Learning behaviour in Noisy Minors

["John Leonard" <>]

On the theme of birds learning to exploit energy-rich resources, a few years ago I was in Tasmania. I had driven up Mt Wellington and had stopped at a picnic area half way up.

 

I was sitting at the table with my lunch in front of me, and I was reading the Currawong page in the field-guide to make sure I knew the identification points of a Black Currawong, when I looked up. There, about a foot away from me, was a Black Currawong standing on the table, just about to spear my plastic-wrapped sandwiches with its beak.

 

John Leonard

 

On 5/11/06, John Brannan <> wrote:

On a similar note: while I was camping on a beach in Japan, I made the mistake of leaving a newly purchased, unopened, sealed and lidded plastic tub of margarine outside my tent overnight. When I went to open it the next morning (having nicely burned some toast on the fire), there was a neat, roughly circular puncture about 5 mm in diameter in the middle of the lid. Removing the lid, I saw that the hole also went through the thick plastic seal over the margarine (the Japanese have something of a fetish when it comes to packaging) and every last skerrick of margarine had been licked out of the tub (250 gm). The culprit was undoubtedly one or more of the local Jungle Crows ( Corvus macrorhynchos). Needless to say, I kept my margarine safely indoors from that point on...

John Brannan

Rick Kuhn wrote:

During lunch outside the Street Threatre Cafe in Childers St I twice saw a Noisy Minor pluck a paper sachet of sugar from a glass, peck a whole in it and eat the sugar. A friend who was there has also seen them do this at the Purple Pickle Cafe, about metres away, on the ANU campus. Another friend had a camera, so I hope to be able to post a pic in a while.

Rick

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