All About Birds

Do birds have the senses of hearing and smelling?

Being nature's great singers, of course birds can hear. But birds hear a much greater variety of sounds than we do. In a case where we hear one sound only, a bird may hear as many as 10 separate notes.

Birds don't have the externally visible part of the ear that we think of as the ear. (Those feather tufts on some owls are just display feathers. Albeit very cool display feathers. I wish I had some.) The outer ear, sometimes covered with a feathered ear flap, is not easily seen, but leads to their ear canal.

The shape of an owl's face aids the bird's keen hearing. The large facial discs around their eyes funnel sounds directly into the ears, located at the sides of the head, behind the eyes. Their ear openings are also slightly offset, giving them the ability to use their ears to determine the direction and distance of the sound's origin.

Glad we got THAT settled. Now, can birds smell?

Most don't. (An exception would be some dee-licious fried chicken. That is some good-smellin' bird.)

Ornithologists have debated this topic. Tests appear to show that, while many birds have olfactory organs, their brains don't seem to be developed to use smell. There are exceptions. Kiwis have poor eyesight and hunt worms using their sense of smell. Some water birds can smell out fish to hunt.

And then there are vultures. There's apparently a longstanding controversy over how well vultures can sniff out their meals.

Alan Barnhardt, who rules the roost at the Carolina Raptor Center near Charlotte, N.C. relates that in the 1930s, a natural gas company in Texas injected dead animal smells into a gas line, and then watched for vultures to discover leaks. Apparently the research was thwarted because the researchers used such old, putrid meat that it grossed out the vultures. When the researchers replaced the old meat with fresher fare, the vultures came to dinner. The researchers, on the other hand, were rarely invited to dinner parties.

One of the birds, a rare Princess Parrot, is worth more than $20,000 on its own.

Retiree Errol Wilson said thieves broke into a large avery in his back garden in central Nowra late on Saturday night and stole 34 valuable birds - about half of his collection.

Mr Wilson said he made the "sickening" discovery early on Sunday morning.

"I noticed a big hole in the bottom of the avery where they'd cut all the wire with something and got in," he said.

"I looked in the other walkway and I saw some of the doors had jarred, and I thought, 'oh no'. "I had a look and 34 birds were missing."

Mr Wilson said the overall value of the missing birds was about $41,000, due to the rare colour mutations he had bred into them.

He has spent the past 20 years building up his collection of birds, some of which are among the only ones of their kind in the country.

Lloyd Marshall, the editor of Talking Birds newspaper, said some aviculturists would pay a lot of money for the birds in Mr Wilson's collection due to their colour mutations.

Mr Marshall said Mr Wilson's Princess Parrot was worth so much because he had bred yellow into the naturally green and purple bird.

"That bird is worth about $20,000, because there aren't any," he said.

"And he's starting to breed them, which means because he's the first one to have them, and when he gets babies he'll be able to get a lot of money for them.

"And he's done that with various other species."

Mr Wilson said he was devastated by the loss of his beloved pets.

"I was dry retching all Sunday. I still feel sick," he said.

"I still can't sleep because I keep getting up to see if they've come back."

The 65-year-old has put up an $80,000 reward for the return of all of the missing parrots.

"If I get the whole collection back I'll pay that, no questions asked," he said.

"Why I put so much money on it to get them back is I'm 65 and to put another 20 years into it, I may not achieve it and I'll be 85."

Mr Wilson has reported the theft to police but believes publicity may be his best chance of getting his birds back.

"By doing what I'm doing I think it will make it very awkward for them to pass them on," Mr Wilson said.

"If they get cold feet now through the publicity and everything, I may get the whole lot back, but that's a big chance."

If a children's cartoon can teach us that fish are friends, then don't be surprised that a documentary on parrots shows us that birds are saviors. That's the moral behind "Independent Lens: The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," which airs tonight on PBS. The film follows former street musician Mark Bittner's quest for life's meaning and the unexpected answers he receives from his colorfully feathered charges.