Do birds enjoy humans?

Birds are some of the most abundant and visible wildlife that share our daily lives. We see them outside our windows, hear their songs, and often feed them in our backyards. This close coexistence leads many people to wonder – do birds enjoy being around humans? Or are they indifferent to us? In this article, we’ll explore what science tells us about how birds perceive and interact with people. Understanding avian cognition and behavior can help inform our relationships with our feathered friends.

Bird brains and intelligence

To understand if birds like us, we first need to appreciate how their minds work. For a long time, the tiny size of birds’ brains led people to assume they were simple, instinct-driven animals. But research has shown bird cognition to be surprisingly complex and advanced.

Pigeons can recognize and differentiate hundreds of visual patterns. Crows use tools, solve multi-step puzzles, and hold grudges against specific humans. Parrots have large vocabularies and can creatively combine words. Many birds cache food, navigate long migrations, and build intricate nests – all evidence of intelligence and adaptability.

While avian brains are structurally different from mammalian ones, they contain just as many neurons. As science moves away from old biases that “bigger is better,” we understand that small brains can still support impressive cognitive abilities.

Social and emotional behaviors

Birds exhibit many behaviors that reveal rich social connections and emotional lives.

Courtship rituals and pair-bonds in geese, albatrosses, and other species look like love to human observers. Long-lived birds like parrots form strong attachments and can pine when separated from mates or flock mates.

Many social birds cooperate to raise young or defend territories. Some birds console flock mates after a conflict or loss. Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, an indicator of self-awareness.

Stress responses in birds produce the same hormones as in humans. Birds demonstrate fear, excitement, relaxation, and pleasure. Memorizing favorite songs or challenging brain puzzles puts birds in good moods.

The more we understand avian psychology, the more birds seem to share our complex cognitive and emotional experiences. If birds have such inner lives, perhaps they also have inner preferences – including enjoying human company.

How wild birds respond to humans

To gauge birds’ interest in humans, we need to observe their behaviors around people in the wild. Do they display any preference for proximity or engagement with us?

Flight distance

One simple measure is flight distance – how close a bird allows humans to approach before fleeing. Bird species accustomed to people will tolerate much closer proximity than wary species.

Urban birds like pigeons, house sparrows, and gulls often forage at people’s feet, while skittish forest birds mayflush from cover when humans are still 50 meters away or more. The table below compares flight distances for several common birds:

The less afraid birds act around people, the more likely they are to view humans positively or neutrally.

Feeding wildlife

Another indicator is how readily wild birds accept food from people’s hands or backyard feeders. Birds that don’t normally scavenge from humans must overcome wariness to take advantage of these feeding opportunities.

The offered food reward frequently outweighs their fear. Backyard birding has exploded in popularity as people are rewarded with sightings of colorful songbirds like cardinals, chickadees, woodpeckers, and finches. These birds learn to associate yards and feeders with safety and abundance.

However, feeding can also make wild birds dependent or more susceptible to predators. Best practices involve moderation, cleanliness, and native plants that provide supplemental natural food sources.

Nesting sites

Some birds not only grow comfortable around human spaces, they start building nests on our homes and property. Barn swallows, phoebes, robins, and house finches often nest on ledges or eaves of houses and barns.

Cliff and barn swallows originally nested on natural cliffs and cave walls, but many have adapted to vertical human structures. The availability of ideal nesting spots seems to overcome any population-wide wariness of humans.

Chimney swifts further illustrate the point. As old hollow trees that once hosted these birds became scarce, swifts started roosting communally in brick chimneys. Now groups clinging to chimney walls is a familiar sight east of the Rockies.

While proximity to humans is likely more tied to habitat than affection, nesting in our spaces shows a high tolerance of human activity.

Interactions with friendly individual birds

Beyond general population-level behaviors, some individual wild birds form voluntary bonds with specific people. What do these unusual relationships tell us about birds enjoying human company?

Feeding wild birds by hand

Patience and food can help some wild birds overcome their instincts to avoid humans. Individuals may learn to perch on fingers, shoulders, or heads to delicately pick food from people’s hands.

This delightful experience has spawned tourism like New Zealand’s Otorohanga Kiwi House, where visitors can hand-feed endangered kiwis at night. The birds get supplemental food while becoming comfortable with gentle human contact.

