Birdfeeding: Friends of a Feather Flock Together

A falcon lost his ability to fly. Now the bird is an artist in Vermont.
‘He’s a little bird who think he’s a human,’ said Mal Muratori, who works at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.


But Ferrisburgh, an American kestrel with an injured wing, is headlining art classes in Vermont and drawing crowds with his talented talons.
A couple of paintings done by Ferrisburgh are now being auctioned at a fundraiser online, and the raptor recently showed off his skills at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.

Selling art made by animals, or animal-human teams, can make for a good fundraiser.


The raptor conducted himself as if he had imprinted on humans as a baby, Morris said, so the bird didn’t know how to behave in the wild, and probably wouldn’t survive there.

Most birds who act like humans, because they have imprinted on humans, are social species -- parrots, ducks, ravens, etc. This is the first I've heard of a raptor doing it. It's odd because they don't have the same kind of flock-management wetware.


Lexie Smith, an AmeriCorps environmental educator at the institute, had recently watched a friend paint with a crow named Tuck in Tennessee. The crow painted with its beak, using a small sponge that had been dipped into paint. Before coming to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Muratori had also watched a crow paint with a brush.

This is the first case I've seen regarding a crow painting. But it makes sense. They're very visual birds, and while their art appreciation typically focuses on sculpture, it's not that big a jump to painting. Crows are also talented tool users. So a crow using a sponge to paint, I would call that tool use and purposeful art-making.


She and Muratori said they found an airy space in the building and put down some newspaper and sheets of white paper dabbed with nontoxic blue, teal and pink paint, then they brought Ferrisburgh out of his enclosure. They used hand signals that he recognized — two fingers tapping on a spot — to get him to run through the paint in exchange for his favorite snack of meal worms.
Soon the bird was running back and forth across the paper, leaving colorful tracks in exchange for treats, Smith said.

This is technically a human-animal team, rather than an animal making art. The humans select the colors (quite well in the samples) and use a food reward to direct the bird's movement through paint and across white paper. So it's not what I would call tool use or purposeful art-making. However, it does make pretty great abstract art: small scattered spots of compatible colors against a white background, in a way that would make a really fun wall decoration.


She and Muratori saw that Ferrisburgh seemed to enjoy running across paper and canvasses with paint on his talons, so they came up with the idea of having him lead a “Coloring With Kestrels” class.

Now here's where we get into personal preference. Most animals hate the texture of paint and will have nothing to do with it. But some really do enjoy it and will happily make a glorious mess. In this light, we can reasonably classify this as a form of messy play that uses paint. While not the same as purposeful art, it is a precursor of that.


I have long observed tool use and artistic expression in animals, so this is a fascinating addition to that.

For examples in the wild, see bowerbirds. They make their own paint. While the chemical signal in paint may be relevant, don't discount the visuals -- they also collect objects in their favorite color, including manmade things like bottlecaps.