Flying/Playing

[Jeff Cashdollar]

John/Anyone,

I was walking today beside a lake and noticed three ducks flying. It was very windy, actually wind advisory warnings were posted for Middle TN. The flying was extremely strong. Could be several reasons for this, high-wind, mating season and maybe they were attempting to land on the lake in these conditions.

My question, do birds fly for fun and enjoy the art of flight. Very hard to ask them or mail a questionnaire to a local duck nest. Any research on their love for flying.

[Roy Priest]

I believe very few birds fly for fun. Crows certainly do as do members of the falcon family. I'm sure many more do but they are in the minority.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Thanks Roy and I agree with your statement. It made me think, I have incorrectly stated my question. I know birds fly for a purpose. I was wondering in flight, do they play or sometimes just see what they can do.

[John Chardine]

Certain species do I think Jeff. As Roy mentions, the crow family do a lot of aerial playing. Here's an image of two Ravens. I watched this family for an hour or more. I think in this case it was almost incidental that they were flying- the birds were interacting and playing and they just happened to be flying at the time.

There are least two ways to interpret play in the animal kingdom. The dry, scientific approach is to interpret play as a way of practicing skills that are needed in "real-life" situations, e.g., play fighting. This is the evolutionary explanation. There is nothing wrong with this but I think we often short-change animals by assuming they don't have the intelligence or brain-power to play just for the fun of it. I think a lot of animals do just that.

[Paul Guris]

All you have to do is own nearly any species of hookbill (parrots, parakeets, cockatoos, etc.) for a while and you grasp very quickly just how intelligent and "emotional" some birds really are. One example is when birds engage in feather plucking. This behavior is common in birds that are ignored and don't get proper interaction with their owners, but it is very uncommon in birds that get attention.

Hookbills, crow, and jays all seem to be high on the intelligence and "thought" scale. New Caledonia Crows have been documented using tools in the wild, and I believe another species of crow learned to use tools in captivity. I think parids (I might have that term wrong and the taxonomy may have changed recently) like chickadees, titmice, tits, etc. are also pretty bright. I saw a program called something like Search for the Birdbrain of Britain that showed them solving complex puzzles to get food.

John: I notice that all of my examples seem to be of highly social birds. Do you know if most birds that are perceived to be intelligent are also social? I'm pretty sure the flipside of that isn't true (e.g. shorebirds).