Crows
Table of Contents
ENCOUNTERS WITH THE WISE GUYS OF THE AVIAN WORLD
Title Page
{ PREFACE }
{ ONE } - The Birds in BLACK
CROWS OF THE WORLD
GHASTLY, GRIM, AND ANCIENT RAVEN
REVOLUTIONS IN EVOLUTION
CROW UNIVERSITY
{ TWO } - Family DRAMAS
CATCHING CROWS
TO HELP OR NOT TO HELP
LIFE STORIES
THE PLOT THICKENS
{ THREE } - The Trickster REVISITED
RAVEN ALLIANCES
MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE LAB. . .
CACHE AND CARRY
{ FOUR } - Fellow FEELING
THE CULTURE OF RAVENS
CROW EMOTION
ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS
RAVEN’S GREATEST JOKE
{ NOTES }
{ FURTHER READING }
{INDEX}
Copyright Page
ENCOUNTERS WITH THE WISE GUYS
OF THE AVIAN WORLD
{ PREFACE }
The Crow CONNECTION
LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I have crow stories to tell. There was the time in the northern forest when a raven—and what is a raven except a crow taken to the extreme?—flew over my head, looked down, uttered a rasping call, and then made two complete barrel rolls before continuing smoothly on. “I am a raven,” it seemed to say, “and you, poor thing, are not.” There was the American crow, glimpsed through a car window just outside the city where I live, that was hanging by its beak from a branch and whipping around in the wind. More than anything, there is the everyday pleasure of seeing those lithe, calling forms rowing through the air, bound for somewhere. Any day with a crow in it is full of promise.
Admittedly, not everyone shares this enthusiasm for wild black wings. To some folks, crows and their kin—the ravens, jackdaws, and rooks—are nothing but a darned nuisance. Where a more sympathetic observer might appreciate the birds’ role as scavengers (nature’s clean-up crew), these people are disgusted by a diet that includes the dead and the rotten. Where you or I might hear an interesting confusion of crow voices, these others hear only noise. And where a thoughtful person might reflect on the intricate relationship between predator and prey, the crows’ detractors are alarmed by their depredations on songbirds. In this connection, it is worth noting that although crows do feed on eggs and nestlings, there is no evidence that these losses have reduced songbird numbers. Alas, the same cannot be said for the endangered desert tortoise of the southwestern United States, which is being battered by a burgeoning population of garbage-fed ravens.
Happily, for every person who views crows with distrust, there is someone who enjoys and appreciates them. One of the many delights of writing this book has been making contact with this growing flock of corvid enthusiasts. Who knew that there was a lively online community of crow people in various parts of the world, all busily tap-tap-tapping out their stories and sharing them with one another? Did you hear about the raven that dropped a crumpled-up bag on a kid who was holding an order of fries? Or how about the crows that, day after day, singled out a particular factory worker on his lunch break in a parking lot and treated him to intense displays of bowing and rattlelike calls? All this and much more is just a mouse-click away at sites like those listed on page 107.
➣ Birds of a feather flock together in this engraving of four crows and one crow cousin. In the midground, from left to right, are the jackdaw, rook, and carrion crow and the related black-billed magpie. In front, a common raven picks at a dead rabbit.
But this book is not just a celebration of day-to-day encounters with these fascinating birds. My aim is to delve deeper. The information in these pages derives primarily from a decade and more of systematic and often audacious research by leading scientists in three major regions: Europe, North America, and Australasia. It has been my privilege to speak with many of these experts and to hear firsthand about their discoveries, some of which have not previously been published. In particular, it is an honor to acknowledge the assistance of Vittorio Baglione, University of Seville, Spain; Thomas Bugnyar, Konrad Lorenz Research Station, University of Vienna, Austria; Anne Clark, University of Binghamton, USA; Nicky Clayton, Cambridge University, England; Peter Enggist, Enggist Science Consulting, Switzerland; Sylvia Hope, California Academy of Sciences, USA; Gavin Hunt, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Alex Kacelnik, Oxford University, England; John Marzluff, University of Washington, USA; Kevin McGowan, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, USA; Cynthia Sims Parr, University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, USA; and Daniel Stahler, Yellowstone Center for Resources, Yellowstone National Park, USA. Bernd Heinrich of the University of Vermont was interviewed for an article entitled “Reasoning Ravens” that was published in Canadian Geographic in 2000. John Spirko of Fort Erie, Ontario, and Sandy Harbanuk of the Juneau Raptor Center are among those who shared their stories with me; Barbara Hodgson provided the fine illustration that appears on page 17. A special word of thanks is due to Dr. Carolee Caffrey, until recently the West Nile virus specialist for the National Audubon Society, USA, for her enthusiasm, knowledge, and generosity.
