Indeed, for a long time, most birds were considered merely “a wing guided by an eye.” Foraging was a matter of instinct and visual searching out of sustenance—whether in the form of flitting insects, skittering rodents, fresh roadkill, or tasty and nutritious fruits, nuts, and berries. This bias toward vision is hardly surprising. We humans are eye-minded creatures, and when it comes to visual acuity, we’re near the top of the animal chart. It makes sense that for a long time, studies of food searching in birds focused on sight. The world of birds, we thought, was a world like ours, of light,
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