Sulfur-crested cockatoos flock to a drinking fountain in a western Sydney park AND turn the knob to Get Water :)

[SorellaLaBefana]

The parrots are the first known birds to operate this human device.Klump et al., Biology Letters (2025)

...The behavior—not seen in any other bird—has been so successful, it appears to be spreading among western Sydney’s cockatoo population...it likely represents a local “cultural tradition,”...“Once a few cockatoos figured it out, others likely picked it up by watching them.”

Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Vienna, has studied Sydney’s cockatoos for years. While conducting fieldwork in the western part of the city in 2018, she noticed several of the birds perched on a fence waiting their turn to investigate a nearby water fountain. To access water, human patrons twist and hold the fountain’s handle, which causes water to spew from a spout embedded inside a rubber top. When Klump got closer, she was shocked to realize the cockatoos seemed to be doing the same...

Every cockatoo exhibited slight variations in its plan of attack. But the general strategy was the same: Each placed one or both of its feet on the fountain’s twist handle, then lowered its weight to twist the handle clockwise and prevent it from springing back up. As the parrots slurped water from the bubbling spout, their sharp beaks often left behind chew marks on the fountain’s rubber top...

So why did the cockatoos gravitate to drinking fountains in the first place, when plenty of other water sources such as puddles and creeks are available? Perhaps they have developed a taste for the purer fountain water, Klump says. Or the elevated fountain perch helps them spot approaching predators such as eagles and falcons...

https://www.science.org/content/article/cockatoos-have-learned-operate-drinking-fountains-australia
There is an amazing, short, video of the birds in action at the above Science link

Oh, those busy bird-brains