Crows are generalists, with a keen interest in all things edible. This engraving, by R. Havell, is based on a drawing by John J. Audubon.
Crow lovers one and all, these busy people found time not only to answer my many questions but also, in several cases, to review relevant portions of the text. I am grateful for their collaboration and, most of all, for their crow-like fascination with the world around them.
{ ONE }
The Birds in BLACK
ON AN ISLAND in the South Pacific Ocean, somewhere west of Fiji, a sleek black crow is poking around in the greenery of a sun-streaked rain forest. With its senses sharply focused on the search for food, the bird hops from branch to branch and from plant to plant, jabbing its stout beak into the bases of palm leaves and cocking its head to inspect crannies in the bark. Insects are hidden in there—juicy centipedes, weevils, and grubs—but many of them are out of reach, buried deep in the vegetation or curled up at the bottom of wormholes drilled into the tree trunks.
An ordinary bird might be stymied by these difficulties, but not our crow. Without hesitation, it flies to a nearby tree and picks up a twig that it had left there a few minutes earlier. At first glance, the stick doesn’t look particularly special: it’s just a sprig from a native deciduous tree, Elaeocarpus dognyensis, that has been stripped of leaves and bark. On closer examination, however, you can see that the stump-end of the twig, where the crow snapped it off the branch, has been nibbled to form a tiny hook. And watch what the crow can do with it! Grasping the twig in its bill, the bird flies directly back to its foraging site, positions the stick so that one end is braced against the side of its head, and then deftly inserts the implement, hook first, into the crevice. With a few quick flicks of its beak, the bird works the twig back and forth, then pulls it out, with a tasty insect squirming on the end of it. Crow, the Tool User, in action.
This techno-savvy bird is a New Caledonian crow, Corvus moneduloides, a species found only on the remote islands of Grande Terre and Maré in Melanesia. (New Caledonia is a French colony about a thousand miles northeast of Brisbane.) When the bird’s sophisticated tool behavior was first described by biologist Gavin Hunt of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1996, the news made headlines in the prestigious journal Nature and raised a hitherto little-known species to celebrity status. And as the spotlight fell on the New Caledonian crow, the glow of scientific fascination quickly spilled out to include all the other species of crows around the world.
Raven design from a Viking scabbard mount.
How Crow PERFECTED the Spear
According to the myths o
f the Aborigines of Australia, there was a time long ago when two great beings, the Eagle and the Crow, were in conflict with each other. Both hunted with spears, but only the Eagle knew how to make spearheads with backward-pointing barbs, which would stay in to make the kill. The Eagle tried to protect its secret, but one night, when everyone else was sleeping, the Crow took the Eagle’s spear-head out of its hiding place and had a good look at it. From then on, the Crow was able to make barbed spearheads and kill its own kangaroos.
From left to right, the carrion crow, the common raven, and two African species, the pied crow and the thick-billed raven.
They’re out there in our own backyards, spying on us from lampposts, stealing food from the dog, and shattering the early morning with their loud, steel-edged caws. If one species of crows routinely makes and uses tools—a behavior so remarkable that it was until recently thought to be uniquely human—then what might the rest of those swaggering, black-clad wise guys be up to?
