The brilliant and bizarre ways birds use their sense of smell – from natural cologne to pest control

Blue tits sniff out herbs to line their nests with. taviphoto/Shutterstock

When we think about birds, we often picture their colourful plumage: the iridescence of a peacock’s tail or the electric blue flash of a kingfisher. Or we might consider how they use voices, from the song of the nightingale to the coo of a dove or the shriek of a jay.

So it’s easy to imagine that vision and hearing must be the senses these birds use to explore their environment and interact with each other. However...