A day without learning something new is a lost opportunity. Awareness of that something is the key to integrating it, however. Sometimes what I see doesn’t fully register and then suddenly I see it in a different light and it goes into the ‘vault’. After years of feeding the birds and gradually observing how clever they are I learned something new this morning. At least I think I did.

Last week I realised the Galahs, who are domineering interlopers, are spooked by me raising my arms as if I have wings. This was a hilarious discovery for me. My husband concurred. He and his golf buddies have observed when they are trying to clear a large flock from the fairway so they can hit their balls, nothing seems to work better than raising arms holding a golf club to see them off the occupied area! Apparently they don’t like anything waved above them and while this may be true of many birds, Galahs appear to be especially responsive to it.

This morning there was only one Galah when I fed the Crested Pigeons. I directed him/her to a small pile of isolated seed and it seemed to understand the direction. And then I saw the Crested Pigeons scampering through the larger pile of seed, as they often do, and scattering it into the gravel. A few minutes later I observed through the window four more Galahs had arrived and the pigeons had mostly had to give way to the larger more dominant birds.

But here is the thing…Galahs have a parrot shaped beak that is not at all designed to pick up seed from a flat surface. Whereas pigeons have a small pointed beak that is for pecking and feeding from crevices and flat surfaces effectively. Once the Galahs had eaten what they could, by tilting heads and sort of scooping with their beaks rather unsuccessfully, they move on to food sources farther afield. The pigeons hang around preening and cooing and WAITING. Then they casually move back to the area where the seed has been scattered amongst the gravel and occupy themselves picking it out of the spaces in the gravel! It’s genius. Perhaps it is only adaptability or survival of the fittest but regardless, it its successful enough to keep the Pigeons coming back day after day, year after year.

What have I learned from this observation? That all of us organisms are capable of making tiny adaptions to our behaviour to improve our lives. So says me, the Pigeon Whisperer.

**I know feeding wild animals is not recommended but the reason I feed these native Crested Pigeons is I want them to stay around so less desirable species don’t become completely dominant in the area. I only put a small amount of seed out once a day so the birds don’t rely on it for their total diet. And when we are away they seem to survive just fine on their alternative food sources but they always come back again if there is a ‘free feed’ offered!