CROWS OF THE WORLD
There are about forty-five species of crow in the world (a couple more by some estimations, a couple fewer by others, depending on whether local varieties are split into separate entities or lumped together). Although they are known by a variety of common names, including ravens, jackdaws, and rooks, all are members of the genus Corvus, or crow, and all are variations on a theme, with their glossy black (or sometimes black-and-white) plumage, their raucous voices, and their seemingly endless capacity to fly out of the frame of our expectations and surprise us. They are medium-sized or largish birds—the smallest, the European jackdaw, Corvus monedula, is about the size of a large cockatiel—with sturdy bills, strong feet, and venturing minds that are formed for exploration and discovery. The burliest member of the crow tribe, the common raven, Corvus corax, is as big and brassy as a macaw and just as impressive, with its liquid calls, rustling cape of feathers, and keen alertness. (One of the most widespread birds in the world, the common raven is found throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from Europe and North Africa east through Asia and across the northern reaches of the New World.)
In between these extremes in size lie the other members of the global crow congregation, including a dozen species found exclusively in Europe and Asia—among them the gregarious rook, Corvus frugilegus, a familiar bird of farmland across both continents, the pied hooded crow, Corvis cornix, and its all-black cousin, the carrion crow, Corvus corone. Another eight or nine species are native to Africa, and five or six are found only in Australia: the Australian raven, Corvus coronoides, for example, with its mournful, fading wail, and the only-slightly-smaller little crow, Corvus bennetti, which is famous for its exuberant aerial displays. Yet another dozen-plus species are unique to islands in the South Pacific and the West Indies, from New Caledonia and New Guinea to Jamaica.
Strangely, there are no crows at all in South or Central America, where los observadores de pájaros have to be content with a profusion of brightly colored jays and magpies, the crows’ closest relatives. (Crows, magpies, and jays belong to different genera, or kinship groupings, within the larger family connection of the tribe Corvini.) North America is blessed with four species all its own: the sociable northwestern crow, Corvus caurinus, of the west coast; the glossy fish crow, Corvus ossifragus, of the eastern seaboard, with its distinctive nasal caw; the heavyset Chihuahuan raven, Corvus cryptoleucus, of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States; and the lively American crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, which is seen and heard almost everywhere else. Rounding out the clangorous chorus, in North America as elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, is the common raven, which drifts over gloomy forests and bleak tundra from sea to sea to sea, uttering its sonorous commentary.
Crows and ravens make a statement just by being themselves. Everything about them says, “It’s me. I’m here. This is my world, my place in the world, and don’t you forget it.” They are the opposite of shyness, the antithesis of camouflage, the very embodiment of self-promotion. And although their showy behavior is primarily intended to attract the attention of others of their kind, their“advertising package” is also ideally pitched to attract the human ear and eye. Unlike the little dickey-birds that set us scrambling for binoculars and frantically twiddling knobs, crows are big and bold, making them easy to observe and identify. As a rule, individual species of Corvus are not difficult to tell apart, if you spend a few minutes learning their particular field marks. The common raven, for example, can be distinguished from all the other crows that share its range by its large size; its big schnoz, or heavy bill; its slotted wing tips; and its diamond-shaped, rather than fan-shaped, tail.
Even the crows’ harsh voices are—if not exactly music to our ears—surprisingly companionable. Technically speaking, crows are songbirds, though you wouldn’t know it from what comes out of their mouths. Not for them a soaring aria that would put the Three Tenors to shame. Instead, crow ➣ In this illustration by Arthur Rackham, the mythic ravens Hugin and Munin drift over the mountains of Valhalla.
This lovely French illumination, which dates from 1410, shows the sun god Apollo with his white raven. Below, learned people discourse on learned subjects.
vocalizations are earthy, studded with what sound to us like consonants and vowels, as if their caws and “quorks” were pronouncements in some unintelligible tongue. And this attunement between humans and crows, this resonance, is both striking and unexpected. Why the connection between bird and mammal? For whatever reason, crows stir our senses, and, over the centuries, their harsh calls have echoed loudly through our dreams and myths. When the legendary Crow or Raven speaks, even the gods listen.
