Summary: Sulikowski & Burke (2012)

 In foraging behaviour terminology, win-shifting consists of avoidance of locations that have yielded food recently while win-staying consists of active return to these locations. Numerous nectarivorous bird species have shown to be biased towards win-shifting, suggesting that this might be a candidate for a cognitive adaptive specialisation (since food resources that have been exploited recently will not necessarily be available). Sulikowksi & Burke (2012) demonstrated that noisy miners Manorina melanocephala and rainbow lorikeets Trichoglossus haematodus with prior reinforcement of win-shifting or win-staying maintained these preferences, although poorer performance was not necessarily a consequence of an inability to learn the win-stay event. Their results suggest that birds are sensitive to both strategies, implying that the adapted mechanisms (cognitive adaptation) may result from an inhibition of the win-stay response, rather than a lack of sensitivity to win-stay strategies.