Birds are wild. Found a chickadee fledgling in the road earlier this year and nursed him for a couple days before we found a legitimate rehab. Little guy would just hop out of his box, perch on your finger, and sing as loud as he could until you fed him scrambled eggs. Really got me thinking about how special birds are. We have a hummingbird that visits and he'll do stuff like fly into the garage if the door is open, hover and stare at you for 1-2 seconds, and then take off. It's happened so many times I've stopped being startled by the sudden <i>brrrr</i> noise you hear from their wings flapping (they're so fast they can show up in the blink of an eye).<p>The bumblebees do something similar (I've oddly nursed three different bees with sugar water—all just happened to be in my field of vision crawling around on the ground but not flying). Now you get a bumble or two per day checking in with a quick hover and bob kind of movement before shooting off into the distance.<p>Does anyone know of any research into this or books identifying behavior like this?
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sqnxlzLakU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sqnxlzLakU</a><p>This is more about beehaiviour research and playing with your balls, but the basic idea seems to be that even "small" brains do the same stuff the big brains do - like forming relationships, playing for fun, using tools, etc.
Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary. The bird saved in this story, if it has offspring, will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human. At the very least, there's lots of research into <i>this</i> topic. I can't speak to the others, sorry.
My ex mother in law bonded with a crow. She had it spending time on her shoulder whenever she was spending time in her garden.<p>It was quite a sight, especially when she was wearing dark clothing.<p>A few centuries before people would have had her burned for being a witch.
Crows reach fabulous levels of (animal) intelligence with a brain that is a fraction of the size of the brain of great apes. I wonder what progress has been made in studying the differences in organisation between the two.
I appreciate your AI (Avian Intelligence) contribution to HN.
LOL, man, you made my day! Thank you!<p>(ps. There's a new episode of Mini Fantasy Theater I haven't seen yet, hurray! <a href="https://www.davidrevoy.com/tag/minifantasytheater" rel="nofollow">https://www.davidrevoy.com/tag/minifantasytheater</a>)