Crows just don’t get the attention they deserve. I’m going to help them out by spotlighting them on the Walking Fiddle tonight. We saw a huge flock of them when we were out driving yesterday and I suddenly thought it was time to write a post for the old blog, on crows. Yes, I am going to educate you on this rascally black creature that shares planet earth with us.
First off, if you are a crow, and it’s winter, there is one place you want to be: Auburn, New York. It’s the happening scene. About 30 miles west of Syracuse, Auburn has been one of the most popular winter vacation destinations for the American crow since 1993. 25,000 to 50,000 crows gather in Auburn’s trees annually during the winter. One of the main reasons they seem to like it is the great city lighting, which allows them to stay up and socialize till the wee hours. Now, I don’t know how they know this, but crow experts say they sit around talking about where they found the best food that day. My personal opinion is that they are exchanging ideas on the best ways to torment cats. Ever seen a crow torment a cat? They are quite good at it. Anyway, the citizen’s of Auburn aren’t too pleased about becoming the headquarters of the Crow National Convention. It’s pretty noisy when tens of thousands of crows are roosting outside your office window and I don’t dare to guess what the ground looks like either. Some just want to get rid of them, but others think more creatively. One particularly out-of-the-box thinker named Joshua Klein suggests opening “crow vending machines,” where you train the crows to pick up trash and they bring it to the vending machine and deposit it for a reward. Brilliant! I’m signing up to be a professor at the crow trash collection training college.
Moving on. The crow is considered to be one of the smartest birds in world. Some even think they may actually have a language. Many of the sounds are lower than frequencies we can hear. The typical “caw caw caw” that we humans are familiar with supposedly means either “I’m hungry,” or “This is my tree!” But apparently they make quite a lot of other sounds that we never hear because they only happen crow to crow in the top of a tree. Crows also make tools out of twigs and blades of grass to do things like get food. You’ll be interested in this tidbit from the Wikipedia crow page: “Another skill involves dropping tough nuts into a heavy trafficked street and waiting for a car to crush them open, and then waiting at pedestrian lights with other pedestrians in order to retrieve the nuts.” Next time I see a crow sitting on a traffic light I am going to wait and see what it does!
Young crows stay at home with their parents for several years and help raise their siblings. Most smaller “gangs” of crows you see are probably actually families, which stay together during nesting season. In the winter, though, they like to go roost with other crows- Auburn, anyone? Over on Cornell’s crow site, I found this roosting behavior description which is quite fascinating to me because I have actually witnessed it myself: “Before heading to roost, crows will congregate in some area away from the final roosting site, usually an hour or two before complete darkness. Here the crows spend a lot of time calling, chasing, and fighting. Right at dark the main body of the group will move toward the final roosting spot. Sometimes this final movement is relatively quiet, but usually it is still quite noisy. I have seen crows coming together from several separate congregation areas, heading to one final staging area where they all coalesce, then everyone heads to the final roost. The final roost can be a cohesive group in a single woodlot, or it can be rather diffusely spread out over quite a wide area of suitable trees.”
If crows manage to make it past the first year (many die as babies), they can live 17-21 years. They lay eggs very early in the spring and it takes about four months to build a nest, lay eggs, hatch them and raise the little crows. They mate for life unless the pair failed to breed successfully- then they split up amicably and try someone else. Sometimes they go back home to mom and dad.
Crows actually cast pellets, did you know that? I didn’t. I assumed they pooped white goop like other birds (though honestly I haven’t spend much time considering this assumption). Nope, they have pellets, like owls.
It’s only females that sit on the eggs. They guys don’t. BUT, they will come and bring tidbits to the incubating crow mama and guard the nest if she leaves to get a coffee down at Crowbucks (har har, I know).
Crows can recognize human faces and even associate them with the cars they drive. They get to know people. If you go out and bring them peanuts, they will hang around waiting for you, not just anybody (they really like peanuts and this is a good way to start a friendship with a crow).
I could go on considerably, but I might alienate my potential audience of crow lovers. Perhaps there will be a future installment of crow information. Anyway, if you are looking for sources and citations, I refer you to Wikipedia and renowned crow expert Kevin McGowan’s crow FAQ.