Adventure Ausrama Blog

Be careful the next time you quietly curse a magpie attacking you during breeding season. It may know what you are thinking. Why is it that the birds seem to know the personalities of individuals walking by? If you have fed them in the past they appear to remember you and let you go on by unhindered while swooping down onto the heads of other people. Crows have been observed hiding food from other crows. This is not due to stress as was once believed. There is still contention between the two opposing groups of scientists. Tests on scrub jays it was claimed proved that they were hiding food from more dominant Jays. This was really a hypothesis, not real proof. The other group claims that birds are conscious of others and what other may be seeing, like humans. In their tests bird were allowed to hide peanuts in a litter of corn cobs. If another bird was watching they later came back and re-hid the peanuts. When they buried peanuts on their own they rarely re-hid them. This ...

Birds "talk" to each other, between species! For, example it was found that fairy-wrens learn the alarm calls of other types of bird. These birds have calls with similar acoustic structures. And they learn by living side by side with other birds over time. Alarm calls of scrubwrens were played to wrens in Canberra and Macquarie. Only fairy-wrens in Canberra (where there are scrubwrens ) fled for cover. Fairy wrens in Macquarie (where there are no scrubwrens) did not respond. In another test, recordings of honeyeaters were also played to fairy-wrens. The fairy-wrens sought cover.  They had learned the honeyeater calls. Professor Gisela Kaplan believes that the behavior is not totally due to learning. She believes that the brains of birds are preprogrammed to act when they hear alarms of other birds. Tests done on magpies showed that they found cover only if the alarm calls of other birds were played close to them. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www...