How Do Birds Think?

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 69

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

There is a wide range of opinion about the character of the minds of animals; a discourse that travels from complete denial to woolly romantic assumption (and further). All this sooner or later washes up against Thomas Nagel’s  famous 1974 philosophical paper -What is it like to be a Bat? which declares unambiguously that we’re never going to know. 

Expressway excavations poised above the dunelake

But there are degrees of knowing, so keep your eyes open in a real world and it is surprising the insight that can bring. We were down at the dunelake documenting its destruction, when a flock of Canadian Geese came winging over.  Like most of these wetland birds they spend quite a lot of time in the air this time of the year (reasonably early autumn) and here were two squadrons of around 15 birds each, the one in close pursuit of the other heading straight for the dunelake.

A Candian Goose surveys her flight path

On their approach however, something went wrong (It was a clear windless day) as the lead birds suddenly switched direction right over the dunelake, a change of ‘mind’ that took the following birds completely by surprise. These are big ungainly animals that carry a lot of forward momentum so they can’t change their flight paths easily. For a brief moment there was tumult in the rear as they all adjusted in their own way, to the new GPS instructions from the leadership, while trying to avoid colliding into each other. They were rolling and twisting in what came close to  pandemonium, though soon smoothed out on the new flight path and continued chugging along as of nothing had happened.

Canadian Geese in controlled flight

How could we read this?  Well, the dunelake begins to fill around mid-April,  but it isn’t really habitable for this size of bird until June so while the birds seemed to  know the lake, they were a little out in expecting to be able to land on it.  This in itself, is an interesting disclosure - that the birds don’t wander  around on the off chance, looking for food and refuge. They know this region and knowingly track from one wetland to another. This indicates of course, a condition of mind, though we'll never get inside one to  confirm it. (Canadian Geese  don’t breed or usually feed at the dunelake but use it as a night refuge in winter.)   

But were they actually intending to land?

UK - Starling flock

Another introduced bird starting to flock this time of year is the  starling. These birds are a nuisance on Kapiti Island because they tend to overnight there and drop weed seed (in their droppings) on this regenerating native reserve. Be that as it may, if you have ever seen starlings manoeuvring in a flock in autumn you will know what an extraordinary sight it is. Their co-ordinating balletic rhythms come close to the uncanny. Though Canadian geese also make a grand sight, boating along in formation,  usually at very  low altitude, they don’t exhibit anywhere near the same  inflight flair.

Yet they are usually more co-ordinated than this narrowly avoided midair pile up would suggest.  So what might be going on? The question it raises is about formation flying. Is this innate to a young goose or do the parents go out and teach the youngsters how to do it. And was this happening here? They look effortless enough when you see them overhead but this calamity  shows that it's every bit a highly complex technical skill as that of our own aerial acrobatic teams. And that it requires a high level of concentration  in a community of effort.

So was this an inflight training exercise for a new generation of young geese, led by senior members of the local community? And did they deliberately dip over the (now dry) lake to orientate the youngsters. Had they no intention of landing? If so then this has further implications regarding the communal lives of these birds because here were a group of adults working to blood in their youngsters. 

Current theory would usually regard this behaviour as instinctual - ie young animals following their parents - but here much more complex parenting behaviour appears to be going on. One scientific thinker working in this area of animal minds, while trying to dig her colleagues out of the behavioural hole they still seem quite happy to be wallowing around in is Barbara Smuts. We recommend you follow her up. Better still,  get out there and start  piecing it all together yourself.

Track we were listening to while posting this -Jimmy Reed -You Dont have To Go  

Whoa Baby

You dont have ta go

Whoa Baby

You dont have ta go

Gonna pack up baby

 Down the road I go 

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