RAH, For a moment there I thought you may have been a scientist. It's nice to know you are one of those "humans" that you referenced
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When fish end up where one hasn't stocked them there is a valid reason for their appearance. Bait bucket, birds, flood cannot individually be the reason for every occasion. Even if one is correct for some individual occasion, its purely anecdotal and means nothing for every other occasion. I don't pretend to know what caused anyone's particular occasion.
Look, I just found Sunil's hypothesis rather intriguing. It doesn't rely on the chance that GBH might regurgitate crop stored fish after flying to a new pond by accident. Nor does it rely on the unprovable conjecture that the behavior is driven by instinct. It seems to me that most regurgitated fish die or are dead when regurgitated. To be successful, the GBH would probably have to perform the ritual frequently. When intelligence and determined intent are considered, the likelihood of eventual success might be vastly improved. I am sorry, but this is a fascinating idea. In principle, evidence might be found to support the hypothesis. That evidence might support the hypothesis makes the hypothesis testable and scientific. Certainly this requires agreement as to what constitutes intelligence in behavior. Perhaps, increased levels of complexity might be plausible grounds to infer intelligence. Consider also the alternative, complexity of behavior is independent of intelligence. Not so sure that is a reasonable conjecture either. It is fair to say there is much we don't know. One of the things we don't know is how bird related fish transfers relate to the odds of the lottery.
