[texbirds] Re: Are some crows smarter than 1st graders?
- From: mitch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 11:13:17 -0700
On 2014-07-24 16:07, Dan Smith wrote:
> It will be interesting to see if we might have similarly
> intelligent critters in Texas.
Hi all,
To answer Dan's question, certainly we have creatures more
intelligent than some people here. :) Maybe I've mentioned
this before, with apologies if so...
As an example I'll share my observation of tool use by a
juvenile Scott's Oriole that was 60-90 days old. It flew to a
hummer feeder with something in its beak I could not instantly
identify as I watched through my telescope at 25' or less.
It was gray, curved, and fuzzy looking, kind of leaf-shaped.
The bird took the object and put it through the feeder port
into the cup with the sugar water and held it there for some
time, maybe 10 seconds.
It pulled the object out and then 'masticated' (for lack of a
better word) it, squeezing fluid out of it as it moved it around
within its beak. Then it put the object through the hole again,
again it held it down in the cup of fluid for 10 seconds or so,
pulled it out, moved it all around in its bill squeezing the
sugar water out no doubt, and repeated this again. At least
three times it used the object and dipped it into the hummer
feeder, held 10 seconds or so, pulled it out and 'chewed' it.
By the third time the object was not the same shape and
structure as when it brought it to the feeder, and the bird
discarded it, 'spitting' it out. Being wet, it stuck to the
feeder. I had a bad angle looking slightly uphill so 10 photos
just show the bird with its bill in the port and you can't tell it is
holding something. However in the last frame with the ejected
object sticking up off the side of the feeder that isn't in
the prior frames, it is clear, it was a soaked bird feather
(the ground was covered in White-winged Dove molt), and in the
first frame you can see a gray curved object in bill, which is
a dry gray feather, surely from a White-winged Dove.
At first I couldn't tell looking at the object in its bill what
it was, thinking it was a leaf due to shape, and wondering how
it would get a hard inflexible object through the port hole.
The bird was smarter than that and clearly knew a dry leaf
wouldn't work, and so had grabbed a feather to wick fluid out
of the feeder. Brilliant genius of a less than 90 day old bird.
An Icterid. An oriole. An Einstein.
Did it learn it? Was it innate? Does the parent coming back
to the nest with wet breast feathers on the hottest days teach
it that such an object can work like that? Are we smart enough
to figure out how smart they are? How old would a human be that
could solve that puzzle the way the oriole did? I know some
older ones I am not sure could do it.
Sorry it will be a while to find the pix, they are low res anyway,
but just enough to ID that it is/was a feather in the juv. Scott's
Oriole beak. We moved recently and that sort of thing hasn't
been gotten to yet......
Watch those birds, you never know what they will teach you.
happy feathers!
Mitch
Louisiana Waterthrush at park in town today is a passage bird.
Mitch Heindel
gull and shorebird free Utopia
www.utopianature.com
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