Bird Brain

     The term “Bird Brain” popped into my mind yesterday.  When it is used in conversation it is generally meant to be derogatory, not very smart, but certainly, that is a misnomer, because while their brains are small in size, birds are amazingly intelligent.

    I usually take my bird feeders down in the spring, because if I don’t they are ransacked by bears trying to get at the sunflower seeds inside.  You can see by my misshapen condition of my bird feeder that it has experienced hungry bears in the past.  After taking the bird feeder down the birds have to fend for themselves for half a year.  

    Yesterday I thought I would gamble that the bears will not be around, and I put the bird feeder back up.  Despite its absence for six months, with fifteen minutes of the feeder being put back up, chickadees were flying around it and picking up sunflower seeds from the feeder.  Yes, it only took fifteen minutes for them to find it.

    I will always remember looking out of the window one day in April, and noticing a lone hummingbird hovering around the place where my hummingbird feeder usually hung.  The hummer had just migrated back to the Robson Valley from wintering in the US Southwest, and it remembered where the feeder usually hung.  I hadn’t yet put the feeder out for the summer, and had to scramble around, hurriedly, making some sugar water for the hungry hummingbird to slurp.

    Despite the small size of their brains, birds have a tremendous skill to remember.  Think about that the next time you hear the term “bird brain” used.

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