Our understanding of this question is far from complete, Vicki.
Certainly vultures can smell putrescine very well (at least Turkey
vultures). This fact is used by some oil companies (I've heard),
which add the smell to their pipelines to detect leaks - the vultures
congregate over the leak! Many seabird species can detect the odor
of fish from many miles away. However, there is little evidence that
songbirds and other small birds can smell well. That said, this does
not rule out that they could smell something useful at a short
distance. I'm not sure why your woodpecker wouldn't eat the peanut
suet (what is peanut suet? Suet is usually beef fat, and woodpeckers
love it), but my guess is that it would have had to do with taste or
very short range smell.

Jesse Ellis
Seattle



>Hi,
> I know this sounds like a silly question, (I should know the
>answer) and I think that birds like vultures
> can smell blood. But, when trying to find a peanut suet a couple
>of days ago, I
> returned some, telling the guy my woodpecker won't eat it, it
>didn't have enough
> peanut smell, trying to explain that it needed to have a higher
>peanut base for
> birds. He simply replyed that birds cannot smell, which was not
>the point. I
> told him I would check on that one.
> Any information would be helpful, I am stumped on this one.
>Thanks--
> Vicki Biltz
> Bonney Lake Wa
> vickibiltz at comcast.net
>
>
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>Tweeters mailing list
>Tweeters at u.washington.edu
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--
Jesse Ellis, Ph. D. candidate
Neurobiology and Behavior
jme29 at cornell.edu
111 Mudd Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, 14853