Watch the birdie!

Regular readers of my column here on the Materials Today site will have spotted the occasional photograph I've taken and used to illustrate the article. I've been passionate about photography for a long time but taking pictures in earnest probably only for the last couple of decades (hah!). The evolution of photography parallels the evolution of chemistry and materials science. The chemical technology that allowed the earliest photographs to be formed and fixed and the materials with which the cameras themselves are made are critical to how this art form has progressed.

Of course, at the bottom line a good photograph never really depends on the alloys and polymer resins from which your camera is made, nor the light-sensitive materials that comprise your film or sensor. A good photograph doesn't really depend on the myriad other materials that make up LED flashguns and the rechargeable powerpacks. Suggesting it is so is akin to eating a wonderful meal and complimenting the cook on the quality of their pans. Nevertheless, a powerful modern camera is massively reliant on a wide range of materials that allow an amateur like myself to get close to a subject. In recent months I've been seen out and about East Anglia hunting and shooting the local birds with a rather unwieldy but great piece of glass attached to my digital SLR. This brings me to what I really wanted to talk about in this comment, which only tangentially touches on materials (in the context of nature's optical, thermal and avionic metamaterials - feathers.

There has been a lot of research over the last twenty years or so revealing how much more intelligent many bird species are than we have ever given them credit for. The corvids, crows and their ilk, have been seen to use tools, to have some ability to count and to be able to measure regular distances as they move from one freshly planted seed to the next and pluck them from the soil. There are also endless viral video clips on the internet of parrots, cockatoos and other tropical birds which seem capable of "dancing" to the beat of music played to them. There are also videos of people kissing pet parrots and both bird and human crinkle their eyes as if smiling. And, Of course, many tropical species and indeed others elsewhere are incredibly adept at emulating the sounds they hear around them, whether other birds and animals, human speech, telephones, camera shutters and even chainsaws.

In parallel with that work is the seeming paradox that we cannot explain their intelligence and cognitive skills in terms of the size and complexity of the bird brain. Indeed, the brain of all birds is small and lacks many of the features we consider essential (in mammals, and in higher primates and ourselves) for anything other than the basic skills of fight, flight, food and fornication (the four Fs).

And yet, the birds evolved from the dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago and have thus had a substantial amount of time in which to evolve a wide range of skills that we have perhaps ignored for many years until very recently. One aspect of bird behaviour that has come to light for me recently is the "expressions" on the faces of everything from blue tits and blackcaps to jays, and woodpeckers, and many other species besides. If it's not the patterns embedded optically and sometimes pigmentally in their facial feathers, then it has to be in the eyes. Most birds are rather shy of humans, perhaps with the exception of a few garden birds, such as the robin (Erithacus rubecula), the chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), the songthrush (Turdus philomelos) and the blackbird (Turdus merula), which hang around knowing that we might drop crumbs while dining outdoors, dig the earth and reveal worms and grubs, or put out bird feeders laden with nuts, seeds and fat balls.

However, if you're quiet and slow moving and don't get too close, except through your zoom lens, you can capture these and other species quite candidly. When they do hear your camera shutter or spot you, their expressions can be quite evocative.

Of course, it's easy to project human emotions on to other species when no such equivalent emotion may be present, but this blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) was having a jolly time hopping from pillar to post until he saw me hiding behind the fence taking his photograph. Now, tell me he doesn't look ever so slightly annoyed to have been interrupted in his outdoor activities. And this goldcrest (Regulus regulus) too, who was quite happy darting from branch to branch with his mate on a pine tree outside a hi-tech facility on the Cambridge Science Park until he saw me.

And then there is this great tit (Parus major) caught unawares snaffling nuts from a garden bird feeder. Does he not look ever so guilty to you? And, then there's the focused concentration or is it wicked intent in the eye of this male chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) about to snack on a tiny grub. Finally, the hooded eyelid of this feral rock dove (Columba livia) looks ever so vexed by my persistence in photographing him at Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge.

Now, I realize that much of what I am suggesting is a facial expression betraying an inner self or some kind of pathos, is perhaps simply the bird's markings (the grumpy line on the goldcrest for instance), but posture, and movement of muscles around the eye do seem to hint at something akin to emotion whether or not I am interpreting it correctly or not. This shot of a chaffinch almost seems to be asking "does my bum look big in this?" or is saying assertively "how dare you take a photo of my derrière!". Maybe, maybe not. One thing is beyond doubt, I will be asking you to retweet this article.

David Bradley blogs at Sciencebase Science Blog and tweets @sciencebase, he is author of the popular science book "Deceived Wisdom" you can see his ever-growing gallery of birds on his Imaging Storm website here.