One smart little parrot...

Noodles, my lovebird, is about five month old. I started offering her pine nuts a few weeks ago, as a reward/treat, so I always carry a bunch around in my pocket (which the cashiers at the local A&P find amusing, since every time I start fishing around in my pocket for change I pull out a quarter, a couple of nickels and dimes and about 30 pine nuts).

Anyway, unlike most parrots, apparently lovebirds don't eat by holding food with their feet (I didn't know that...). So she woul accept the pine nut, then proceed to crunch it up in her beak, and work to separate the crushed shells from the meat with her tongue. Highly inefficient, as you might imagined, even for a parrot. And that's really saying something...

A couple of days ago, I noticed that she'd changed her technique -- if she's on solid ground, she'll put the nut on the surface and work it from there, that way she can rescue any lost pieces of the nut she might have dropped. Or if she's on the top of her cage, she'll carry the nut over to a nearby toy or mirror, and lean the nut against the object and work it from there -- again, a much more efficient way of eating.

I don't know if she figured this out on her own, or learned it from watching the wild birds outside her window. I have a bird feeder set up just outside, and I'd long ago noticed that nuthatches and woodpeckers would grab a nut from the feeder, fly over to the nearby dogwood tree (outside my bedroom window, where Noodles can watch them), secure the nut in a crack or nook in the tree's bark, and peck away at the thing. It's a very efficient way of eating (when all you can use to eat is an icepick on your face).

As I alluded to in Little Birdies!, parrots may not be the smartest creatures on the planet, but they're certainly every bit as smart as they need to be...