The way I've heard it from ornithologists, birds aren't very smart at all.
I believe their intelligence is rated at around the same level as amphibians
(like frogs) and a little better than fish. Their brains are more like
reactive machinery than a proactive mind. In this sense, many people
believe birds are not conscious in the sense that mammals are, and do not
have emotional senses of things like pain. It is more like a complex
machine with some fuzzy logic microcontrollers.
Actually, "reactive machinery" is a good description of some of the people I
meet...
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com