If you may recall, in an earlier column, I had mentioned how I chanced upon a rufous treepie on a moringa oleifera tree in the neighbouring compound of a house in Selaiyur I was visiting.

The point of interest was that the rufous treepie was feeding on a square cream biscuit, and would stick to the branches of this drumstick tree tenaciously, unperturbed by the pairs of prying human eyeballs rolling in its direction.

In that column, I was primarily making observations relating to other bird sightings, and therefore, deemed it fit to make just a passing reference to the biscuit-eating rufous treepie.

That morning in Selaiyur, I had taken many photos of this rufous treepie with a basic, less-than-helpful camera that was at hand.

The other day, when I was going through the old photos I had put away in the hard disk of a computer, I was intrigued by a few shots of this bird.

It was obvious that day, that the bird was meddling with something, even as it was holding the biscuit.

These images now piece a whole new picture for me: The bird seems to be using “tools” to fix its breakfast — as it was around 11.30 am, a morning snack is more like it.

From the images, the rufous treepie seems to be using twigs the way one would use tools.

As I can’t get into the bird’s head, I don’t know what exactly it was doing.

On a speculative note, it was probably engaging in this mechanical pursuit to “secure” its snack more firmly. In some frames, there seems to be two twigs, each held by one pair of claws, and both framing a portion of the biscuit.

Birds in the corvidae family, to which crows and treepies belong, are known for their “toolsmanship”. Crows are especially believed to be adept at manipulating twigs and sticks intelligently to carry out tasks more complex than building nests.

Clearly, some idea had streaked through the brain of that rufous treepie on that drumstick tree in Selaiyur that morning, and it was experimenting with it.

Later, I saw the bird holding just the cream biscuit tight between two pairs of claws, indicating that it abandoned the experiment.

Field notes is a weekly column on the birds of Chennai