There is a back story here.
A week or so ago, I made a toasted cheese sandwich, looked at the clock and realized, I didn't have time to eat it before having to rush off. I quickly wrapped it up, jammed it into my coat pocket and thought, " I'll eat it on the way". Then promptly forgot all about it.
Fast forward.
Last night, I found the aforementioned, still wrapped thank goodness, in my pocket. Needless to say, it was one very dry breaded, tough cheesed, sandwich. I put it on the Goodie Stump.
Then about an hour before the above Crow was caught with a completely full mouth of stiff cheese, she or one of her cohorts, there was a three member Crow foraging party in the yard, saw me and attempted to pick up the sandwich. Either it was too heavy or decidedly not aerodynamic enough to fly with as it was abandoned and they all took off.
And back to this post's starting point, the sandwich has moved to just the other side of the sparrow pile, and the Crow has a load of stiff cheese stuffed in her mouth and partially down her throat by the looks of it.
Look carefully and you will see only one small fragment of cheese back mid-beak, beyond those readily obvious pieces which she is expelling.
Waiting for dinner to be ready?
But why rehydrate the cheese? She obviously was able to swallow it as she regurgitated it.
I surmised that when the Crows placed dried out pasta in the bowl, waited, and then ate it, that it was easier to eat that way.
Now I hypothesize that she is doing it because it tastes better that way.
(I suppose she might think it will aid her digestion but that may be going a bit far.)
Yes, according to the latest, not only are many bird's olfactory sense better than was suspected but they also have a full set of taste buds. The existence of which had been denied for ages. The issue? They aren't located in the same places as ours are nor are they identical in structure to ours.
Duh.
A gross example would be the fact that we have arms and they have wings. Can't deny that one, it's too obvious.
Yes, we're structurally different to a point. That doesn't mean we don't have a possibly similar sets of basic senses even if they aren't identically processed. The basic senses have proved to be evolutionarily advantageous in most cases, after all.
At first I thought the light color between the two portions of her beak was cheese. Now I think we are actually seeing the side of the bowl. Perhaps she is touching the cheese with the very sensory rich tip of her beak to see if it is "done"?
Remember how Silver, the parrot, always wants people to suck a hard candy first before they give it to him? I've always surmised that the reason for that is, he can then taste it, as he's no saliva to liquify the sugar on his own.
(Correct. He only gets that sort of thing very infrequently.)
Silver isn't interested in say a tidbit of soft caramel being moistened for him.
1:56:42PM 9 seconds elapse. She stands and looks around then stares at something on the ground I can't see. But take a look at her right leg. Your left. Is that a band?
Perhaps not. A wrinkle in the skin?
1:56:44PM Ta Da! And a tidbit which meets her standards is pulled out of the water. The focus in the eyes and the curve of her beak makes it very easy to anthropomorphize a smile if one isn't careful.
(Upon hindsight this look makes me wonder if she was just putting me on the whole time.)
I don't know when she or whoever came back and ate the "prepared" cheese in the bird bath, but when I went out to clean the bowl and put in fresh water several hours later there wasn't a speck of cheese left.
Donegal Browne
P.S. There was a previous post in the last 12 hours so if you've not seen it, keep scrolling down.
2 comments:
Donna, great post! Luckily I did not "know" that birds can't "taste"--I do know that my chickens like "good" things--and to my surprise--each chicken has different things they like best--so they must taste! Red worms can taste! Put food leftovers in the bin and they will eat it all eventually. Put a cantelope in and the next day many of the worms in the bin have moved to the cantelope and within a few days there is nothing left but the cellulose netting--they apparently can't eat that. So if we get a less than tasty (to us) cantelope--first the chickens get their turn and then the worms! Of course the poor worms later transfer their share of the cantelope back to the chickens and then I guess we get it back in eggs. Is that what Great Nature has in mind? Betty Jo
Indeed Betty Jo! Observation of behavior is a real clue isn't it?
I love the fact that the chickens have individual tastes. Never thought of it, but it does make perfect sense. Don't we?
There was a long time controversy between some scientists who said parrots had little or no olfactory sense and companions of parrots who said for instance, "Then how does my Amazon know when I'm cooking spaghetti with meat sauce, her favorite, when she isn't in the kitchen?"
The expert responded that perhaps the bird knew the sounds of preparation for that particular dish, and by the way how did she know her parrot actually knew what it was saying?
She responded, "Whether you're microwaving left over spaghetti or corned beef hash the preparation sounds the same. And I know she knows what she's saying because she says, Spaghetti!, in a very excited way.
I assume the researcher just decided she was making it up.
Not so. This evening I asked Quicksilver if he'd like some pizza. He said enthusiastically, "Want some dinner!" Not only did he know pizza was food but also the name of the meal. I have to admit that he does use dinner for any lunch or dinner/supper in which the food is hot. Though he never uses it for a hot breakfast. But as many people in Wisconsin call lunch, dinner and their evening meal supper. I can see where he got it.
How many chickens do you have?
To Silver, a ham sandwich isn't dinner. I kind of agree with him.
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