Alexandersmap

    Tag: Crows

    • Clever Enough to Be Crows

      “If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.”
      – Henry Ward Beecher

      I stood at the window and watched three crows walk across the lawn, pausing now and then to pluck some edible creature out of the grass. Each walked with intent, and the three of them orchestrated a reconnaissance mission of the terrain, assessing every morsel and every threat together. The shiny black feathers were striking against the muted green lawn and the relentless fog enveloping everything.

      Crows communicate like no other birds, with a rich and diverse language of their own, and a particular nuance in how they move and gesture to each other that is beyond the understanding of this simple human on the other side of the glass. I had no doubt they were aware of me, and no doubt they recognized the glass for the barrier it was. I thought I was observing them, but you forget in that moment that you too are being observed.

      Standing there, just beyond my gaze, on the far side of the lawn near the relative safety of junipers, was a wild rabbit, young and cautious, also making breakfast at the lawn buffet. The crows and the rabbit were indifferent to each other, aware but knowing the threat level each posed to the other. Each looking outward for the first sign of a fox or coyote or maybe an overzealous neighborhood dog, and with a common purpose, they became allies of the moment. I was the odd one of the bunch, at once a part, and apart, from the action.

      I suppose there’s nothing of travel and philosophy or fitness in this post; no mountains summitted, no waterfalls gazed upon, no international borders crossed, no personal milestones broken. Void of such action, you might think it a frivolous cluster of words. I’ll concede there’s little to glean from these words on travel and fitness, but you might just find a bit of philosophy in the four creatures working the foggy lawn, or the one observer seeking to understand the foggy world on the other side of the glass.

      The crows stayed with me long after they’d taken flight, leaving me with the fog and empty lawn. I’d like to think this observer lingered in their mind well past our moment together. But that would be folly. Crows have better things to ponder than the frivolous life of humans.

    • Crows Never Forget a Face

      Sunday morning, while writing yesterday’s blog post, I observed a murder of crows, or four of them anyway, fly into the trees in my yard and start communicating with each other in that caw caw way.  Like a biker gang walking into a Friendly’s, the other birds in the vicinity grew very quiet when the crows announced they were crashing the party.

      The crows split up, with one flying behind me to a tall tree in the front of the house.  Two of them remained on a branch on an oak tree deeper into the woods.  And the fourth ran point and flew onto a branch of an oak tree that reached out over the lawn in the backyard.  I saw right away what he was doing.  There was a birds nest on the branch and he bounced over to it, cawing all the time, head bending side to side as he inspected the nest.  The pair of crows in the woods observed and cawed their feedback.  When point crow reached the nest he started pulling it apart and dropping bits of straw down to the ground, digging into the nest looking for chicks or eggs to eat.  After a couple of minutes he determined there was nothing there worth eating and he flew off, with his mates joining him.

      Crows are both fascinating and annoying creatures.  Like [most] humans, they’re highly intelligent and social, and they’re omnivores.  Crows are symbolic of death in mythology, like vultures, but they’re really just opportunistic hunters and gatherers.  You see them all the time bouncing over to roadkill, but they’re smart enough to gauge the speed of the car coming at them and avoid becoming roadkill themselves.  I read that if a crow is killed, other crows will gather around it to determine what killed it, and then like a lynch mob go after the killer.  Crows apparently never forget a face, so if you go out and chase away a murder of crows or throw rocks at them they’ll mark you as a dangerous character.  Given what they do to crow killers I’d say be on your best behavior with them!  With an average lifespan of 7 – 8 years, they have plenty of time to develop a plan to deal with you.

      There are apparently 30 different species of crows out there, ranging from magpies to ravens.  I know that the crows flying about in the woods of New Hampshire are smaller than the crows flying around on Buzzards Bay, but share similar hunting and communication traits.  I can admire crows but still wish that they’d shut up when I’m trying to sleep in when I’m on the Cape.  They aren’t just bigger down there, they’re also louder and early risers.  Maybe they’re trying to tell me something:  Caw! Get up!  Caw!  Life is short!  Caw!  There’s so much you can do with this day.  Thanks for the reminder.  Best get on with it.