“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
I think humans like to look at other living creatures and assign to them characteristics of our own species. We anthropomorphize other living things. We immediately understand that animals feel fear and love of some kind. I am not sure if all non-human animals share a sense of curiosity, but some obviously do. Dolphins, whales, primates, etc have all demonstrated behavior we would tend to classify as curiosity.
I have found that some birds are curious as well.
In the picture above, there is a bird sitting far away from where we were standing. Because of my interest in birds, we stopped to watch it for a while. You can’t make out the bird in the yellow circle in the photo above, but there was a very pretty bird sitting on that rock. A bird I had never seen before.
It took me a while to get out my superzoom camera and take a closeup of that particular bird, but here it is.
As we rested a good number of yards away, sitting on a rock, the bird continued to flit around, but at one point it landed on a tree stump that was only about twenty feet away; relatively close for a wild creature. I had the distinct impression that this bird was curious about us and what we were or weren’t doing. Since we were sitting quietly watching the bird, taking a drink and resting, I think the bird realized we had no bad intentions and it took chances to come close to us. It didn’t “park” there or stay very long in any one spot, but it did fly away and then come close again.
Eventually we packed up and moved on. Later I was able to identify this bird as a Green-tailed Towhee. This is one of the prettier birds I have seen with it’s red-orange tuft atop.
NOTE – Green-tailed Towhee. Park Ridge Fire Lookout Station Trail, Kings Canyon, CA
Read more about the Green-tailed Towhee
See previous JBRish posts about birds HERE
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©Jeffrey B. Ross – 2017