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Birds pinching milk from bottles

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Subject: Birds pinching milk from bottles
From: brian fleming <>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:28:09 +1000
While we are on the subject, the first bird known to develop a milk-theft habit was the Blue Tit in Britain, where milk of diferent grades has (or had) colour-coded foil tops. Some individual bird, or group of birds, presumably made the discovery, and the technique spread right across Britain with remarkable speed. The birds soon learnt that red and gold tops indicated the creamier milk. A friend told me that she was staying for Christmas in a rather isolated place in the New Forest - without a car. For Christmas they had decided to be festive and extravagant and order one bottle of gold-top milk. The milkman duly delivered this, fighting his way through deep snow drifts. And when the three elderly ladies went to get the milk from the doorstep, to their horror, there was a drowned Blue Tit in the top of the bottle. First reaction - the poor little thing! Fish it out and discuss resuscitation.
Second reaction - horror - we'll have to throw the milk out!
Third reaction - hang on, there is no other milk in the house, and no way to reach the shop three miles away in deep snow. Anyway, the shop is closed.
Lengthy discussion. In the end they drank it - with no ill effects.

Incidentally, all the assorted Tits (Chickadees in America) seem to be intelligent problem-solvers. Read Len Howard's book "Birds as Individuals" (1952) - long out of print but available in second-hand bookshops. LH's account of the ability of Great Tits to get at and plunder a bag of peanuts she had secreted in a closed desk-drawer is astonishing.

Anthea Fleming

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