Gifts From Birds

One of the things I really like is learning about the remarkable attributes of various animals.  There is so much more to them than we generally appreciate.  For example, humans consider themselves to be the only animals that if they looked in a mirror, they understood that that was a reflection of them, not another person standing there in front of them.  It was considered to be an amazingly remarkable thing when it was discovered that a chimpanzee, too, understood that it was seeing a reflection of himself, it wasn't another chimpanzee.  Humans had to, sadly, accept that another species had that same level of intelligence and awareness.

Well, low and behold, Magpies, a type of birds, also understand that what they see in the mirror is a reflection of them.  Experimenters have placed red dots on the throats of Magpies, which when the birds saw that in a mirror, they scratched the dots off with their legs instead of touching the mirror.  Of course, various kinds of birds have different developments and abilities, so we all know that there are still other birds, such as parakeets, who will sadly fall in love with their reflexion in a mirror, feeling that this other bird is company, or maybe a mate.  I suffered for months from a poor bird outside my second floor office window that spent all day banging on its reflexion in the window.  It was admittedly confusing for him, because he seemed to live among the dense foliage of one of the big trees that was outside that window, and the lushness of the leaves and branches gently flowing and waving in the wind was an alluring target reflected in the large glass window.  He never grasped that there always was goig to be this invisible force field to prevented him from flying in that direction.  He always got a rude bumping sudden stop, fortunately not hard enough to hurt himself, but he was enchanted by his own reflection that it seemed he genuinely fell in love with and wanted to marry.  He was so horny for that bird in the reflexion that he never gave up trying, bumping into it and constantly banging his beak onto the glass in an attempt to get a rise out of that other bird.

I attempted to discourage him by taping a piece of colored paper on the glass from inside my office, which was stupid of me, because it didn't block the reflection at all.  So I asked a maintenance man to climb up the tall ladder and tape the paper on the outside of the window in the place where he always came to peck on the window.  But the bird only found his reflection of either side of the paper...I didn't want the maintenance man to block out the entire window, so I gave up on that tack.

I am no longer working at that place, but a friend of mine who was aware of that bird told me that he is still at it.  That poor bird deserves to find a real mate, but so far, none seems to have found him.

Probably far more interesting are the extremely intelligent birds, such as Corvids of New Caledonia, that are tool makers.  They carefully fashion various tools out of twigs that can reach into cracks and holes that enable the birds to catch up grubs and other delicious things to eat that otherwise would be beyond their reach.  They meticulously use their beaks to carve the twigs into the shapes they want.  And their babies learn to make these tools, too, by carefully watching their parents at work and then play at making their own until they are able to make tools as good as the ones their parents make.   The birds keep the tools that they have made, in different lengths and with subtle different curves to fit into various locations, and they carrying them with them when they go hunting for food.

I am getting all this from the book, The Genius of Birds, by Jennifer Ackerman, which I highly recommend for anyone who might be interested in birds.  

One of the cutest things, in my estimation, was in a chapter on bird socialization.  Some of them are highly social, and to paraphrase from Ackerman's book, they manipulate, eavesdrop, argue, cheat, deceive, kidnap, divorce, and play.  They pilfer, warn others of danger, tease, share, vie for status,  kiss to console, and possibly even grieve.

What I thought was so cute, and says a lot about them, is that some of them give gifts.  Presumably this would to be to each other, such as a bite of food to someone having trouble.  But they have a sense of fair play, like evening a score instead of being a "hog".

A friend of the author had a bird feeder for crows, and those crows returned the favor by leaving for her gifts.  I love listing gifts that crows have left for people.  To me this is so precious:  a marble, a little wooden bead, a bottle cap, and colored berries, all left on the woman's doorstep.    But other people in the area who had bird feeders also claimed their precious gifts:  jewelry, hardware, shards of glass, a Santa figurine, a foam dart from a toy gun, a Donald Duck Pez dispenser, and even a candy heart with "love" painted on it, delivered right after Valentine's Day.  I tell you, all these gifts took thought!

In Seattle, there was a little girl who fed crows peanuts on a tray in her yard.  Trinkets showed up on the empty tray:  an earring, bolts and screws, hinges, buttons, a tin plastic tube, a rotting crab claw, a small scrap of metal printed with the word "best", and an opalescent white heart.  The little girl kept all these precious gifts in a plastic bag.  I would keep them, too...presented with love and appreciation from the brains of intelligent birds.