Today while poking around suburbia looking for Mushrooms I came upon two
crows in a yard in University Place. They were side by side, walking almost
lockstep across a lawn. Then one of them raised up its wing closest to the
other crow and kind of opened it part way and hit the other. The victim then
retaliated doing the same thing. They continued to walk alongside each
other, occasionally whacking each other one after the other with their
wings. It was comical and reminded me of boys punching each other on the
arm. The birds got to the end of the yard, did a short flight towards the
street, landed again side by side and then looked all around with great
interest as if expecting that someone was watching them. It was then I saw
the third crow, perched atop a utility pole. This crow nodded a couple of
times, then cawed and the two on the ground flew up onto a fence but with
very different body language and position. The one perched highest on the
fence above the other was fully upright and alert, the one perched lower was
sort of head down and slumped. It was as if the two had held some contest,
the crow on the pole declared the winner, who then flew up to the champions
stand.

The fun with crows was not over. A large dog came around the corner of the
fence and the two crows took exception to its presence and cawed loudly and
the upper perched crow (the current champion of wing whacking) flew above
the dog, dipped down towards it and cawing even louder. This caused the dog
to move into a trot and the crow perched, then swooped, then perched and
swooped on the dog all the way down the block and out of my view, making
lots of racket. The crow in its swoops never got closer than 4 feet from
the dog but it was clearly swooping at the dog. Just before the dog went
out of view down the end of the block both the other crows took off after
them and I could hear cawing for another several minutes although I could
not see if they continued to be attached to the dog or had moved on to
commenting about something else.

What an interesting bird.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
Snohomish County, WA
Where mushrooms are popping up all over