Parrots can reason

Parrots are known to be highly intelligent birds but until now it had not been proved that they can reason.

We know that humans and other great apes do it. Now a parrot has shown it can use logical reasoning to work out where food is hidden.

Sandra Mikolasch of the University of Vienna's Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Austria and her colleagues first checked that seven African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) had no preference for two types of food, seeds or walnuts.

Each parrot watched a researcher hide a walnut under one opaque cup and a seed under another. Then the researcher hid the cups behind a screen, removed one of the treats and showed the bird which one had been taken. Finally, the screen was removed to see if the parrot could work out which treat must remain, and under which cup it must be.

Only one of the parrots, a female called Awisa, was able to do this. She chose correctly in three-quarters of the tests – 23 out of 30.

As with similar studies using apes, not all parrots could solve the problem. The other parrots chose more randomly, suggesting they hadn't worked out what was going on. It seems that parrots, like apes show individual differences in their abilities to reason.

"So far, only great apes have been shown to master this task," says Mikolasch. "So we now know that a grey parrot is able to logically exclude one possibility in favour of another to get a reward, known as 'inference by exclusion'."

The confirmation that parrots can reason adds to our already considerable knowledge about their complex mental abilities. The term ‘bird brains’ couldn’t be further from the truth. The more we learn about these fascinating birds the more one must surely question how long it will be generally viewed as acceptable to keep them as pets, imprisoned in cages for our own reasons.

Tragic inevitability of latest zoo deaths

We may deplore the latest announcement that captive wild animals held in a European zoo have been killed – but we should not be surprised. Copenhagen Zoo, which caused a worldwide outcry last month by killing and publicly dissecting 18-month giraffe Marius, has now killed four lions to make way for a new male.

According to the zoo, it made “a change” in the lion pride because it had received a new male lion from Givskud Zoo, also in Denmark, as a means of preventing inbreeding at Copenhagen. The new dynamic of the pride would have put existing members, and potentially the newcomer, at risk of aggression. Which meant that four of the existing pride simply had to go.

As I said when interviewed for an excellent BBC Radio 4 documentary,The Report, broadcast in the wake of the Marius episode, at least Copenhagen Zoo was honest about its highly objective approach. Other Danish zoos are equally open about the “breed and cull” strategy promoted by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), although the same cannot be said of British zoos.

EAZA members subscribe to the organisation's breeding programmes, with a studbook for each species involved. An EAZA spokesman once told us at OneKind that:

“The unnecessary culling of animals is of course avoided wherever possible; however, sometimes the greater good of the population as a whole is better served by allowing the animals to breed rather than engaging in birth control. In a limited number of cases it is then necessary to cull the resulting offspring.”

That was in the context of the culling of red river hog piglets in Edinburgh Zoo in 2010 and 2011. This latest example shows that the strategy extends beyond the culling of surplus offspring (who are often given names and feted as adorable at the time of their birth). This is pragmatic, pre-emptive population management.

And it is not confined to Denmark. From conversations with European studbook keepers, researchers for the BBC programme reported on the deaths of healthy giraffes, hippos, zebras and Arabian Oryx in members of the European breeding programmes, including UK zoos.

According to The Report journalist Hannah Barnes, EAZA does not publish records of healthy animals that have been culled, but an estimate was given of somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 animals being "management-euthanised" in European zoos in any given year. Speaking on the programme, one zoo spokesman suggested that the numbers game was misleading because “you know, most of those animals were rats or mice or something like that.”

Rats or mice or something like that. For OneKind, every sentient individual has intrinsic moral value and we have asked zoos questions about management culling with far less success than the BBC. The response is invariably that population management and ensuring healthy genes are very complicated matters. We get that. But what still perplexes us is how the approach can be justified at all, given that even the healthiest zoo populations are still living in captivity. Successful reintroductions are rare and it must be asked whether creating an international “Ark” of wild animals who will never live in the wild is a valid purpose for breeding them at all.

Grouse shooting opens to industry spin

The press and media are full today of predictions of a bumper year for grouse shooting, as the season opens.  Plenty of healthy well-feathered birds are waiting in the heather to be startled into the sky by lines of beaters, and then shot as they fly, fast and low, over the waiting guns.

