This is said to be a Brazilian bird (please identify the species), and it sure looks to me as if it’s playing, though, I suppose, one could say it’s trying to crack what it thinks are eggs. (The velocity of hurling, however, seems to great for that.) Birders—any guesses?
h/t: Ant
Hi Jerry
The species is red-legged seriema, I think.
Never seen that behaviour
Cheers
Luke
I say it is trying to get dinner. “What a bouncy egg!”
Dinner, but fun.
Could this be near the coast? Perhaps the bird thinks they are clams of some sort?
I think birds are smarter than we give them credit. I doubt he thinks they’re eggs.
Sometimes. But let me tell you about the cuckoo…
Seems something those birds just like doing.
WEIT readers are awesome!
I’ve been know to do this myself. I wouldn’t deny anyone the pleasure – not even this bird.
“Hey! Who hard boiled these eggs?!”
They certainly know to do it on the hard surface.
“Killing their prey may involve beating the animal on the ground, or throwing it against a hard surface such as a rock.”
From here: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Birds/Facts/fact-redlegseriema.cfm
Throwing things sharply at the ground is how seriemas kill their prey. Take a look here:
Maybe it is both play and predatory. Our cats and d*gs do exactly the same thing, play-killing their toys.
Hell, humans do the same thing too. 😉
Red-legged Seriema trying to kill its prey!
Eric Salzman
I’ve seen a couple videos of these birds bouncing golf balls on Facebook. I don’t know what it’s all about, but they seemed to be enjoying it. One went on for some time.
Face it, we have a club here with a 10-year waiting list for new members, and this bird can get away with it for free! He must be chuckling his feathery arse off.
So bird is deliberately mocking the golfers? Fun1
Definitely a Birdy.
Definitely not an eagle or albatross.
I like how the bird puts it’s head really low to the pavement to start off so that there is a lot of force behind the bounce!
Could be both business and pleasure – a way for the bird to crack things like clams or what not that turned out to be useful in enjoying bouncy balls!
I wonder if some dinosaurs killed their preys with that move.
Clearly some do!
Seriemas are cool for several other reasons:
1. They are probably the closest living relatives of the extinct terror birds, phorusrhacids.
2. They are the New World equivalents of the African secretary birds.
3. They were part of the dismembered, wastebasket order Gruiformes, and are now recognized as relatives of falcons, parrots, and songbirds.
The fact that it’s a predatory behavior certainly doesn’t rule out it’s being fun.
I have seen a Whistling Kite “playing” with a bolus of horse shit. It grabbed the bolus from the ground, rose some distance and then dropped it, repeating the cycle many times until it spotted yours truly lurking in the bushes. Or maybe it was my olfactory emanations which gave the game away.
After the kite flew off I examined the ground for what I assumed would be a tennis ball,
but could only find dried up horse crap.
I once watched a pigeon on the beach apparently playing with a penny. It would peck around in the sand, then pick up the penny and fling it sideways, over and over.
That’s an impressive bounce!
Auckland Zoo had some keas once (a large New Zealand parrot, famous for its often-destructive curiosity). They were, I think temporarily, in a large concrete-floored cage. There were some small logs maybe 3″ diameter and 9″ long in the cage, and three or four keas were ganging up to roll a log across the cage floor and back repeatedly.
cr
Don’t know the species, but he looks to have about a 12 handicap.
On Sunday afternoon I watched a family (?) of about ten crows in Regents Park London, & one was playing with a gull’s feather, poking it through a fence. I cannot help thinking it is behaviour stimulated by nest material gathering ‘instincts’.
It’s called a “Murder” of crows. Truly.
I saw a picture of two crows with the caption “Attempted murder”.
I often see ravens dropping chestnuts on the road, thereby breaking them. Looks like the same kind of behavior, maybe with a “WTF”? attached.
Seriema
300+ million years of difference … an interesting exercise in comparative psychology. (Not as bad as the folks who work on cephalopods, though!)
Though, to be fair, it is a test case in convergent evolution that science fiction writers might want to think through! 😉
Based on other viewer’s very insightful comments, I’d guess its BOTH fun and a shell-cracking instinct.
The birds born with instincts to enjoy this behavior would practice it more than those who didn’t. They’d get better at it. If it was a behavior that regularly got them food, the birds with the ‘instinct to enjoy it’ would outcompete the birds without that instinct, leaving more kids who would in turn be more successful, etc…
And the end of this process is birds who enjoy bouncing balls, just as cats enjoy chasing mice and many animals (including humans) enjoy sex. Because all else being equal, the ones who like to do it a lot will outcompete the ones who don’t.
Our D*g does something similar. She even takes tennis balls to slopes and drops them down so she can chase them.
I have never seen a d*g do this, but perhaps others have. I would love to know.