on egg) in a massive aviary.
They are ridiculously large for birds, massively strong, very, very scary and strutting about beside us (never have the words "don't put your finger in the cage" been less necessary) they looked exceedingly intelligent - but I have no idea if they are. But living up to 80 years old I reckon they are not purely brute strength and size.
These beggars would carry the whole damn bird table away!!
 Mike Conlon 01 Mar 2016
In reply to Doug: I heard an item on the radio some time back. It was about higher inteligence and why man developed more than many animals. A crow expert came on and explained that because crows were also sociable animals and associated in groups, they observe other crows involved in tasks. Sometimes thay are successful and sometimes not. She placed great emphasis on the fact that by observing unsuccessful attempts to do things, ruled out the need to try such a method themselves which accelerated learning enormously. This is obviously not the case with more solitary animals and massively hinders their development.
 nniff 01 Mar 2016
In reply to Doug:

The green parakeets hereabouts are not smart enough to stay out of the way of our cat. It's got two so far.

The blue tits, starlings, coal tits etc that tuck into the fat balls seem smarter. The robins don't seem to be able to cope with the fat balls and peck away at the bird seed feeder. They all avoid the cat.
OP Doug 01 Mar 2016
In reply to nniff:
We have a robin (maybe several, who knows, they all look the same to me) that has given up trying to perch on the fat ball but realises that flying into it releases bits of food which s/he can then eat. So its arrive, fly into, eat crumbs, then repeat several times.
Post edited at 15:54
In reply to Doug:

There is a very funny book by the same name as your title which is worth reading

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bird-Brain-Guy-Kennaway/dp/0099563479/ref=sr_1_1?ie...

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