The great broad-winged bird circling in the distance in the late morning must have been an eagle. It was too big to be a hawk. I slept through the clatter of the jays and rose late to see through the branches of the nearest trees the eagle sailing the forenoon thermals to the west.
They are reevaluating bird intelligence, I hear, and not just among the corvids, though they are certainly more than clever. The Times was just saying that "[r]elative to its body size, the crow brain is the same size as the chimpanzee brain." Apparently the idea that intelligence must come in a brain organized like our own, in layers of cells, is coming under attack. The avian brain is set up differently, in clusters rather than layers. We think with the neocortex; they may think with the pallium.
Cortex means outer covering, especially the bark of a tree. Pallium is another kind of outer thing. In ancient Rome a pallium was a kind of men's overgarment or cloak. Later it became a liturgical garment. Trying to imagine bird intelligence, seeing the eagle this morning, I wonder what it is like to think with a cloak.
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