Jackdaw hauls up food

This 14 February 2019 video shows a jackdaw hauling up food, in the backyard in the Netherlands of Leo de Leeuw, who made this video.

Jackdaws are more likely to join a mob to drive off predators if lots of their fellow birds are up for the fight, new research shows. The study found that when more birds call out to show they are willing to mob a predator, more other jackdaws join in. University of Exeter scientists say this suggests jackdaws use a form of counting when deciding whether to join a mob: here.

Chaotic mobs of jackdaws suddenly get organised once enough birds join in, new research shows. The birds form mobs to drive away predators near their nests, and are initially disordered. But the new study, by biologists at the University of Exeter, physicists at Stanford University and computer scientists from Simon Fraser University in Canada, shows a dramatic switch to “ordered motion” once the group reaches a certain density: here.