204 Bird Brained

At ten o’clock last night, just as the BBC television news was starting, my cell phone vibrated, indicating that I had a message.  

Rambling:  ‘Cell phone’ is one Americanism that I do use.  It is much easier and quicker to say than “mobile phone” and although a ‘mobile phone’ may be used in the way its name suggests, ‘cell phone’ is just as acceptable as it is named after cellular networks, where service areas are divided into ‘cells’.

Unlike the mobile phone which can never be anything but “mobile phone”, I foresee the day when the single word “cellphone” is recognised just as “telephone” is an established word now. Telephone is derived from tele (at a distance) and phone (sound or language).

I looked at my cellphone screen and saw a message that I had never seen before.  It read:

[Alarm] Anti-theft alarm triggered.  Check your vehicle.

Electric cars like ours have become very popular among car thieves but our model has Immobilisation Technology which is supposed to make their theft more difficult.  Nevertheless, I have read that a determined thief, with the skill and technology, finds it quite straightforward.  

Our car was parked right outside the front door and as I opened the door, hoping that I would not be confronted by a burly figure wearing a hoodie and a Covid face mask, I could hear the wailing of the car alarm and all four indicator lights were flashing.  It was pitch black but as far as I could tell, there was no one there.  The doors and the boot were still locked.  After a minute or two, the wailing stopped.

Twenty minutes later, the alarm went off again.  This time, I rushed out.  The alarm was sounding, the lights were flashing but again, there was no one there.

I thought that possibly, the thief had scurried off as soon as the alarm sounded and was hiding behind a bush somewhere nearby, watching me.  

I devised a shrewd plan: I turned on the outside porch light so that now, the car was visible.  I went upstairs, got a chair from a bedroom and sat on it so that I could look out of the window on the landing and watch the car below.

After a few minutes, the indicator lights started flashing and the alarm sounded, louder than ever.  No one had gone anywhere near the car.  There was clearly some kind of fault and so, we had a problem.  

Five houses are within 50 yards of us and if the car alarm was going off every now and then throughout the night, there would be justified complaints from angry neighbours.  I had to do something and the something I did was to drive the car some 200 yards away and park it a long way from any houses.  At 11:10 p.m., as I went back into the house, I could faintly hear the alarm in the distance.

At nine o’clock this morning, I went to the car to drive to the KIA dealership and get them to fix this irritating and annoying fault.  As I approached it, I was becoming a little worried.  All was quiet.

“Oh no,” I thought.  It’s happening again.  I’ll ask them to fix a fault when that fault seems to have fixed itself.  What if it starts again tonight?

As soon as I reached the car, I felt relief.  The problem wasn’t coming from outside.   I could see through the windows that what was causing all that fuss was inside the car.  A blue tit was on the top of the front passenger seat.

Its movement inside the car when the doors were locked had been what caused the alarm to sound.  How it got into the car, I have no idea but it just sat there, staring at me and it didn’t fly off until I opened the door nearest to it and then it was off and away. 

Problem fixed.

*****

Talking of birds, this photo shows an interesting fact that I've discovered recently about bird behaviour.

Blue tits in Wavendon prefer to eat to the left.

Both sides of this bird feeder, which is fixed to the outside of a glass patio door, were filled at the same time with sunflower hearts from one packet.  The birds, most of which are blue tits, are clearly drawn to the left side first.

‘Lateralisation’ among birds, akin to being right or left handed in primates, is a known characteristic.  It’s been shown that many parrots tend to be left-footed, meaning they prefer to use their left foot for tasks like holding food and some bird species prefer to use their right foot for picking up food or scratching their beaks. 

Apparently, lateralization in feeding is food-type specific and it somehow impacts on feeding success in wild birds.  Maybe, I’ll fill the feeder with biscuit crumbs next and see how they deal with them.

Interestingly (I think), while primates are usually right handed, orangutans tend to be lefties.  

 

 

153. Smarter than the Average Felon

I’ve written before about the birds we see in our garden.  I have kept notes and the total number of different species I’ve seen, just by looking out of the window, is 34.

Caroline’s brother, Mark, gave us a bird feeder for Christmas.  It’s so intricate that it’s not just a feeder, it’s a bird feeding “System”. 

It took some time to erect.  First of all, a metal spike had to be hammered about 70 centimetres into the ground.  Then, a second piece of tubing was screwed (remember that - it was screwed) into the buried section resulting in a post about 2 metres high.  Finally, some curved hook-like pieces were attached to the top from which several vessels holding food were hung.

Bird food is expensive!  The first batch of various seeds and nuts that we expected would last for several weeks, cost £27.  

We were wrong about how long the foodstuffs would last. The photo above, taken only two hours after the system-launch, shows that the tube of sunflower hearts (just to the left of the pole) was already empty.
The most common visitors are robins, chaffinches, nuthatches and four kinds of tits. Greater spotted woodpeckers come as well. 

