April 9, 2014

Birds At Play

by James Collins (author's profile)

Transcription

[Portions of the scan are cut off. The transcript will reflect this with "—".]
Newsfr—

Birds At Play

Outside of my window, I see va—
activities throughout the day. One in p—
I've paid a great deal of attention to.
it bump on the wire game—which, in effec—
played by crows. I don't think it's a game—
dominance as they gently land where one
occupies. When it is bumped, it flies ont—
next telephone pole. Each length of wir—
adjacent to poles is one point on bump—
and when it is played, there are usually—
birds. They fly directly at them and of—
last second, the bird flies to the other po—
giving up the one it was perched on. Thi—
repeated by all of the crows, sending each one—
the wire. They do this exactly like Jun—
frogs that human played as kids.

It definitely is a game. Nothing in t—
manner suggests territory claims. When l—
they all repeat to the order they started o—
poles. I've seen up to twelve crows playing—
the wire. It's not just entertaining to wa—
it also has taught me that birds do play and
socialize among themselves.

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tigana Posted 9 years, 10 months ago. ✓ Mailed 9 years, 10 months ago   Favorite
About birds playing - yes they do. We were eating at a restaurant on the pier once - overlooking a small strip of sand. Although this was in Southern California, there were no humans out there - probably because there were other 'people-friendly' beaches close.
Anyway - during the entire time we were there (at least an hour and a half) we watched a seagull play with a tennis ball. He would stand and drop it at the top of the slope, then run down and try to snatch it up before it hit the water. He'd then repeat the process. Everything in his body language bespoke 'fun' - he wasn't doing this to try to open the ball and eat the contents (like he thought it was a shellfish, or a nut) - he was playing a game. :)

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