First known tool-using bird

Several species of bird are known to use various tools as part of their typical behaviour, but the likeliest first known tool-using bird species is the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus). Native to southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia, notably India, the Egyptian vulture was a very familiar, venerated species to the ancient Egyptians as far back as 3100 BCE, so its tool using would undoubtedly have been known to them. Most famously, these vultures will pick up small rocks or pebbles in their beaks and drop them or sometimes actively hurl them from a height down onto ostrich eggs, in order to smash their hard shells, thereby enabling the vultures to feed upon their contents. Interestingly, laboratory experiments have shown that the Egyptian vulture's stone-throwing behaviour is innate, not acquired culturally by watching others performing it.

In ancient Egypt, the Egyptian vulture was so familiar and significant a species that in this early human civilisation's system of hieroglyphics, it was used as the symbol for the letter "A". It was also deemed to be a sacred species, protected by the Pharaohs, who punished with death anyone killing one of these birds; they thus became known as "Pharaoh's chickens". They were sacred to the goddess Isis too; and the goddess Nekhbet, divine protector of Upper Egypt, was even typically represented with the head of one of these vultures, her priestesses wearing robes created from their white feathers.

Also, this species has been recorded in Bulgaria holding a twig in its beak and using it as a tool with which to roll up strands of sheep wool to use in its nest.

Several other birds have been recorded making use of tools in more modern times. The woodpecker finch native to the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, breaks off cactus spines and uses them to spear and pull out insect grubs inside cracks within the bark of trees as most famously recorded by British naturalist Charles Darwin. The green heron will drop stones into standing water to attract fishes to swim within range of its harpoon-like beak. Crows use several different tools for a range of different activities, which even include waving burning branches over their plumage in order to suffocate or to smoke out parasites. In 2020, Atlantic puffins were shown to use sticks as "back scratchers" to reach itchy areas caused by parasites not accessible by beak or feet alone, and perhaps also remove the offending parasites; this was the first tool use documented in a seabird.