Calling someone a bird – brains should be a complement. Birds get more horsepower out of a much smaller brain than do mammals. With flight you cannot afford a big brain but when you fly in 3-dimensional space you still have to be smart. Hence small and powerful brains.
I asked for two reasons...I went to a wedding a few years back for my boss’s daughter, and my boss was classmates with Irene Pepperberg of “Alex” the Gray Parrot of fame...I sat next to her at my dinner table, and it was really interesting to talk to her. I asked her what it was like sharing a house with a bird like that, and she said it was like living with a temperamental adolescent!
Then, I read a book a few years ago “The Genius of Birds”, and while the author was clearly a liberal, I found her book fascinating. I am an inveterate bird watcher, and one of the things I like about birds is that when they know you are there, they don’t fly away and you can watch them, and secondly...they watch us humans avidly.
Fascinating creatures. She said that a Chickadee can store the independent locations of around 6000 cached items of food in its territory!