6 November 2012    By Michelle WarwickerBBC Nature

Watch a Goffin’s cockatoo using a “tool” to reach food

A captive-bred Goffin’s cockatoo has surprised researchers by spontaneously making and using “tools” to reach food.

The species is not known to use tools in the wild.

Researchers in Austria recorded the cockatoo – named Figaro – repeatedly breaking off splinters from a wooden beam and using them to reach nuts on the other side of his wire enclosure.

The team believe Figaro’s feat is the first recorded instance of tool-making among parrots.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, was carried out at an aviary near Vienna by scientists from the University of Oxford; the University of Vienna and the Max-Planck-Institute for Ornithology in Germany.

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Nature’s tool-users and makers:

 

“No-one has ever reported [a parrot] sculpturing a tool out of shapeless wood in order to use it later with great sophistication,” said Professor Alex Kacelnik of Oxford University, an author of the study.

While birds from the corvid family, such as New Caledonian crows, are known to make tools in the wild, this specialised ability is very rarely reported in other bird species.

Researchers were unexpectedly alerted to Figaro’s tool-using ability while he was playing with a pebble and accidentally dropped it out of reach on the other side of his wire mesh enclosure.

After some unsuccessful attempts to reach his toy with his claw, Figaro used a stick from the aviary floor to try to fish for the object, levering it with his beak.

The team then carried out a series of tests that involved placing nuts outside the cockatoo’s enclosure, and video-recorded the results.

In the first test, Figaro tried unsuccessfully to reach the nut with a stick that was too short.

He then made his own tool by biting large splinters from a wooden beam. When they were the right size and shape to use as a “raking” tool, he would use them to successfully collect the nuts.

The team repeated the exercise in 10 trials over three days. Figaro was successful each time in making and using tools to retrieve the nut.

The time that it took the cockatoo to manufacture suitable tools also improved over the course of the tests.

“It’s almost as if he discovered a solution and then managed to apply it,” Prof Kacelnik told BBC Nature.

But he added: “Nobody yet understands in what sense tool-use requires a very high level of intelligence.”

While Figaro is alone among Goffin’s cockatoos to have been recorded making and using tools, Prof Kacelnik says that his behaviour could display a “level of intelligence for solving a new problem” in the species.

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The latest batch of Eurasian cranes to be reared in England has been released on to the Somerset Levels and Moors.

The 19 birds hatched from eggs brought to Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire from Germany.

They were reared at the centre before being released in the Somerset countryside last week.

It is the third time the cranes, which will join 33 already in the wild, have been released as part of the Great Crane Project.

The birds were released by their human surrogate parents, who wear costumes resembling the cranes’ plumage.

Project manager Damon Bridge said the older birds had shown “great interest” in the youngsters.

“It’s going to be fascinating to watch how they all get on,” he said.

The Great Crane Project is a partnership between the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, RSPB and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust, with funding from Viridor Credits Environmental Company.

October 23, 2012

Richard Willingham

Richard Willingham is regional affairs correspondent

 

Illustration: Cathy Wilcox

COLES will stop selling company branded pork, ham and bacon from pigs kept in crammed stalls as well as company branded caged eggs from January, meeting a commitment by the company to phase out the factory farming practices a year early.

The announcement comes as Animals Australia, the group that uncovered the cruelty to Australian cattle in Indonesian abattoirs last year, launches a campaign against the factory farming of animals.

The campaign, which features TV ads, pleads with consumers to use their purchasing power to end the trade. The ads show pigs and chickens in squalid conditions with some animals made to look like they are singing.

“The majority of pork, egg and chicken products on supermarket shelves come from factory farms where animals are severely confined, have no quality of life and are routinely subjected to surgical procedures without pain relief,” the campaign director, Lyn White, said.

“Many of the practices inflicted on chickens and pigs in Australia would be cruelty offences if inflicted on dogs or cats. This simply cannot be justified when we know that all animals share the ability to suffer.”

Animals Australia says laws now allow battery hens to be packed into cages where they cannot stretch their wings; mother pigs can be caged barely able to move for months on end; and chickens raised for meat have been bred to grow at three times their natural rate, causing health problems.

The organisation has written to the agricultural industry urging it to encourage members and producers to move to higher welfare systems.

Coles first made the commitment to phase out the products because of ”consumer sentiment” in 2010. The company says 34,000 mother pigs will no longer be kept in stalls for long periods of their lives and 350,000 hens will be freed from cages.

Customers will not suffer higher prices as a result of higher production costs.

Animals Australia wrote to the National Farmers Federation chief executive, Matt Linnegar, about the campaign arguing it would give farmers interested in welfare but concerned about backlash the confidence to change practices.

”We understand that the current demand for pork, chicken and egg products cannot be met by higher welfare systems, hence the need to educate the community to eat less and pay more – ensuring that the bottom line for producers can remain positive.”

Woolworths said 98 per cent of its fresh pork suppliers operated sow stall free farms and it expects all of its fresh pork to be produced in stall free conditions by mid 2013. The company said it has already removed caged eggs from its Select brand eggs.

The Australian Egg Corporation Limited – representing 400 commercial egg producers that distribute a range of products to the local market – said banning eggs from one egg production system was misguided.

”The decision should be a consumer’s, based on their personal choice and budget. Families shouldn’t be manipulated by activists such as Animals Australia and retailers such as Coles,” AECL managing director James Kellaway said in a statement.

Mr Kellaway said there are three recognised egg farming systems – caged, barn and free range – with caged eggs comprising 55 per cent of the retail market. Coles says free range makes up 50 per cent of its branded sales.

“Each of the three main egg farming systems has welfare strengths and weaknesses. For example, hens in cages are likely to live longer, be more healthy and are safe from weather and predators. Just like Animals Australia, AECL fully supports greater welfare outcomes for all of our laying hens but we believe science should lead the way, not emotion or self-interest.

“As such, we have invested more than $10 million over 10 years in research and development into better welfare for hens and this investment will continue,” Mr Kellaway said.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story failed to specify the new measures only concern Coles-branded pork, ham and bacon products.

Poll: How important are good farming conditions in your shopping decisions?

Poll closed 24 Oct, 2012

It was all thanks to a touching gesture by friends of breeder Graham Hicks, who secretly raised £1,500 to buy it as a retirement gift in a dramatic bidding war at auction.

Graham was lost for words when he found out 40 pals had clubbed together to buy his prize-winning Muscovy drake – as he was the one who had put the bird up for sale in the first place.

Top poultry breeder Graham auctioned off around 1,400 birds, including geese, bantams and heavy and light ducks after announcing his retirement.

But friends and colleagues secretly formed a syndicate to place a winning bid of £1,500 for the prized drake, and presented it back to him as a memento of his 30-year career. An almost speechless Mr Hicks, from Selattyn near Oswestry, said: “It was a real surprise that they did it. It is so nice that the drake will be coming back to me.”

The price was the highest ever paid for a Muscovy drake in the UK. The average in Britain is less than £50.

Andy Cawthray, part of the syndicate at Park Hall Showground last Sunday, said dealers from all over the UK were at the sale: “It was a once-in-a-lifetime sale. It is the Red Rum of wildfowl and there was huge interest.

“People came with packed wallets because Graham is a top breeder.

“Our hearts were in our mouths – because we didn’t have any more money. It was unbelievable.”

Choosing hens is as much about beauty as laying ability, says Francine Raymond.

Buff Orpington hens and a Brahma hen is Francine Raymond’s garden Photo: CLARA MOLDEN

An area of sky above the North East is being dubbed “the Bermuda Triangle” after hundreds of racing pigeons vanished.

More than 230 homing pigeons were released in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, with an end destination of Galashiels in Scotland, but only 13 arrived.

Now some North East pigeon fanciers say they will no longer send their birds on this route because of the large proportion of pigeons which have gone missing.

A variety of reasons for this series of disappearances have been touted – some say it is to do with “unusually high levels of solar activity distorting magnetic fields” and some say it is because of unseasonal rainfall which has confused the birds.