Noddy or nice: on Santa’s naughty list
The Naughty List is a magical list written by Santa. It lists all the people who have been naughty that year and won't receive presents on Christmas Eve.
Birds are wonderful creatures and, just like humans, they deserve presents too! But which birds would land on the naughty list?!
The Noddy Terns!
Okay, they aren’t really naughty birds, but they are Noddy birds… so I had to include them on the list!
Terns are slender and graceful seabirds that live around seacoasts and inland waters. These birds have wedge-shaped or only slightly forked tails, and Noddy Terns are found almost worldwide! There are five species of Noddy Terns in the world: the Brown, Black, Grey, Blue, and Lesser Noddy.
They were given their name due to their ‘nodding’ displays - literally, they just nod their heads! They sound so sweet and agreeable.
But Noddy Birds are actually known to steal food from other birds!
This photo is of a Brown Noddy, sitting on the head of a Galápagos Brown Pelican.
The noddy is harassing the pelican to give up its meal of freshly caught fish, a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism (literally, parasitism by theft). Brown noddies are capable of catching their own meals, but will resort to kleptoparasitism when the opportunity arises!
Actually naughty and mischievous birds:
Nicknamed “flying devils” and “flying monkeys,” by sailors and whalers of the 1800s, the Caracara was known as “the most mischievous of all the feathered creation”! How fun!
Native to the Falkland Islands, these large, social, yet strangely inquisitive birds of prey look and act like a cross between an eagle and a raven. You may know eagles as vicious birds of prey, and ravens as intelligent, but sometimes mischievous and naughty, birds.
These birds were studied extensively by Charles Darwin himself, who was super intrigued by the difference in the way they looked and behaved.
Their hooked beaks and strong talons seem to mark them as natural predators; yet somehow their social and inquisitive natures reminded Charles Darwin more of crows than anything else.
In the 1800s, Charles Darwin and his crew landed on the Falkland Islands and were ‘constantly haunted’ by these birds, who would sneak into their residences for offal and kitchen scraps.
Unlike the wary hawks and falcons Darwin knew in England, these “mischievous” raptors could walk and run with the speed and agility of pheasants, and the crews of the HMS Beagle and Adventure (the boats the men came on) soon learned that the birds’ interests extended beyond food!
“A large black glazed hat was carried nearly a mile,” Darwin wrote, “as was a pair of the heavy balls used in catching cattle … [and] a small Kater’s compass in a red morocco leather case, which was never recovered.”
The crew of the Adventure, which surveyed the Falklands while the Beagle made a circuit of islands in nearby Tierra del Fuego, were forced to post lookouts to prevent striated caracaras from flying aboard and tearing the leather from its rigging.
Such a bird deserves a place on the naughty list - but their mischief is born out of an intelligent and inquisitive mind! Almost two centuries later, scientists who study the Caracaras have found some cool fun facts about the birds.
In tropical French Guiana, scientists have found that the Red-throated Caracaras are birds of prey unlike any other! They live in family groups that resemble troops of monkeys, drive wasps away from their nests to feed on the wasp larvae, and may even use millipedes’ defensive secretions to repel mosquitos and other parasites.
In Argentina, studies have shown that the Chimango Caracaras can swiftly teach one another to recognize and exploit unfamiliar new resources—including garbage bags and pizza boxes—while captive Striated Caracaras show a fondness for puzzles and games that suggests a grasp of abstract concepts such as colors, shapes, numbers, and names.
Who says birds are ‘bird-brained’?
Anyway, if there were any birds that would make it on Santa’s naughty list… these cheeky buggers may just make the cut!
Noddy just like me frfr