Smoke Bathing

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    Smoke triggers the same odd contorsions as ants do. The same passive /active movements and postures are used. The rook picks up a burning cigarette bud in its beak, goes into a magnificent anting posture and rubs it up and down the inside of its arched wings.
    These movements are combined with the "passive " form. The bird simply sits on top of the burning cigarette, with streched wings, thus allowing the smoke to pass through its feathers. This behaviour appears to be more common in corvids than in other birds. In the midle ages, crows, rooks and jackdaws engaged in the same odd behaviour, using not cigarettes, but smoldering embers.They sometimes carried them back to their nest. This is why crows were thoght to be responsible for starting fires. Because of this reason, these birds were known by then as "Aves Incendiaria"(fire birds). While fumigating its feathers, the rook's posture, with wings spread and head turned to one side, resembles the mythical Phoenix, the bird reborn from fire. So it may well be that these birds indulging in pest control spawned the Phoenix legend...
