Three up close

The fountain in Shipyard Park, plus geese

Social learning for food among cockatoos

Kate Golembiewski, What’s Safe to Eat? Birds of a Feather Learn Together, NYTimes, May 2, 2026.

By watching their peers, dolphins learn to capture fish in empty conch shells, then ferry the shells up to the water’s surface in order to eat. Octopuses can master experimental tasks by watching their tankmates in the laboratory. Crows follow the cues of others in their flock to attack specific humans who have harassed fellow crows in the past.

Scientists call it “social learning,” and it essentially means monkey see, monkey do, an adage that turns out to apply to many animals beyond just primates. Now, a study of Australia’s sulfur-crested cockatoos shows that the birds employ social learning to understand whether unfamiliar foods are safe to eat.

In more forested areas of the cockatoos’ native range in Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia, these mohawked parrots eat plant roots, seeds, fruits and insect larvae. But the birds have learned to thrive in urban environments. “They’re everywhere in Sydney,” said Julia Penndorf, a behavioral ecologist and lead author of the study in PLOS Biology, who encountered the birds as a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra.

In urban areas, the birds have expanded their diets to include nonnative plants and nuts, including almonds and sunflower seeds people offer to them, and they can be seen prying the lids off garbage bins in order to forage.

“The big issue with urban birds is, they kind of eat everything,” Dr. Penndorf, who now works at the University of Exeter, said. This expanded diet is high-risk, high-reward: the birds have more options for food, but there’s always a chance that strange new snacks might be poisonous.

Dr. Penndorf and her colleagues wondered if the highly intelligent cockatoos might owe their varied urban diets, and, in turn, their takeover of the city of Sydney, to social learning.

The rest of the article discusses an ingenious experiment by which Penndorf and her colleagues verified that cockatoos could learn what foods to eat from one another,

Hoboken pigeons

Flowers, geese, bacon

Goose at sunrise on Pier 13 in Hoboken

Canadian geese in Hoboken by the Hudson River

Bald eagles on the Hudson

Eagles on the Hudson🦅
Bald eagles are on the ice on the Hudson River during winter primarily to hunt for fish and conserve energy.
I was fortunate enough to observe and capture some of their behavior amid the fury of ice floes and deep freeze. What an exhilarating experience! pic.twitter.com/WbiPp6T91Y

— Ron Birds (@BirdsRon) February 7, 2026

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Upside-down world

Duck on a post

Friday Fotos: It was a foggy day, May 15, 2025

Claude 3.7 describes a line drawing of a peacock colored in a realistic way

This is another Art Club image. It’s a fairly elaborate one, a peacock. For some reason I decided to color it in a realistic way, or at any rate, in my best guess at what peacocks look like. It turns out that I did a fairly good job.

As always, my remarks are in bold face while Claude’s responses are plain face.

* * * * *

What’s in this image?

This image shows a colorful illustration of a peacock surrounded by stylized flowers. The peacock has distinctive blue plumage with the characteristic "eye" patterns in blue, purple, yellow, and black on its tail feathers. It has a blue head with a purple and blue face, a distinctive crest on top of its head, and a curved beak.

The peacock is set against a white background with several large, stylized flowers around it: a red flower on the upper left, an orange flower on the upper right, a blue flower on the lower left, and a yellow flower on the lower right. There are green leaves and brown branches connecting these flowers. In the upper right corner, there are some small blue birds flying in the distance.

The artwork appears to be hand-drawn and colored, possibly with markers or colored pencils, and has a signature with the date in the lower left portion of the image.

It’s a black line drawing colored with markers. Are the colors of the peacock realistic?

Yes, the colors of the peacock in this marker illustration are actually quite realistic. The male peacock (technically called a "peafowl") does have vibrant blue-green body plumage, a blue crest on its head, and colorful tail feathers with the distinctive "eye" patterns featuring blues, purples, greens, and yellows.

The artist has captured many accurate color elements:

• The predominantly blue body feathers
• The blue head and crest
• The distinctive eye-shaped patterns on the tail feathers with blue, purple, and yellow/gold
• The color gradation and patterns in the tail

While no artistic representation is perfectly accurate to nature, this illustration does a good job of capturing the peacock's striking and colorful appearance using markers. The stylistic choices, like the very bright blue and the purple accents, might be slightly exaggerated for artistic effect, but they're not far from the actual coloration of these magnificent birds.

