Bird Watching

I was watching some starlings outside the other day. They certainly have brains!

There were three of them, and one had a piece of bread or food of some kind in his beak, naturally the other two birds wanted it too, and everywhere that he went to try and get away from them, they followed him. The poor thing couldn`t put the food down to eat, because as soon as he did the other two were there trying to snatch it away from him. They must have been frustrated too, I suppose that they could see food and couldn`t get it. Anyway, one of them began to lose interest and went a bit further away, but it was the other one, that caught my attention.

He (or she!) seemed to think of a new way to get the food from the first bird. He stood and turned away from the one with the food, so then the one with the food, thinking they`d left him alone dropped the bread onto the path and as soon as he did so, the other bird suddenly made a rush for it, so again the first bird picked it up. The second bird then again stood and turned his back on the first one, as if to say, ok you have it…. But as soon as the other one put the food down to eat, the other one made a run to grab it. The first couple of times I didn`t really think much about it, but the bird did this a dozen times or more. So, it was obviously a deliberate ploy on his part, to fool the first bird. I don`t think the first one was a sharp as the second one, because he never seemed to twig what was going on!

It was really amusing to watch, and made me realise how birds can use their brains.