Inadvertently, I ran an intelligence test on birds.
I have a two-sided bird feeder that sits halfway between a window (for observing) and some trees (for perching). Of course, the birds regularly go to the side of the feeder facing the trees which means that the feeder itself obscures my view of them from the window.
The solution to this problem was to block the entrance to the feeder on the one side. Surely this would force the birds to come around where I could see them.
The first bird to arrive after I blocked one opening was a Black-capped Chickadee. It tried the blocked side, flew back to the tree, and then promptly flew around to the open side and fed. Thereafter it came only to the open side.
The second bird to try it was a Steller’s Jay. Five times it flew in and tried to get seeds from the blocked entrance and always failed. Finally, it gave up and flew to the floor of the deck where it picked up a few seeds that had been dropped earlier. Later in the day it was still trying to get seeds from the blocked side and never did figure out that the other side was open.
The Pine Siskins figured it out quickly also. The jay remains stymied. So much for corvid smarts.
The Black-capped Chickadee quickly came to the open side of the feeder.
The Stellar’s Jay has yet to figure it out after a few hours of failure.
