By Denny Olson
I spent my graduate student summers as a teaching naturalist in Minnesota State Parks, and my first full-time job was doing the same at Minnesota’s Northwoods Audubon Center. Luckily for me, that began a 54-year lifetime of teaching about nature. I say “lucky” because it demanded that I be a professional student of nature for well over half a century. Scientific discoveries and thousands of personal experiences in the wild have made that path quite a ride for me. I get to be continually amazed at the absolute genius of our planetary companions – most of whom are hundreds of times more “fit’ to be here, because they have been adjusting and adapting – to each other — for hundreds (or thousands!) of times as long as we have been classed as Homo sapiens.
That has been why I love the “Bet you didn’t know this!” stories I get to share with anyone who will listen. Here are some of the “Birdbits” that fascinated me:
According to archaeologists, birds evolved with the dinosaurs, not after or from, starting about 150 million years ago. That’s about 50 times as long as our ancestors have been walking on two legs. (It also ought to suggest that a bit of humility on our part might be appropriate …)
Birds pack five times as many neurons into a cubic centimeter of their brains as we do, which is part of the reason they seem to operate at hyperspeed. It’s normal speed for them. We are just slow.
American Dippers search underwater for aquatic insect food in frozen winter creeks – often under the ice. Water steals body warmth about 25 to 100 times faster than air of the same temperature. And they are small, with a much smaller internal volume for heat production. They even have micro-feathers on their nictitating membrane eyelids (third-eyelid goggles), turning the membrane silvery-white. Watch for it when they blink. They are thermodynamic rock stars.
Peregrine Falcons are fast (200+ mph in a “stoop” to catch flying birds). Most bird-people know that. Most people don’t know that the center-focus area of their retinas and eye lens make them nearsighted … hardly an advantage for spotting distant prey. Their solution? They have farsightedness eight times as acute as our eyes, but in a ring of clear focus around that center-focal area. That means they must look slightly to the side, above or below the flying prey to see it clearly – presenting another problem for them. They must have a perfect aerodynamic shape to fly at 200 mph, so they can’t afford to tilt their head in any direction. That would cut their speed in half. So, to get to the prey bird faster, they keep their head straight and spiral down to the prey, getting there much faster. The shortest distance between two points, for a mathematician, is a straight line. Not for Peregrines …
Hooded crows have taught themselves traffic etiquette regarding stoplights. They fly down to stopped cars at a red light and place acorns under the tires of the cars, fly back to perches and wait for the light to turn green, then wait for the cars to clear the area, and fly back down to eat the tasty nut-bits on the road.
Black-billed Magpies, who are self-aware enough to preen in a mirror and clean specks off themselves that they can’t see another way, have also enlisted help in finding access to food. If a larger animal dies of natural causes, they are usually first on the scene, but they can’t punch through the hide of that animal to get to the tasty meat below. So they fly away to find a wolf or a coyote, dive bomb and even bounce off the head of the canine until it loses its patience and chases the magpie, repeatedly, until the magpie leads the big carnivore to the dead animal. Then it perches nearby to wait for the wolf or coyote to rip through the hide and tear into the meat. When the carnivore is sated, and goes to lie down and sleep it off, it’s dinnertime for the magpie!
More stories to come next time!