Hopefully, most will be cleanly killed. Those that are only wounded will be retrieved by pickers-up and despatched to end their suffering.

OneKind opposes sport shooting for a number of reasons. First, we just don’t get it - why is it fun to spend a day killing hundreds of living wild creatures? It’s a rhetorical question of course, and on one level we might feel we should just be tolerant and let others make their own ethical choices about how they spend their money and their free time.

But that’s before we consider the cost of grouse shooting. Not only the money that is expended, although that is considerable. Scottish Land and Estates put a “really good” day’s driven grouse shooting for eight or ten people, killing around 200 birds, at around £15,000, while a cheaper walked-up shoot without beaters, killing around 40 or 60 birds, would work out around £2,000 for the day.

Not only the environmental cost either, although many point to the unnatural effects on the environment when heather regularly burned so that the grouse can have a supply of young shoots to feed on – a practice said to threaten to release millions of tonnes of carbon locked into the peat bogs, not to mention the loss of wild animals trapped in the fires. Then there are the large quantities of lead shot discharged, the restrictions on public access to land (in England at least), and the scarring of landscape by roads built to allow shooters and keepers access to the moors.

No, the cost that concerns OneKind is the cost exacted of our native wildlife, sentient individuals every one of them. In addition to the thousands of birds directly shot, there is a huge toll of collateral harm to our wild creatures so that the grouse can thrive, fly up and be “harvested”. Our own field officer watched a gamekeeper beating trapped crows to death in a cage on a grouse estate, and I have literally lost count of the reports of rare, legally protected birds of prey such as buzzards and red kite being found in the vicinity of poisoned baits on grouse moors.

Iconic eagles are not safe either, with a ringed, named, satellite-tagged golden eagle poisoned in the Angus glens last November. Over the last six years, according to RSPB Scotland, another four eagles, a red kite and seven buzzards have been shot, poisoned or trapped on sporting estates in the Angus glens alone. In January 2013, the nest tree of a pair of white-tailed eagles was felled. In England, the hen harrier population is reduced to a fragile three breeding pairs, due to persecution.

The industry protests that these are the actions of a few rogue estates and individuals and that may be true, but the effects are still appalling. In numerical terms, raptor persecution pales into insignificance compared with the onslaught conducted against mammalian predators such as foxes, stoats and weasels and against hares that can pass ticks and disease to the grouse. Thousands of these animals, and plenty of non-target species such as badgers and otters, are caught in break-back traps or in the slow cruelty of snares.

A petition to the UK government calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting has already gathered 13,000 signatures. If that appears too drastic a step, there is undoubtedly a case for shoots to be licensed to provide sanctions for the most egregious wrongdoing, as the Scottish Raptor Study Groups and the RSPB have recommended. OneKind would support such a move, as soon as possible. And an alternative to banning shooting would be to educate our young people about the sentience of wild animals and to persuade landowners that, with nature tourism worth billions to the UK economy, alternative uses for our magnificent landscape are both feasible and desirable.

Yellow-Headed Blackbird

The Yellow-Headed Blackbird is an attractive resident of marshy areas throughout Western North America -- particularly the prairie regions.  Unfortunately their 'song' doesn't match their pretty feathers.  Rather than a lovely trill, the blackbird lets out a rather nasal squawking sound.  Ahh well, at least they look nice.

We were driving through Nanton, Alberta and saw a large number of the birds sitting on top of cat tails in a large marshy area (one of which is shown in the photo).  Oddly enough they were the only ones we spotted on our entire trip from Calgary to Cranbrook.  After a bit of research, we learned that they like large marshy areas -- the males are territorial, so the area must be large enough to host a few of them (at least if you want to spot them).  They tend to live in loose colonies so require enough territory for at least a few males.

We also noticed that the red winged blackbirds that usually dominate the ponds and fence posts near our home seemed to cower every time their slightly larger yellow-headed cousins let out a squawk.

