The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

by Jennifer Ackerman

It turned out that the gull, a female breeding on the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco Bay, had hitched a ride on a garbage truck bound for an organic composting facility in the Central Valley near Modesto. At first the researcher thought the bird might have gotten trapped in the truck. But then, two days later, the same thing happened. Clearly, this gull was using its head (if not its palate—as one Bay Area news reporter quipped,

When disturbed while incubating, Carolina chickadees will imitate the sounds of a copperhead. The northern flicker makes a buzz like a hive of bees to deter predatory squirrels.

But just a few weeks ago, all six birds were playing in the snow, “which they absolutely love,” says Osvath. “They do all the classical things, sliding down a hill, going back up, sliding down again. Sometimes on their backs with a stick in their feet. You can throw snowballs at them, and they all line up and try to catch them, jumping as high as possible. Sometimes one raven will walk over to another and just grab a leg and yank it. Then the other will grab a leg, too, and they’ll both lose balance and fall over in the snow, boom!