My suggestion on this is that birds feeding on sugar is odd and I wonder how
it started but is it overly clever? Sure it is an unnatural food but birds
have been taking food from feeding stations provided by people for a long
time. There has been some recent attention to Rainbow Lorikeets taking meat
from food trays put out for butcherbirds etc. That probably stems from that
the food is in the same situation as seeds put out for parrots. It is
probably (my guess) taken as a strange type of fruit, rather than meat
eating directly.
Ravens, gulls and even ibis will learn to pull apart packaging to get at
food inside. So that is sort of clever. The stealing sugar packets from an
outdoor cafe to eat the contents would seem another whole step up of
cleverness. Can't say I was aware of that. Especially clever if it is
actually true that they (in this case from the photo from Fleur r Leary of a
Port Lincoln Parrot at Alice Springs) ignored the packets of sugar
substitute. How would they do that?
Philip
-----Original Message-----From: Bronwyn King
Sent: Saturday, 5 December 2015 7:41 AM To:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] clever
birds.
A few shots of birds enjoying sugar. The first are from near Lucinda in
FNQ: Blue-faced Honeyeater,
Spangled Drongo and Silver-crowned Friarbird taking advantage of the
spillage from sugar trains (photos taken through the fence).
The final one is from the ANBG cafe .
https://picasaweb.google.com/bronkin/BirdsAndSugar#
Bron
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