While taking photographs, I was "swooped" by one of the males (apparently I ventured a bit to close to his territory so I quickly backed off).  Yellow-headed blackbird males are very territorial, though they usually only swoop at other birds that enter their area (not soccer moms with cameras).

Distribution/Location

General:  Yellow-headed blackbirds live in Western Canada and the United States in marshy areas.  They are particularly fond of cattail marshes.  In Canada and the Northern US, they migrate south during winter months (they're easy to find from April to September, but don't stick around for our harsh winters).

Description - male:  The yellow-headed blackbird is 8 to 12 inches long.

Bright yellow head and chest with the remainder black (thus the name "yellow-headed" blackbird).  Feet, legs, eyes and beak are black.  There is a streak of white on the wings, that is most noticeable while in flight.

Description - female:  The female is much different than the male.  The body is brown with a yellow chest.  There are hints of yellow on the face.  The beak and legs are dark grey to black.  The females are quite a bit smaller than the males and lack their white wingbars.

Description - young:  When immature, the birds are similar in coloring to the females.

Feeding:  Diet consists of insects and seeds.  Their marshy habitat has an abundance of insect life.

Habitat:  Cattail marshes, croplands and shoreland vegetation.

Nesting:  Yellow-headed Blackbirds breed in colonies.  Males typically have 2 to 3 mates, though particularly energetic males can have 5 or 6.  Needless to say, the females do most of the work raising the chicks.

The female builds the nest, which is a bulky, open cup made of leaves, stems, and grass, and lashed to cattails or other plants growing over the water.  The female uses wet vegetation to weave a nest which tightens and strengthens as it drys.  The female typically lays a clutch of 3 - 5 eggs each year which they incubate for 12 days.

The female provides most of the food for the young, but the male may help feed the young of one of his mates. The young leave the nest 9 to 12 days after hatching, but stay nearby, close to the water, until they can fly, about 9 to 12 days later.  The female feeds the young for a few days after they fledge.  Females typically raise one brood each season but may raise two.

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Enemies:  The main enemy of the Yellow-Headed Blackbird is the Marsh Wren (surprisingly, it's a much smaller bird).  The wren competes for nesting space and will attack the blackbird's eggs and young.

Crows and grackles also raid the nests to feed on the eggs and young.

Migration:  Migrate south to winter in the southern United States and Mexico.  Only found in Canada from April through September.  They migrate during the day in loose flocks.

Willow Ptarmigan

The Willow Ptarmigan is found only in the colder regions of North America.  During particularly chilly winters they do migrate further south than normal and can be seen in locations throughout Canada where they normally are not found.

The same species is also found in Britain, but it is called the Red Grouse.  Unlike its North American counterpart, it does not turn white in the winter.

Distribution/Location

General:  The North American species turn snow white in the winter.  They will often fly into snow banks and nestle in the snow to sleep.  By flying into the banks instead of walking, they don't leave tracks for predators to follow.

Description - male:  Willow ptarmigan are fairly large birds, the size of a small chicken.  During the summer, the male has a chestnut brown head and neck, with a mainly white belly splashed with brown.  The tail feathers are black and the eyebrows are red.  

During the winter, the bird is entirely white but for its black eyes, bill and outer tail.  It also retains the red eyebrow.  The feet of the bird are heavily feathered and act much like snow shoes.

Description - female:  The female is identical to the male in winter.  During the summer it is a mottled brown (less reddish than the male) with some white on the belly.

Feeding:  The willow ptarmigan feeds mainly on leaves and shoots of plants, but also eats berries, seeds and insects.  It prefers willow and birch.

Habitat:  The willow ptarmigan can be found in the tundra and in thickets with alder and willow trees.  They are found in open forests and shrub meadows high in the mountains where the temperature is colder.

Nesting:  The nests contain seven to ten eggs in a hollowed out area on the ground lined with feathers and grass.  The female will try to find a place sheltered by rocks or logs.  The male guards the area while the female incubates the eggs.  The chicks hatch after about three weeks.

Steller's Jay

The Steller's Jay is a very pretty bird that doesn't seem to be particularly shy of people.  Although it is lovely to look at, it has very harsh, noisy vocalizations.

