This has probably been subject fodder on Tweeters before while I was
likely away for a few months and missed it. Anyway, here's my take...

"A Murder of Crows".... I saw an amazing PBS-Nature show last night
about crows. Maybe you've seen it since I think it may have first aired a year
or so ago. I stumbled on to it just by random chance last night on CBC
Vancouver ("The Nature of Things" -- Canada's more-or-less name version of
the very same PBS-"Nature"). We all know these guys are pretty smart, but my
goodness just how smart I had but a fraction of an idea. Did you know
that young birds often remain under the parents care for up to 5 years? They
really do annoy the heck out of me in early summer with their constant all
day long begging, but they've got their own language (literally!) ...
different specific calls to identify various dangers, one for cats, one for
hawks, one for cars, one for people even, and on and on. Amazing.

The real show stopper for me however was about the nuts. Nothing new
about some birds gathering nuts (shellfish with gulls) and dropping them on a
hard surface to crack them open. Depending on the nut, whether a walnut or
some other kind of nut, crows have worked it out as to know EXACTLY how
high they must be to successfully drop a particular nut so that it cracks open
but doesn't shatter, not too high, not too low, and when NOT to do it if
another crow might be watching. HOWEVER, that's not the real kicker. The
real kicker was that they have learned to watch and read the traffic lights
and wait 'til the light turns RED before flying up to drop a nut, thus
minimize the chance of an oncoming car running over the nut and smashing it or
secondarily getting run over themselves. Of course it's pretty rare for a
crow to get hit by a car anyway since they are often there in twos (or
more)..., like that funny little bird joke I heard long long ago, one crow out
roaming the street or road, the other standing 'watch' nearby to warn "car
car" at approaching danger. With ravens up there in logging heaven, it's
the same thing except they warn "truck truck". Still makes me chuckle
every time I think about it, but ironically it seems amazingly true. But
learning to 'read' traffic lights is really taking it to the next level!

Much of the research that went into this production happened right here in
Seattle via the University of Washington where there is a massively huge
night time crow roost in the Arboretum just a few blocks away. That's quite
an impressive sight actually some evenings as thousands of crows assemble
from all over the Puget Sound lowlands and stream to the roost from all
directions. Kind of like blackbirds but just bigger birds. Oh, one other
thing that was kind of cool..., when one of their own dies or killed by
whatever means, a flock of crows will silently gather in a tree top overlooking
the corpse, quietly sit there for a few minutes, then after paying 'last
respects', just suddenly take off enmass without making a sound.

So, as much as I sometimes loathe the American Crow, particularly the
tiresome irritating sounds the young make around here all post fledging season
long (late Spring/summer) not to mention when they start mobbing something
so as to deafeningly drown out everything else and disturb the peace, or
just deliberately hell bent to annoy ME just for the sake of doing it (they
know me by sight; I can tell!), I guess I come away now with a bit more
respect for these dark lords of the birdscape. Actually, now that I know a
little more now than before, and I have always wondered, I suspect these
predictable annoyances in the summer are probably all the exact same birds year
after year after year. Roost in the arboretum by night with the collective
swarm then come over here by day, this neighborhood, this block, this
yard. In fact, I think they're so damned smart that I might just vote
"American Crow" in 2012 in lieu of some mortal political hominid which may be a
vast improvement over where things stand and look now. Go Corvids!

Richard Rowlett
Bellevue (Eastgate), WA