Cardinals teaching their young

I read a recent article in the paper that said that meerkats were one of the few animals that actually train their young. Add Cardinals to that list. In a home video I did on cardinals feeding their young, I comment on how it appears that the birds are teaching their young even after the young have learned to fly.

First they take them to places where there is food and they feed them, showing them where the food comes from. To strengthen their wings and flying skills, the parent birds will fly to a spot somewhat out of reach and force the juvenile to come to it. Sometimes they find this doesn't work, and they fly to the young bird and feed it again. But they are persistent. The next time they may fly to a place on the ground and wait for the juvenile to fly down to the parent for its reward. They may feed it several times in this new location before they move again, to a limb in a nearby tree. Again the juvenile must fly to the parent now up to the limb to get its reward.

Although they do spend extra time in our area because of the plentiful and easy food supply, we have observed them flying to the next yard where there are no feeders and going through similar processes with more naturally provided foodstuff.

After several days of these kinds of trips, the parent will bring the juvenile to the feeding area, drop to the ground in a seed rich area, and show the juvenile there is food on the ground. It goes about eating, but it will not provide any to the juvenile. Eventually the juvenile figures out that it must pick up the seeds off the ground itself if it is going to get anything to eat.

During the feeding processes, the juvenile continues with a trick learned in the nest. It flutters its wings and chirps irritatingly to get the parent to feed it. It takes a while to give up this habit in relationship to eating. I have seen juveniles eating out of a dish on their own, but when the parent came by they suddenly acted helpless, fluttering their wings and chirping. This trick rarely works as the adult already knows the juvenile is capable of eating on its on. There is some association which juveniles have with fluttering and eating. I observed at least one bird come upon a pile of seed on the ground. When the juvenile cardinal saw the food, it started fluttering its wings as it approached and ate some without assistance.

From my observations, it appears to me that the cardinals have several lesson plans:
1 Where are areas in the neighborhood that you can find food.
2. What should you do before going directly to the food (land on a nearby tree or fence and make sure the area is clear) (it is possible that somehow they communicate what is dangerous.)*
3. You can find food in many places: on the fence, on the ground, at a feeder, and elsewhere.
4. Physical Education: Okay now, fly to me. I have a treat for you.
5. Now you are an adult: I'll fly here with you, but I'm not feeding you.
6. You are almost on your own: you fly about, find food, and I'll watch out for you.
7. You are on your own.

This is not unique to cardinals. We have seen sparrows do the same thing. The old expression about kicking them out of the nest may be true, but when the parents do that, they aren't finished with their young.... (more)

*It seems that fear is taught or at least learned to some extent. Young often seem less afraid of certain things than adults. This seems true of all birds. For example, Adult cardinals are often very skittish in our yard area taking flight at the appearance of nearly any other bird, but I once saw a juvenile face down and intimidate a Jay to back away from a food source (until a larger more intimidating Jay showed up and chased it off). We also observed a baby cowbird approach not only its adopted parents (sparrows) for food but also a dove dozens of times bigger than it was as well as a chipmunk (which most birds give wide berth to.)