A plague of starlings descended on us early on. There must have been more than 20 of them, all squabbling and jostling for position but thankfully, they haven’t come back. 

Moorhens visit often.  They are predominantly water birds and their usual food sources are unavailable to small garden birds and so, to some extent, moorhens are intruding and somewhat unwelcome. 

The moorhens began by just pecking at the seeds that had fallen on to the grass below but they soon became adept at flying in and landing on the tray.  It is like watching a Boeing 747 trying to land on an aircraft carrier. 

Of course, it's squirrels that are the main problem. 

They are renowned for their ability to overcome any obstacle or impediment in order to get to food.  There are many videos on YouTube that show them doing that.

My first attempt to stop squirrels getting to the food was to rub the pole with candle wax hoping that they would be unable to grip and climb.  They could and did.

That inverted cone is intended to thwart them, hence it's called a Baffle.  It worked for a while but they are too clever for such basic, low-tech apparatus.  They tried to grab it and swing themselves up but it is intentionally loose and moves under their body weight, tipping  them off.  

To appreciate what they did to get to the food, you need to be aware of some facts and dimensions.

A squirrel’s body length is about 27 cm (11 inches).  A squirrel is able to jump about 120 cm (4 feet) vertically.  That ratio would mean an Olympic high jumper clearing more than 8 metres (26 feet) from a standing start.  

The world high jump record is 2.45 metres (8 feet).

The only way a squirrel could get above the Baffle was to jump and cling on to the post above it.  One of them stood on the low wall and prepared to jump:

He jumped,

landed and held on....

and there he is, sniggering and mocking me.  

I have worked out that he jumped about 95 cm (3 feet) vertically and 155 cm (5 feet) horizontally.  

Assuming that the point at which he grabbed the post was the highest point of the parabola of his jump - and it might not have been because he only jumped as far as was necessary - that would be the equivalent of a human long jump, from a standing start, of close to 22 metres (72 feet). The current long jump record is 8.95 metres (29 feet).

I needed to move the post further from the wall so that they didn’t have the assistance of the wall to boost the start but I knew that moving the post wasn’t going to be easy.  As I said at the beginning, it was hammered deep into the ground.  

I pulled back the curtains that morning to see this:

The little buggers had unscrewed the post.  The buried, base section is at the right edge of the picture.  It had not snapped or fallen.  It had been unscrewed.  Little buggers!

The seeds were all over the ground and the tits, moorhens, ducks and squirrels were gorging themselves.   

Did they have a meeting to draw up plans?  Were the birds in on it too or was it just the scheming, devious, cunning, kleptomaniacal, rodents, acting on their own?  Have they got tool kits, spanners and screwdrivers?

I put it together again, screwing it tight.  The next morning, it had happened again!  The post and containers were on the ground and all the seeds and nuts gone.

I am not beaten.  I won't give up, even though the squirrels’ need to get their paws on my nuts is probably stronger than my determination to stop them.  

Squirrels are very crafty and extremely cunning. I have to be cleverer and more astute than them.  There's pride at stake here.

I bought stiff plastic tubing.  The joint they have been unscrewing is 35 cm above the ground.  I threaded a 75 cm  sleeve of tubing on to the post so that it covers the join.  

Now, before they’ll be able to disassemble it again, they will have to use a stepladder.  If they can't break into the locked shed to get mine, they could bring their own and if they haven’t already got one, they’ll certainly make one.  

Then, they’ll have to work as a team.  

One squirrel will have to stand on the shoulders of another.  It will have to unscrew the post, gripping it above the piping.  

When it is unscrewed, they’ll have to lift the upper section clear of the pipe so that it can fall and this is why they’ll need the stepladder.  

Please don’t point out any flaws in this plan because the squirrels will hear about it and be forewarned.

They told me they wanted to negotiate.  

Here is Cyril, the squirrels' equivalent of Michel Barnier - the EU's chief negotiator on Brexit talks - arriving on time.  

Cyril said they wanted to come to an agreement on the strategic, operational, legal and financial issues relating to the processes and utilisation of the feeding system.  

Those talks got nowhere, mainly because I hardly understood a word he said.  

What's “dehiscent opportunism” for goodness sake?

The moorhens have suggested that if the squirrels do manage to dismantle the Feeder again, and they're fairly certain that they will, I should start leaving copies of The Times cryptic crossword, a couple of Word Searches and a Sudoku on the grass. 

They think that the squirrels will become so engrossed in trying to solve the puzzles that they’ll forget to dismantle the System.  We've got nothing to lose and so it's probably worth a try.  

It might just work.

Patrick sent me this video.  I called Cyril in, opened it to full screen and suggested that I might install something similar.  He laughed.

"That looks like fun," he said.