Internet birdfest

A few days ago I got an email from a colleague of mine pointing me to a video about birds of paradise. I am happy I went and looked at it because it is quite amazing. There is no question why this group of birds stand apart from others – they are not beautiful to watch, but their behaviour, too, is quite amazing. Watch:

There are other birds that I find absolutely amazing. The Lyrebird for example, incorporates into its song sounds that it hears as it goes about life. There are two types of song learning birds (songbirds). Some will learn to imitate a song from an adult tutor as they are growing up, and pretty much sing that song as adults. Others can continue to incorporate elements to their song as adults. The lyrebird falls into this last group. But what I find amazing about the lyrebird is not that it incorporates new song elements, but that some of those sounds are not “natural” sounds. Watch:

Lyrebird

Another amazing bird is the New Caledonian crow. A while back Gavin Hunt (now at the University of Auckland) came to find out that these birds were able to manufacture tools in the wild. They modify leaves and twigs from local plants to make different types of tools which they then use to get food. This finding spurred a large body of work on bird intelligence. Watch:

And if you are interested of where these wonderful animals all came from, there is a fantastic blog by Ed Yong over at national Geographic. Read:

The changing science of just-about-birds and not-quite-birds
(HT @BjornBrembs)

I am sure there is a screenplay somewhere in there, inspired by Tron and involving cats chasing birds in cyberspace. But I shall leave that for someone more creative than me.