04 Oct Avian tool use in West Dublin

For a long time, we humans flattered ourselves with the belief that tool use was among our defining and exclusive traits. In the last decades of the 20th Century, we grudgingly conceded the  franchise — first to primates, then elephants, cetaceans, and birds. But who knew we had tool-using songbirds right here in Nova Scotia?

Sunday afternoon, two nuthatches, one red-breasted, one white-breasted, transformed a stump in West Dublin, Nova Scotia, into a vice. The birds wedged sunflower seeds into a crack in the stump, thus freeing their beaks to peck open the firmly secured meals.

Few things annoy the Contrarian more than cheesy anthropomorphism, (e.g.: the Weimaraner-abusing William Wegman), so I will tag this post sittapomorphism.  Photos by Peter Barss.