Field Guide
Think birds lack smarts? Think again!
Bird intelligence
Nature lovers have a fondness for their backyard birds that is often reserved for dogs, cats and other pets, even though feathered friends tend to come and go with the seasons. Turns out, birds are more like pets than you think, as the same ones often show up at the same feeders year after year.
“People really underestimate the cognitive abilities of animals in general, which is their ability to perceive, integrate and use information,” says Carrie Branch, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology. She studies communication and cognition in birds, with a special emphasis on chickadees. “They learn. And to learn, you have to remember things. They learn from their experiences and remember just like people do.”
Making memories that last.
Memory duration varies from bird to bird. “There’s evidence, depending on the bird, of course, that they remember variations of certain songs or locations for up to two years,” Carrie says. “They definitely have long-term memory.”
Instinct and memory differ.
Think about migratory birds and how they return to the same region year after year. That’s instinctual. It involves natural smarts, but not necessarily learning. By contrast, think about how birds know where feeders are located. “They couldn’t possibly instinctively know that a feeder exists in someone’s yard,” Carrie says. “They would have to find it and remember that it exists to come back to it.”
Keeping a cache.
Some resident species, like titmice, woodpeckers, chickadees and jays, skip migration. Instead, they cache thousands of seeds, storing them throughout their territory. As part of the process, these birds identify which feeder has their preferred foods and return to it.
In addition, there’s evidence— found by Vladimir Pravosudov, a professor at University of Nevada, Reno—indicating that mountain chickadees, birds that live in harsh conditions at high elevations, have better memory than others. It’s because memory is more critical for them to survive.
Skull size doesn’t always matter.
Chickadees and other songbirds typically have large brain-to-body ratios. Several studies have found that birds with relatively larger brains tend to be better at adapting to new situations and preforming complex tasks.
Could that mean the bigger the bird, the bigger the brain and therefore, the smarter the bird? “That’s actually a controversial topic,” Carrie says. “Some large birds are actually not very smart.
Looking at specialized regions seems to be more important than overall brain size.” That means that even smaller birds, like the warbler or hummingbird at your feeders, may be able to display surprising mental abilities.
Years ago, post-surgery boredom led Kelsey Roseth to start observing and studying backyard birds. Now she has an immense adoration for these cute creatures.