GHASTLY, GRIM, AND ANCIENT RAVEN
In ancient Greece, the raven was celebrated as the sacred bird of Apollo, god of healing, prophecy, and the sun. But even familiars of the gods can get into trouble. As Ovid tells us in his Metamorphoses, it seems that Apollo once had a lover named Coronis, the prettiest girl in all of Thessaly, though not, alas, the most chaste. One day, Apollo’s Raven—at that time a splendid, silver-white bird—caught the girl in flagrante delicto and, “merciless informer” that he was, flew straight to his master and shouted out what he had seen. Boiling with Olympian rage, Apollo picked up his bow and arrow and shot Coronis through the breast, then almost immediately succumbed to regret. Unable to save his lover, he turned on Raven instead, the fatal loudmouth that had uttered a truth better left unsaid. As punishment for this lapse of discretion, Apollo banished Raven from the company of white birds, which is why, to this day, ravens are black as night yet bright as the sun’s rays.
In Norse mythology, ravens had the ear of the warlike Odin, the father of the gods. Having traded one of his eyes for a sip at the Well of Wisdom, Odin relied on his black henchmen, the ravens Hugin and Munin, to fly through the nine worlds and return at night to his throne, bringing him whispered news of everything that was going on. Often the news was bloody—Munin means “memory,” especially memory of the dead. And ravens were also associated with the gruesome Valkyries (from Old Norse valkyrja and Old English waelcrige, the raven, or “chooser of the slain.”) Not only did the ravening corpse goddesses flock to the scene of battle, but they could also see into the future, foretell the outcome of the combat, and determine which of the warriors were doomed to die. The Irish war goddess Badb performed the same bloody services, in the guise of either a raven or a carrion crow.
Crows and ravens are scavengers, which is a polite way of saying that they eat the dead, so it is darkly fitting that they were linked to the carnage wrought by swords and war axes. In India, by contrast, the pretty little house crow, Corvus splendens, is a bird of the domestic scene, found around virtually every human habitation in the country, even in the center of crowded cities. Perhaps the only species of bird that is entirely dependent on humans for its habitat, the house crow has been living communally with people for hundreds of years, feeding on garbage, nesting in treed gardens, and performing aerial stunts off the tops of tall buildings. But house
crows are also found on the burning grounds, where the dead are laid on their funeral pyres for cremation.
Common raven, as pictured by Rev. F.O. Morris in his A History of British Birds, 1851.
DEMON BIRD
During the witch craze in Western Europe, ravens and crows were sometimes feared as demons. In Strathnaver, Scotland, for example, in the seventeenth century, an entire congregation of prayerful souls was seized with dread when they sensed a spectral raven in the house with them. Evil emanated from this shadowy presence, and the people were paralyzed with fear. A day passed and then another, and the group decided to sacrifice the householder’s son to the bird spirit. And so they would have done had it not been for the intervention of a servant. Eventually, neighbors rallied to tear the roof off the house, and the raven’s dire spell was broken.
Mrs. Stene-Tu and her son, members of the Tlingit Raven Clan in southeastern Alaska, were photographed in their potlatch dancing costumes around 1900.
As an intimate presence in both life and death, the crow is revered in India as an evocation of the ancestors and is respectfully fed both at times of bereavement and during an annual period of remembrance called Shraadh.
What if it is true that the crows hopping around on the boulevard embody the memory of the beloved dead? Or more portentous yet, what if in their dark shining they represent the mystery at the very heart of existence?
In Native communities around the Northern Hemisphere (particularly the northwest coast of North America and eastern Siberia), people cherish the living tradition of a spirit Raven, or sometimes a spirit Crow, which imparted its irreverent and ribald spirit to the world. A rapscallion of the first order, with no regard for decorum or sentiment, this great Raven created humans and then, more or less whimsically, condemned them to death. According to a tradition of the Tlingit people, recorded in writing in Wrangell, Alaska, in 1909, Raven made two attempts to produce humans, once out of rock, a project he abandoned because it was too slow, and once from a leaf, an easy-to-use material that suited him better. “You see this leaf,” he said to his new creations. “You are to be like it. When it falls off the branch and rots, there is nothing left of it.” That is why people die, the elders said, because Raven had made them from leaves that perish. According to the Australian Aborigines, by comparison, the great Crow created death because he wanted to have his fun with the widowed women.