Citizen scientists, let’s study those clever sparrows

Iwrote about clever sparrows a couple of weeks ago, but have since discovered that researchers at Waikato University have been on to these birds for some time. Honours student Mike Davy has been testing sparrows pinching sugar sachets from his campus cafe for over a year.

As soon as sugar is placed on the tables, the birds pull the sachets out of their containers, tear the ends off them and shake the sugar out before pecking it off the tables or the ground.

If several birds are competing for the packets, a sparrow will fly off with one to rip open some distance away.

Davy finds huge numbers of torn packets within 200 metres of the cafe and some up to a kilometre away.

The cafe owner reckons the sparrows cost him up to $1000 a year.

Several readers responded to my clever animals column. Aucklander Evan Clulee reports on sparrows at his nearby coffee bar being very choosy with sugar sachets. His birds flew off with sachets of sugar, but never with sachets of artificial sweetener, even though they looked exactly alike.

Clulee wonders how the birds tell them apart, and suggests that they might smell the difference between the sugar and the sweetener sachets.

I think this is a remote possibility, as ornithologists have been testing birds’ sense of smell for more than a century and have come up with only a handful of sniffing species – among them the kiwi, kakapo, muttonbird, albatross and the turkey-vulture.

But no one seems to have tried the sparrow. Perhaps Waikato University might test them?

I have tried to repeat these observations at coffee bars and cafes on the Kapiti Coast. I find sparrows readily eat tiny sugar grains thrown on the pavement but they don’t seem to recognise sachets of sugar as food.

Calling Citizen Scientists!

Here is your opportunity to add to the sum of human knowledge.

You might care to test the sparrows and sugar sachets at your local cafes or coffee bars.

I’d be very interested to hear from you on Bob.brockie@icloud.com.