ENVISION AN EPISODE of your favorite workplace sitcom centering around a protagonist's troubles, triumphs and, at times, failures. When it comes to TV, we love watching drama unfold.
The next time your heart races at the sight of a squabble between backyard birds, remember this comparison. The behavior is normal and showcases fascinating parallels between how birds and humans handle conflict.
Mindset Matters
The emotional upset we experience when witnessing our feathered friends fighting is called anthropomorphizing. That means we're attributing common human characteristics or behaviors to them.
Humans' social behavior is complex and nuanced. We present ourselves differently in various situations to achieve a conscious or subconscious goal. Birds are bright, but ultimately they are fighting to survive. And while many of us dislike strife, birds do too! Both humans and birds go out of their way to avoid ruffling feathers.
Citizen Science Research
When it comes to backyard battles, there are some consistent winners and losers. Eliot T. Miller, a Schmidt Science postdoctoral fellow based at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has studied birds' interactions extensively based on behavioral research from Project FeederWatch data.
"The idea was to ultimately collect a big enough dataset that we could address some big-scale, macroecological questions," Eliot says.
Curious Conclusions
This story is from the February/March 2024 edition of Birds & Blooms.
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This story is from the February/March 2024 edition of Birds & Blooms.
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Sense or Nonsense? - Why some birds can taste and smell - but others can't
Does a porcelain berry taste like a blueberry to a gray catbird? Does a block of lard smell like frying bacon to a northern flicker? The short answer is no. While some avian species do have a well-adapted sense of taste or smell, they can't distinguish between flavors and odors the way humans can. They're not picking up every ingredient in the suet you put out, says José Ramírez-Garofalo, an ornithology researcher at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the director of Freshkills Biological Station in Staten Island, New York.
Maple Mania - Amazing facts about this fall foliage mainstay
Amazing facts about this fall foliage mainstay
Food-Focused and Fierce - Meet Canada jays and learn why they eat almost anything they can find
Even if you haven't heard of Canada jays, you've heard of their relatives. Members of the corvid family, they belong to the same group as American crows, blackbilled magpies, and jays including blue, Steller's and scrub. "Unlike many of the other jays, a Canada jay doesn't have a crest of any kind; it just has a rounded head," says Dale Gentry, director of conservation for Audubon Upper Mississippi River.In 2018, the Canada jay's name was changed from gray jay, but Dale thinks the former adjective was fitting. "Most of its body is shades of gray with some white," he says. "There are different subspecies that have different physical traits, but most of them have some lighter coloring on their foreheads, upper breasts and throats, each with a darker streak that starts at each eye and goes back."
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BIRDS OF A FEATHER MAY FLOCK TOGETHER, but what about other collectives of critters-and what do you call them when they do?
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