Not so bird brained

[Tim Lund]

A video shared by a friend on Facebook

[Tim Lund]

It's a green backed heron

[mosy]

I get an error message when clicking to play the video. Does one need to be logged into Facebook perhaps?

[Tim Lund]

I can't get that to work now either. But here's the same behaviour someone's uploaded to Youtube

[mosy]

Birds are clever old sticks from learned and remembered behaviour aren't they? In fact all animals are, expect the poor individual fish perhaps who don't get a second chance to learn if they get it wrong the first time.

It reminds me of a Youtube showing birds dropping nuts onto a pedestrian crossing because they figured out that vehicles would run over them and break the shells and, being on a crossing, the vehicles would stop periodically and the birds could fly down and collect the conveniently shelled nuts Oh, hang on, found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM

[Tim Lund]

I don't suppose this can be properly tested, but I think the homo sapiens' main overwhelming competitive advantage isn't being that much cleverer than members of other species as individuals, but having evolved language as a means of communication. Recently I read some speculation about birds having achieved a similar advantage, though not to the same extent, from the evolution of birdsong, enabling them to occupy territories with enough food and also be able to find mates.