Why Do Crows Like To Gather in Large Roosts?

Most people in Danville, Illinois, wish the crows now in their midst would find themselves another winter home, Steve Bailey welcomes the visitors with open arms. He’s a bird lover, of course, and proud to live in the unofficial Winter Crow Capital of North America—despite the noise, the mess, and the smell that comes with that distinction.

 Still, the birds remain. The most obvious reason for their stubbornness is that Danville offers a perfect location for crows. It’s in a river valley surrounded by agricultural land in all directions. As for the crows’ communal tendencies, the birds know that there is strength in numbers. That is, roosting together helps them watch for predators and increases their chances of finding food.

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A Western Screech Owl in Desperate Need

Please read what happened to this poor little owl and how he was rescued and had a happy ending. 

My heart goes out to any creature that encounters any kind of threat and accident due to careless humans.


On January 5, Santa Clara County’s Injured and Orphaned Wildlife Inc. came to International Bird Rescue with a Western Screech Owl that had flown into insulation foam as workers were insulating an attic. With its face coated in hardened foam, its life was in danger.

As soon as the patient arrived at our San Francisco Bay Wildlife Rescue Center he was examined and stabilized. We administered anesthesia and started to carefully remove some of the foam that was smothering large portions of his face and body.

 The bird had been attempting to preen off this toxic material, and had ripped a big patch from his chest before he arrived at the Center. Clinic staff removed several chunks of foam from his mouth and we are hopeful that the rest will be cast in a pellet.

Click here to read the full article and find out about the owls happy ending.

Pigeons Recognize Human Faces

If you shoo a pigeon, that bird is likely to remember you and know to stay out of your way the next time you cross paths, according to a new study. Researchers found that wild, untrained pigeons can recognize individual people's faces and are not fooled by a change of clothes.

A new study was conducted on untrained feral pigeons. At a park in Paris, two researchers of similar build and skin color, but wearing different-colored lab coats, fed a group of pigeons.

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Pigeons Can Count! Not Bird-Brained After All.

 This is so awesome to know because I really love pigeons!

Pigeons may not be so bird-brained after all, as scientists have found the birds' ability to understand numbers is on par with that of primates.

 Scarf and his colleagues first trained three pigeons to count up to three. On a touchscreen, they presented the pigeons with a set of images that had objects of various sizes, shapes and colors. For example, one set presented images with one yellow block, two red cylinders or three yellow rectangles. To receive a treat, the pigeons had to select the images in the correct object-number order, from lowest to highest.

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Pigeons are Very Smart Birds!

Wow I knew this was true about pigeons.  I love them so dearly.

Pigeons (at least the feral kind) are actually nearly as smart as Rhesus Monkeys when it comes to mathematics.  Researchers from the University of Otago, New Zealand recently demonstrated this with studies indicating that pigeons can count up to about 8 or 9. The researchers actually decided to use pigeons for their study because they knew that they were easy to train and had excellent vision (an attribute required for their experiment).

Click here to read the full article.