Pinion wandered over to the front of the cage and peered through the bars.

The humans' feeding station was messy with dropped food, fragments (and sometimes far more than just fragments. Humans, am I right?) strewn across the ground. Pinion had never liked the smell of the food the humans ate.

But the crows did. The crows liked everything the humans dropped.

The flamingo watched as one crow in particular approached a bottle half-full of a weird clear-brown water that humans seemed to enjoy, carrying a stone in its beak. Pinion tilted its head with curiosity at what the smaller bird was going to do. As it watched, the crow dropped the stone into the bottle. And then it walked away with purpose.

That caught Pinion off-guard. Hadn't the crow wanted something with the bottle? Maybe not.

The crow picked up another stone, returned to the bottle, and dropped it in before walking away again.

Pinion lowered its head to look more closely at the bottle. There were several stones in there already; clearly the crow had been at this for a while.

As it returned with yet another stone Pinion asked it a question, gently, in the hope that it wouldn't be spooked and fly away. "Good day to you, crow. What are you doing?"

The crow looked at Pinion out of the corner of its eye as it reached up and dropped the latest stone into the bottle. It didn't leave for another stone or fly away - instead, it talked.

"Do you see how little there is in this bottle?" it asked, dipping down so that its beak was level with the brown water. "It's too low for me to get it. Or my beak is too broad. See?" It stretched up high enough to thrust its beak into the neck of the bottle and Pinion saw that it was true - the tip of its beak was a claw's length away from the surface of the brown stuff. "If I put stones in, the level rises so I can drink it."

Pinion blinked a few times as this sunk in and the crow went away to find yet another stone, leaving Pinion to its dumbfoundedness. The crow had dropped another three in when Pinion spoke up again.

And here we are, with another choice to make. What do you think Pinion should say?: