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Thread: Lovely Birds

  1. #1
    Prawnil
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    Default Lovely Birds

    I live in a city and enjoy seeing all the pigeons everywhere. It's certainly forgivable when a little toddler runs about after them in the square, because they must be such a novelty to little babies, since they move above and live on their own. The 13 year old Mr big-&-clever-machismo spitting and kicking at them in front of his friends isn't so innocent, and neither is the crusty old man taking a boot at them for pecking at crumbs, who ought to have learnt better by now.
    Birds are great.

    Pigeon fact: if the pigeon's iris has turned orange, it is older than 6-12 months! Before then, the eye is entirely brown/black.

    I came across this lately,
    "...for example, pigeons can memorize up to 725 different visual patterns (von Fersen & Delius, '89), learn to categorize objects as 'human-made' versus 'natural' (Lubow, '74), discriminate cubistic and impressionistic styles of painting (Watanabe, Sakamoto, Wakita, '95), communicate using visual symbols (Lubinski & MacCorquodale, '84), rank patterns using transitive inferential logic (von Fersen, Wynne, Delius, '92) and occasionally 'lie' (Lanza, Starr & Skinner, '82) (Munn, '86).
    New Caledonian crows make tools** out of leaves or novel human-made material, use them appropriately to retrieve food and are thought to pass this knowledge on to other crows through social learning (Weir, Chappell & Kacelnik, 2002) (Hunt & Gray, 2003).
    Magpies develop an understanding of object constancy at an earlier relative age in their lifespan than any other organism tested and can use this skill to the same extent as humans (Pollok, Prior & Gunturkun, 2000).
    Scrub-jays show episodic memory - the ability to recall events that take place at a specific time or place, which was once thought to be unique to humans (Clayton & Dickinson, '98). This same species modifies its food-storing strategy according to the possibility of future stealing by other birds and, therefore, exhibits a behaviour that would qualify as theory-of-mind (Emery & Clayton, 2001).
    Owls have a highly sophisticated capacity for sound localization, used for nocturnal hunting, that rivals that of humans and that is developed through learning (Knudsen, 2002).
    Parrots, hummingbirds and oscine songbirds possess the rare skill of vocal learning (Jarvis, 2000). This trait is a prerequisite in humans for spoken language and, with the exceptions of cetaceans and possibly bats, is not found in any other mammal (Jarvis, '04). In addition, parrots can learn human words and use them to communicate reciprocally with humans. African grey parrots, in particular, can use human words in numerical and relational concepts (Pepperberg, '99) (Pepperberg & Shive, '01), abilities that were once thought to be unique to humans.
    So, many birds have cognitive proficiencies that are quite sophisticated, and some birds and mammals have cognitive proficiencies that clearly exceed all other birds and mammals."
    The Avian Brain Nomenclature Forum, 2005

    **Some clips of crows being clever
    Great Japanese crows
    Another great crow
    Third great crow (probably captive)

  2. #2
    cobweb
    Guest

    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    i love birds, too

    we had a Rook on our roof the other day making farting noises!

  3. #3
    cherished emmapresley's Avatar
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    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    they are pretty cool.
    one pooed on me the other day, i may have mentioned..you really can't be annoyed. if i was a bird flying about i'd probably take great delight in shitting on ppl. hehe.

    i used to spend a lot of my childhood being dragged around huddersfield town centre by various aunts and great aunts, and inevitably we'd end up nr st peter's church and the walkabout park bit, where there is (was) a shop that had opposite mirrors creating the <never ending view of me> plus a zillion pigeons living. i've been up to the very top of st peter's church and stood on the platformy roof bit..so you could say it's a bird's eye view..*chortles weakly* and i've been shat on a few times by st peter's pigeons.
    ahronli sed ah dunit so thid tek thuh cheyus graytuh offa mi nihbles

  4. #4

    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    Birds are the coolest of creatures I especially like gulls, raptors, pigeons and corvids not least because they are the most persecuted.

  5. #5
    Metal Head emzy1985's Avatar
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    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    The last time a bunch of 10-13 year old twats were distrubing the pigeons in Luton Town Centre, me and my friends decided to run at them making horrific zombie noises, much to the dismay of their parents. HAHA! Oh well!

    We have pigeons and nests outside the flat in the window boxes. The cats take great pleasure in watching them for hours, but the birds know they are safe or else they wouldn't nest there.
    The taste of anything in my mouth for 5 seconds does not equate to the beauty and complexity of life.

  6. #6
    The Birdlady AliBlack's Avatar
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    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    Yay, a pigeon friendly thread I love pigeons, I care for injured and sick wild birds. Pigeons, corvids, gulls and blackbirds are my favourites (if I had to choose!). I've got several disabled pigeons, they're happy in captivity as long as they've got other pigeons for company and a mate, several of mine have paired up and have nests Feral pigeons are the hardest bird to release (I used to think they'd be the easiest), because they don't want to go, they usually want to go back in the aviary! A wild one turned up in the garden one day and started coming into my bird shed where the cages are and he spends most of his time in there now, comes and goes as he pleases, roosts in there at night :smile:

  7. #7
    Kevin2's Avatar
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    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    I saw a flock of pigeons flying around in maneuvers yesterday - up, down, to the right, to the left and so on... to then return to their power line. A fine display.

  8. #8
    gorillagorilla Gorilla's Avatar
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    Default Re: Lovely Birds

    i saw a jay in my nextdoor neighbour's garden recently, it was beautiful
    'The word gorilla was derived from the Greek word Gorillai (a "tribe of hairy women")'

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