The red-headed woodpecker has learned to catch flies like a common flycatcher. The yellow-bellied, or sapsucker, cuts holes in the trees, and eats the insects that come to feed on the sweet sap that drips from them.
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Woodpeckers have also learned to cut a hole through a board and nest inside a building, instead of drilling a deep hole in the trunk of a tree for a nest.
Birds show intelligence when they draw us away from their young ones, by acting as if they were hurt and not able to fly. I have already spoken about that.
Sometimes when a bird is caught he will lie quiet and pretend to be dead. But all the time he is looking out for a chance to fly away.
A man who watched birds very closely once saw an interesting instance of their intelligence. They were two of the birds who get their food on the seashore by turning over stones and eating the creatures hidden under them. They had found a big dead fish thrown up on the beach and half buried in sand. Under such a fish they were sure they should find food, so they went to work to turn it over. The fish was three and a half feet long, and the birds were about as big as our sandpipers. So it was a hard thing to do.
First they pushed against it with their beaks and breast, but it did not move. Then they went around the other side and scratched away a good deal of sand from under the fish, and went back and tried again to turn it over. Still it was too heavy to stir.
Again they ran around the other side, scraped away more sand, and tried it once more. They kept up this work for half an hour, but did not succeed in stirring the great fish.