Consciousness Concepts.

When I watch the blue tits busily flying back and forth to feed their brood in the nest box behind my kitchen, I’m often tempted to wonder whether they feel relief when the job is over and they can relax for the summer.

It occurs to me that as naturalists and ornithologists learn more about birds, it’s becoming ever more evident that they’re more intelligent than we thought they were. But this isn’t about intelligence. Machines can be intelligent when it comes to matters pragmatic. This is about consciousness and its ability to recognise abstract principles like love and hate, relief and despair.

It certainly seems apparent that certain species of birds – the parrot family in particular – experience moods. And it further seems to me that any creature which can experience moods is capable of recognising the abstract in some form or other. So do the blue tits experience a phew! moment when the kids have flown the nest and learned to feed themselves? I don’t know. Does anybody?

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The other thing I’m noticing a lot lately has nothing to do with any consciousness but my own. I keep seeing snowflakes drifting across the garden, only they’re not snowflakes, of course; they’re dandelion seeds. I watch them sailing through the air on the prevailing breeze and am struck by the fact that here are tiny fragments of potential life riding the wind in hope of finding a place to call home. The word ‘hope’ is, of course, the odd word out.