It’s not the correct answer I’m after - it’s the conversation. If that were the goal, I could’ve just googled it myself. I’d much rather spend a few minutes speculating with you about what bird it might’ve been than have you immediately look up the right answer.
In most cases, when you feel tempted to take out your phone during a face-to-face interaction, you probably shouldn’t.
I totally agree with you - when I’m not actually asking somebody to tell me the right answer right away, I’ll usually try to include “do you reckon” in the question to imply that. Like, “what bird do you reckon that was?” or “what do you reckon the tallest building is?”. I usually find that results in a brief convo before somebody pulls out the phone to answer, which I’m not so opposed to – after we’ve had a chat!