Consciousness in Nature
The way scientists test self-awareness is called the mirror test, and works like this. A mirror is placed in the animals living space, and they are given a few weeks or a month to experiment and learn about the mirror on their own. Then when they are asleep they paint a red dot on their forehead, or a place they can on see it in a mirror. and Then they watch to see what happens when they wake up and look in the mirror. If they then rub the spot as they look in the mirror there can be little doubt that they recognize them-selves in the mirror and that the spot was on them, thus they have a self concept. One cannot have a self concept without being fully conscious, or self-aware.
Some animals are hard to test, and it seems to be only social animals who care about their self-concept, and worry about a spot on their forehead make the best subjects.
So to test a non-mammal with a small brain we need to find a social bird. One of the social birds is called a magpie. So they will be our test subject, and we will give magpies the mirror test.