In my duck-hunting days a duck hunter who used wooden decoys told me he was sure that there was a certain number of decoys necessary before they were effective.
The decoys were wooden blocks, carved and painted to resemble life-sized ducks, weighted to float like them, and anchored in shallow water in a flock within gunshot range of the blind in which the duck shooter sat. The idea was that ducks flying by would see the flock on the water, assume that here was a safe resting place, and fly in and light, or attempt to light among them, giving the wild-fowl gunner an opportunity to shoot the wild birds.
The duck shooter claimed that if less than twenty-five or thirty decoys were put out in the flock, the setup was much less effective than if more than twenty-five to thirty decoys were used. He thought that the ducks could distinguish between less than twenty-five or thirty and more than twenty-five to thirty, and favored the latter. Though this is distinguishing between greater and lesser amounts, it hardly comes in the category of counting.
DISTINGUISH "MORE" FROM "LESS" However, a series of experiments summarized on Page 121 in the periodical Bird Banding for 1940 seem to indicate that birds can distinguish between different numbers of things, such as peas and numbers of dots. The birds, including pigeons, parakeets, and jackdaws, were trained either to choose a certain number of objects under certain circumstances, or to choose between two quantities of objects with reward and punishment motivation. It was found that these birds were able to distinguish up to a maximum of six. That this is really counting in the human sense of the term, which is linked with speech or written symbols, is improbable, but it does indicate, as one would expect, that birds do at times distinguish between different quantities, and sometimes with considerable precision.
COURTSHIP FEEDING [Ref]
A young man, giving his best girl a box of chocolates, and a bird, giving his prospective mate a worm or a berry, have this in common: they are both practicing courtship feeding. Further, humans and birds are the only vertebrate animals that do this.
With birds, during courtship, the female often begs to be fed by acting like a young bird—with fluttering wings and widely gaping mouth. The male normally places the food he has collected directly in the open mouth of the female.
The significance of this courtship feeding has been discussed especially by David Lack, in the scientific journal, the Auk. It seems that in courtship feeding the food as such is not of primary importance. The female does not need the food she is begging for; indeed she may have had a full meal since her mate, whom she is soliciting, had last eaten. Perhaps it is of help in maintaining the bond between the pair during the period that exists before they have a nest and young to look after. In this connection it is interesting that with waxwings during courtship feeding the fruit that the male gives the female may be "handed" back (by beak) and the food exchanged back and forth.
In looking for significance and correlations in courtship feeding we find that some species practice courtship feeding and some do not. And the birds that do practice it are usually those in which both sexes care for the young. It might be considered an early, useless appearance of a habit that later becomes useful when the male feeds the incubating female and helps feed the young.