As the Crow Flies

 One my favourite scenes in “Treasure of Sierra Madre” is when the old-timer says, “It’s not far, as the crow flies” and Fred C. Dobbs answers, “Yeah, but we aren’t crows.” The saying goes way back in history. Humans and crows have travelled in the same circles for thousands of years. Yet they remain cautious and careful around our kind. One of my early Christmas toys was a “Crow Shoot” set with a cork gun and a target perch of four wooden crows. People shot crows sometimes for sport and sometimes because they were thought to be a pest that stole their harvest. In fact in recent years it is thought that crows do more good by eating cutworms and pest insects. The urban crow has very different behaviour towards humankind than the country cousins. Still if you feed crows, you see clearly that they are not all that relaxed about the situation. They don’t mob in ‘every bird for himself’ like gulls and pigeons. In a feeding situation there is first a sentinel bird and he (usually a younger male uncle in a family group) checks around first to see if everything is on the ‘up & up’ before making the ‘dinner-call’ for the others. The call is two short “caws” delivered with his head pumped up and down. Older birds eat first and the younger ones come later. That’s crow manners. If there are gulls nearby they just jump in and grab much to the disgust of the watching crows. Some food is brought back to nestlings if there is a family in the nest. The uncle also feeds the young as part of the extended family. It takes two years for hatchlings to mature and leave the nest. During that time they are educated by parents and grand-parents. It takes time to learn to be a crow. They are amongst the few animals that make use of tools.

  Crows appear in art as far back as the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux Caves in France. These are the earliest known artworks produced by human kind. There are over forty-six species of crow and three of those are in danger of extinction. Hearing a crow talk is always a surprising experience for a person, but not as you get to know how smart these birds can be. 

KDM