It is the provincial bird of British Columbia, Canada.  Steller's Jays are frequently seen in the Rockie Mountains.

Distribution/Location

General:  The Steller's Jay is a member of the Jays and Crows family.  Just as the Blue Jay is common on the East Coast of North America, the Steller's Jay is common on the West Coast, from Alaska and the Yukon in the north to Arizona and New Mexico in the south.

Description - male:  Charcoal colored head and nape with a large black crest on top of the head.  Most have white streaks on the forehead and chin though there are some subspecies that do not.  The body, wings and tail are a deep blue.  The bill and legs are black.  The birds are about 11 inches long.

Description - female:  same as male, though slightly smaller.

Description - young:  Nestlings are born featherless.  Three weeks after hatching, they have the same coloring as the parents.

Feeding:  The Steller's Jay feeds on insects, other birds' eggs and nestlings, nuts, seeds, acorns and berries.  They are also frequent visitors of campground picnic tables and bird feeders.  The Steller's Jay hoards food like acorns, seeds and nuts in caches around it's territory for occasions when it can't find fresh food.

Habitat:  The Steller's Jay can be found in campgrounds, picnic areas and towns making it a fairly easy bird for an amateur bird watcher to spot.  It also spends time in coniferous and mixed forests.

Nesting:  They mainly nest in conifer trees, using the needles of the tree to line their nest.  The nest is built of sticks, twigs and mud.  However, they have adapted to urban life by occasionally nesting under the roof of a building.

The female typically lays a clutch of 3 to 4 eggs (though it can be anywhere from 2 to 6 eggs) which she incubates for about 16 days.  The eggs are bluish-green with dark brown markings.  The male feeds the female while she's incubating the eggs.

Migration:  The Steller's Jay lives in its territory year round.  They often live in mountainous areas and will move up the mountain in the summer and back down the mountain into the valley areas in the winter.

Ruffed Grouse

The most notable characteristic of the Ruffed Grouse isn't how they looks -- it's how they sound.  In the spring and a little in the fall, the male ruffed grouse beats the air with his wings to make a loud drumming sound.  It's such a deep sound that you feel it more than hear it.  He does this to show where his territory is and to attract females.

Another characteristic of this bird is their ability to stay perfectly still if they are threatened.  Only when the predator (or unknowing hiker) is within a few feet of the grouse will it leave cover and blast into the air in a flurry of wings.

Distribution/Location

General:  Ruffed Grouse live throughout most of Canada all year round.  The birds are territorial and typically never leave the approximately 100 hectare (about 240 acre) territory they call home.

Description - male:  The Ruffed Grouse is 15 to 19 inches long.

It has a small crest on top of its head with reddish or grey-brown coloring.

The name, Ruffed Grouse, comes from the black 'ruffs' on the side of his neck.

Description - female:  same as the male, though the neck ruff and tail band are not as defined.

Description - young:  Newly hatched chicks are white to light gray.  When immature, the goshawk is a brownish color with pale underparts.

Feeding:  Ruffed grouse feed mainly on ground vegetation though they do eat a few insects.

Habitat:  Ruffed Grouse are most commonly found in deciduous woodlands (mixed and poplar forests) with dense undergrowth.

The Ruffed Grouse is well adapted to Canadian winters.  They have scales on their toes that extend out -- almost like snowshoes.  They also nestle themselves in the snow for warmth and to hide from predators.

Nesting:  Ruffed grouse nest on the ground, typically in a shallow depression.  They rely on camouflage, so you'll often find the nests surrounded by a litter of leaves or nestled near a log, tree or boulders.

The female typically lays a clutch of 9 - 12 buff colored eggs each year.  The female (hen) will lay a second time if the first clutch is destroyed by predators early in the year.

The eggs typically take three to four weeks to incubate.  The hen does not necessarily build the nest near the male.  The hen alone is responsible for building the nest, incubating the eggs and raising the chicks.

The hen leaves the nest to feed in early morning and late evening.  She chooses these times because the low sunlight makes it more difficult for predators to find her unprotected nest.