The Cornish Jackdaw Project

The Cornish Jackdaw Project, established in 2012, is a long-term field site for the study of corvid behaviour and cognition, using jackdaws. Jackdaws are highly sociable, colony-breeding corvids, making them ideal subjects for cognitive research. They also have the practical advantage over other corvid species that they will take to nest boxes, so we can monitor their reproductive success. The Cornish Jackdaw Project incorporates over 100 nest boxes across three different colonies, with more than 2500 individually recognisable, colour-ringed and PIT-tagged jackdaws. This unique system allows us to use experiments, observations and automated tracking of individuals to examine the cognitive challenges of life in jackdaw societies.

Current research at the Cornish Jackdaw Project focuses on the following areas:

• The co-evolution of social relationships and cognition

• The effects of social learning on individual and group behaviour

• Collective behaviour in heterogeneous groups

• The causes and consequences of individual variation in cognitive ability

• Cognitive and behavioural responses to environmental change