I've been thinking a lot about caracaras.
Caracaras, if you don’t know, are a subfamily of Falconidae (Here’s a Wikipedia link) that fills an ecological niche much more like corvids than like falcons.
Falcons, I have recently learned, are more closely related to parrots than to other raptors, which is interesting because parrots are famously extremely intelligent and falcons are famously… not.
But corvids (ravens, crows, magpies, jays, rooks, etc), of course, are generally regarded as among the most intelligent birds. And in filling a habitat niche like corvids—scavenging in social flocks, consuming a varied diet, interacting with their environment in cooperative and clever ways—caracaras seem to have retained or regained that parrotlike ingenuity.
Pretty bright for a dinosaur.
It makes me wonder about burrowing owls. Owls are also famously Not The Brightest, and Not The Brightest for a raptor is pretty Not Bright, but burrowing owls are another species that lives in social groups and thus deals with a lot of intellectual challenges the average bird of prey does not. It turns out that social interaction is intellectually challenging and requires resources that being a Noble Lone Beast Of Prey does not.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if our own big brains were rooted in our social structures and our tendency to devise ways to eat just about anything?
Anyway, I just finished reading A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Bird of Prey by Jonathan Meiburg, which is a lovely piece of popular naturalism about the various species of caracaras, and highly recommended.
I also have a series of books about corvids cued up to read once I finish Phil Plait’s Under Alien Skies (very enjoyable and full of neat planet-building tips), because I’m working on a bird/dinosaur inspired alien species and feel the need for some more extensive background reading than I have already done.
All this reading counts as work, right? :D