Black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons are known as “firehawk raptors”. They help spread wildfires in places like Australia by picking up and dropping lit branches or embers onto fresh patches of dry grass so as to scare out small animals. It makes it easier for them to swoop down to catch the fleeing prey.
Ongoing bird research will help answer questions, of course. “There’s loads to find out,” Bonta says, citing recent findings. “We just learned in 2016 that birds’ neurons are packed differently. They’re way smarter than we thought. We’re just beginning to understand avian memory. Crows’ problem-solving ability is amazing. There are a lot of tool-using behaviors.”
Part of the reason Westerners may have trouble accepting the concept of firehawks, Bonta suggests, is our lack of connection to our environment: “Westerners have done little but isolate ourselves from nature,” he says. Yet those who make a point of connecting with our earth in some form—he uses turkey hunters as an example—“have enormous knowledges because they interact with a species. When you get into conservation [that knowledge] is even more important.” Aborginal people “don’t see themselves as superior to or separated from animals. They are walking storehouses of knowledge.”
Credit : Penn State Altoona
Picture Credit : Google