Some scientists also use hand-feeding to study bird cognition up close. Particular wild crows and jays have been trained to tradeCurrency, barter, or requests humans in exchange for peanuts and other treats. The friendly rapport helps researchers test avian problem-solving abilities.

Though based on food rewards, these positive willful interactions with people do indicate some birds find human company pleasant or at least tolerable.

Imprinting

Imprinting is another mechanism for strong wild bird bonds with individual humans. Young gallinaceous birds like ducks, geese, and chickens imprint on the first moving object they see as their parental figure. In nature, this is the mother bird.

But captive-raised waterfowl often imprint on human caregivers. Imprinted birds will then treat their human as a social partner, following them around and preferring their company over other humans.

Interspecies imprinting is exploited at many tourist sites with “imprinted” animals. But it does demonstrate that for birds, an early association with caring humans can override natural wariness of people. Imprinted birds actively seek out human contact.

Returning wild birds

There are also many anecdotal reports of wild birds actively seeking out contact with specific people who have treated them kindly.

For example, an injured wild crow or magpie rescued and rehabilitated by a kind human may return to their caregiver’s home or yard for months or years after release. They may perch nearby, accept food, or even leave “gifts.”

This remarkable behavior suggests a capacity for emotional attachment and thankfulness. Such birds demonstrate an understanding that friendly humans are a source of care and comfort.

Do captive birds like interacting with their human caregivers?

Beyond wild birds, examining the behaviors of birds selectively bred in captivity for generations can provide more insights into avian attachments with people. Species kept as pets, performance animals, or livestock have extensive exposure to human contact from birth.

Pet parrots

Parrots are extremely popular pets due to their longevity, intelligence, and social nature. Parrots bond strongly with owners who provide affection and mental stimulation. Their flock-oriented psychology causes them to treat human families as their flock. They demand time and attention and can grow distressed when deprived of human interaction.

Owners must commit to many years of hands-on care to keep parrots healthy and prevent problem behaviors like aggression or self-mutilation. While parrots aren’t domesticated like dogs or cats, their dependence on humans for social fulfillment demonstrates an avian capacity for interspecies bonds.

Performing birds

Birds like homing pigeons have been used for messaging and racing for centuries. Other trained bird shows rely on relations between trainers and birds to create entertaining human-avian acts.

Pigeons, parrots, chickens, ducks, geese, crows, ravens, and other species can be taught behaviors like retrieving objects, lifting small weights, choosing colors and shapes, or mimicking voices. Positive reinforcement helps birds learn quickly. The fact that food rewards motivate avian learning does not preclude real affection between trainers and performers arising from consistently positive handling.

These working birds choose to cooperate with humans for reward. And off stage, most still prefer human company and stimulation to solitary confinement. The fact such an unnatural situation appeals to them shows their flexible capacity for bonding with people.

Backyard chickens

A growing trend of urban and suburban chicken keeping demonstrates how quickly socialization can shift wild birds’ attitudes toward humans. Chickens descended from jungle fowl notorious for being skittish and aggressive. But just a few generations of friendly handling can produce tame chickens eager for human interaction.

With intelligence now understood to be on par with other smart birds like parrots, chickens display great versatility in adapting to the routines and quirks of their human caretakers. They enjoy perching on laps for petting and develop preferences for certain people. Backyard chickens provide another case of birds not just tolerating but actively soliciting human companionship.

Conclusion

The collective evidence suggests many bird species do actively enjoy proximal relationships with humans in the right contexts. Not all birds, as some remain shy and skittish no matter what. But the many documented cases of voluntary interaction illustrate that birds are capable of recognizing kind treatment. Over time, they can come to prefer human companionship for its safety, rewards, and social fulfillment.

While caution is needed to protect wild bird welfare, their intelligence and adaptability mean close relationships with humans are possible. Bird owners should commit to properly caring for what are likely far more sentient beings than we once realized. And interactions with wild birds should focus on creating win-win relationships that enhance their ability to thrive among human activity.

Understanding bird cognition helps explain behaviors that signal affection toward caring humans. We must provide the environments and positive reinforcement that enable interspecies bonds to develop. Our communities and yards become far more lively and enjoyable places when shared with birds that actively appreciate and seek out human contact.