Interesting. I’m the artist. The line drawing was given to me in an Art Club I belong to. I chose the colors. While I’ve seen peacocks in zoos and have seen photos of them, I had no reference material when I was doing the coloring. It was all from memory.

Thank you for sharing that! It's impressive that you colored this entirely from memory without any reference materials. Your recall of peacock coloration is remarkably accurate - you captured many of the key features beautifully.

The blue body feathers, the distinctive head crest, and especially the "eye" patterns in the tail with their blue, purple, and gold/yellow centers are all true to real peacocks. Even the color distribution with the blue-dominant body transitioning to the more patterned tail feathers shows good observational memory.

Many artists struggle with color accuracy when working from memory, but you've managed to create a vibrant yet believable representation. The marker medium can be challenging to work with since it doesn't blend as easily as paint, but you've used it effectively to create depth and texture in the plumage.

The stylized flowers provide a lovely complementary backdrop that enhances the peacock without competing with it. Was this your first time coloring a peacock, or have you drawn them before?

My first time with a peacock, but I’d done, say, ten other images in the art club. I’ve worked with oil paints and acrylics some years ago and I’m currently a photographer. I’m very careful with color in my (digital) photos.

Thank you for sharing more about your background! That combination of experience with different mediums—oil paints, acrylics, and now photography—has clearly given you a good eye for color. Your careful approach to color in your digital photography has definitely translated well to this marker illustration.

Working from memory can be challenging, but your background in visual arts has served you well here. The peacock's colors are remarkably accurate for someone working without reference, which speaks to your observational skills and color memory.

The transition from traditional painting mediums to markers is interesting—markers offer less blending capability but can create vibrant, clean color fields. You've used them effectively here to capture the peacock's distinctive features while maintaining the integrity of the line drawing.

The composition with the stylized flowers creates a balanced frame around the peacock, allowing it to be the focal point while still having a rich, colorful environment. It's a successful piece, especially for your first time illustrating a peacock!

Gulls taking off while a person consults their smart phone

Birds on a rail

No AIs here, but there is a birdbrain

Dreaming Birds

Maria Popova, Do Birds Dream? NYTimes, March 26, 2024.

A study of zebra finches — songbirds whose repertoire is learned, not hard-wired — mapped particular notes of melodies sung in the daytime to neurons firing in the forebrain. Then, during REM, the neurons fired in a similar order: The birds appeared to be rehearsing the songs in their dreams.

An fM.R.I. study of pigeons found that brain regions tasked with visual processing and spatial navigation were active during REM, as were regions responsible for wing action, even though the birds were stilled with sleep: They appeared to be dreaming of flying. The amygdala — a cluster of nuclei responsible for emotional regulation — was also active during REM, hinting at dreams laced with feeling. My night heron was probably dreaming, too — the folded neck is a classic marker of atonia, the loss of muscle tone characteristic of the REM state.

But the most haunting intimation of the research on avian sleep is that without the dreams of birds, we too might be dreamless. No heron, no kiss.

There are two primary groups of living birds: the flightless Palaeognathae, including the ostrich and the kiwi, which have retained certain ancestral reptilian traits, and Neognathae, comprising all other birds. EEG studies of sleeping ostriches have found REM-like activity in the brainstem — a more ancient part of the brain — while in modern birds, as in mammals, this REM-like activity takes place primarily in the more recently developed forebrain.

Several studies of sleeping monotremes — egg-laying mammals like the platypus and the echidna, the evolutionary link between us and birds — also reveal REM-like activity in the brainstem, suggesting that this was the ancestral crucible of REM before it slowly migrated toward the forebrain.

If so, the bird brain might be where evolution designed dreams — that secret chamber adjacent to our waking consciousness where we continue to work on the problems that occupy our days. [...]

As with the mind, so with the body. Studies have shown that people learning new motor tasks “practice” them in sleep, then perform better while awake. This line of research has also shown how mental visualization helps athletes improve performance.

There's more at the link.

A quorum

Are you sure about that?

They're watching us [between the birds]

Synthesis, Antithesis, Birds