I once spent a winter studying crow behavior as a project in college. Crows
do some really interesting things if you watch them. I got to see a crow
once fiddling with a stick, as another one watched, perched on a wire. It
passed the stick from bill to feet several times, and then hopped in the
air and flung the stick up and tried catching it in its beak! It missed,
picked up the stick and to my astonishment, after fiddling with the stick,
did it again, this time catching the stick! It flew up in the air about 20
feet and did a flying summersault and transferring the stick from bill to
foot in the process, then returned to the ground, passing the stick from
foot to bill. At this point there were 6 bystanders who had stopped to watch
this crow. After 10 minutes of this fiddling, including a few more tosses
in the air, but no catches, it carefully bowed and deposited the stick on
the ground and walked away, every once and a while peering back over its
shoulder as if to see if the other crow would pick up the stick. It did not,
at least while I was watching. The perched one flew off instead, and the
crow who had been fiddling with the stick followed it. I have seen mutual
preening as you describe several times, plus all kinds of other interesting
bows, tilts, and rocking behaviors. Once you start paying attention to
crows, you will never be bored. I have long assumed these behaviors were
all related to mate selection, but I heard a talk from a crow expert who
said that siblings often play together, long after leaving the nest,
especially in their first year.

A couple months ago, in the parking lot of a fast food place in Monroe, I
sat and watched a lady feeding French fries out her window to 2 crows
standing idly by. In less than 60 seconds time, from out of nowhere, 22
other crows had descended. There were several reorganizations of the
positions of the crows relative to the lady with the French fries. The
"best" positions were held by a trio which all the other crows stayed a
respectful 12-14 inches or so away from. Then two gulls showed up and the
crows rearranged themselves yet again, this time giving even more distance
between them and the gulls, who took up the best position. The French fry
benefactor apparently did not like gulls as much as crows and stopped her
donations. I imagine this hierarchy has been well established in the
dumpsters around town.

I saw a similar thing happen another time when a bag of garbage fell off the
back of a truck going around a corner. Three crows were on it immediately,
after 4 minutes, there were over 60. Crows frequently perch atop lamp posts
and other high places in Monroe. I have often wondered if, after the book
Ravens in Winter, crows mutually alert each other on purpose to a new food
source, or if they just opportunistically follow the flocking behavior?

Somebody once left a bag of dry dog food on the bottom of a shopping cart at
the shopping center. Within 5 minutes the bag was open and all over the
parking lot and it was a riot of gulls and crows swarming and squabbling
over it. There were over 100 birds in the mix and they formed such a scary
assemblage that somebody actually called the cops, who drove up in to the
fray, got out as the birds moved back, then both cops broke out laughing and
got back into their car, backing up and parking and keeping an eye on the
scene as the riot of birds began again. I brought my class out to watch, but
all that was left was the empty bag by the time we got there. For the next
month, a pair of crows would frequently fly down off the lamp posts and
examine the shopping carts left in the parking lot.

Crows are cool. I really hope they can weather this west Nile threat. It
would be a much poorer world without crows in it.

Rob Sandelin
Sky Valley Environments <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous at msn.com


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