So I was at a barbecue at my friend’s garden and watched a group of parrots raiding a nearby cherry tree on his neighbor’s garden. He commented on the intelligence and communication style of these parrots, what must be going on in their heads and whether AI will enable us to understand eventually what goes on in their heads. I have grown up watching groups of parrots from my childhood and was surprised to see similar behaviors when I moved here. They are very social creatures and extremely intelligent.
My friend is an avid long distance photographer, one of those people with an encyclopedic knowledge of anything with feathers, started going off about bird intelligence and communication. He has quite a lot of experience watching other species of birds and photographing them. We started to exchange information and thinking when we will get a translator to understand bird and animal behavior. That gave me the idea of writing up what behaviors been noticing when I watched birds in the Hague.
Seagulls #
Let’s start with the obvious stars of the show, our seagulls. These guys have figured out city living better than most humans. They have a lot of allies in the city and people love feeding them mostly bread even though there is a ban in most places because the bread crumbs would support a rat population. According to Didi, Seagulls stomp their feet to imitate rain so earthworms come up, then they eat them.
In The Hague, during the months of JUly and August, seagull chicks fall out of their nests, usually they glide to the ground. For a few days to few weeks, while they learn to fly, they’re kind of stuck on the ground walking around avoiding the cats and humans. In 2023 July, I observed a chick over 3 weeks.The chick keeps calling for her mom and gets around quite well in the block on foot. First thing to understand is that the moms are never too far away, keeping a watchful eye. I even caught one of them on camera coming down for a few seconds to feed the chick.
Seagulls also like going to our football and Rugby fields after they are dug before laying the new pitch to eat up the insects from the ground.
Seagulls also seem to know exactly where crabs and shrimp hang out in the numerous canals. Even though they can dive and catch them, they usually go the edges of the canals and have more sucess there.
I watched a seagull execute what can only be described as a military-precision snack heist near most Snack places.
Canada geese doing communal childcare #
During May-June we get a real population explosion of goslings here in The Hague. We also have groups of Canada geese that do this pooled nursery thing. They accumulate chicks from different families and then two parents act like teachers, taking them on grazing expeditions.
Canada geese are very territorial and will hiss at you when you are close. They also seem to get attacked by cats and you will once in a while spot ones with destroyed wings.
Greylag Goose recognizing people #
I’ve observed this one man who feeds the geese every day in a nearby park. He comes on his rusty bike with two bags full of bread. The Geese recognize him and his bike from quite a long distance and they make specific calls and gestures follow him to the feeding spot.
Jackdaws and their evening flights #
We have lots of crows here (Eurasian Jackdaws) and they exhibit this clustered flying behaviour during sunsets and sunrises. Also interesting to watch how they handle heavy wind, they seem to use it in their flight patterns. They look similar to the ones but have quite a different type of call.