posted
The other morning my wife and I were awakened by a load tapping noise coming from our rooftop evaporative cooler, which was covered for the winter.
I reached up with a broom handle and tapped three times on the grille of the cooler's downdraft vent. The tapping on the top of the cooler answered back with three taps. I varied the pattern of my tapping, and the cooler-top tapper matched me beat for beat. This continued over the next five minutes, with me improvising increasingly complex beats, and the rooftop tapper matching me exactly.
Finally I was overcome by curiosity, put on my bathrobe, and went outside to see who the mysterious tapper was. There on top of my cooler was not one, but two fat magpies, taking turns tapping on the cooler. They had both been answering my taps!
Smart birds.
Later that day we found a pile of house finch feathers under our carport. Those cannibals had been up there pecking at finch remains.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
You should have transcribed it - to find out what the birds were mimicking in your broom handle language.
Posts: 551 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Neato!
