Richard Collins: Jays can resist everything... except mealworms

A jay will bury acorns during the autumn and retrieve them in the bleak mid-winter. The bird’s ability to find the cached food after several months, even in snow-covered ground, is legendary

The New Caledonian crow, considered by many to be the Einstein of the bird world

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it — Oscar Wilde.

In 1972, psychologist Walter Mischel carried out the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. A child is offered a marshmallow and told that by waiting 15 minutes before eating it an extra treat will be forthcoming. The tester then exits the room, leaving the child alone with the sweet. Some children sit out the 15 minutes. Others give in to the delicious temptation. Follow-up studies, it’s claimed, showed that those who deferred gratification went on to have 'better life outcomes’, on balance, than those who didn’t. A bird in the hand, it seems, isn’t always worth two in the bush.