Crows & Birdbaths part 2

I'm still watching the crows at the birdbath, and I've come to the conclusion that most of what they're bringing is not, after all, roadkill (There was one stretchy thing I'm glad I didn't get a good look at). Mostly, it seems to be stuff from one of the nearby restaurants--chicken bones that they strip the meat from and sometimes crack, or bread--twice it was big hunks of it that the crow in question left floating in the bath and then returned to intermittently throughout the day. In between crow visits, the other birds came down to munch.

Once it was a large, live grasshopper that the crow very efficiently dismembered at the edge of the bath. I don't know if that was a case of "handy edge" or "chitin is easier to swallow wet."

They (or it--I'm not sure how many crows are involved. We have a group of 2-3 that hangs out regularly, but whether they are the same 2 or 3, I don't know. Anyone know who can legally tag crows for the benefit of casual, front-yard observers?) haven't used the bath for food softening as much lately. I thought maybe the restaurant had made their bins crow-inaccessible, but now I think there may be another explanation. The crow in the picture there would very much like to settle down for a drink or a bath but is instead cawing in frustration (an attempt to call other crows? Anger?) because he's being persistently dive-bombed by mockingbirds. We have lots of those around, it's nesting season, and they do not like crows at all. So, possibly the bath will again be filled with debris in the winter and this is only a momentary reprieve, granted by the busy mockingbirds (who might as well do something other than sing at midnight).

The Nature of Crows

Things they will tell you on nature programs.

Crows are clever.

Crows are clever scavengers.

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill.


Things they leave out

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill which they first soften in the nearest birdbath.

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill which they first soften in the nearest birdbath, and then they fly away.

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill which they first soften in the nearest birdbath, and then they fly away leaving the bones of whatever it was in the water.

Link List: Clever Crows, Parasitic Wasps, and Other Such Delights

Take a look at these beautiful photos by Annie Marie Musselman during her six years at the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center: "Wild-Animal Photos Capture Calm in Crisis", published in Wired. If you're interested, there are more photos and some more of her story on her kickstarter page, where she is working to raise money to publish Finding Trust as a book of photos.

I'm particularly impressed by the second photo in the image; the juxtaposition of eagle and meditating volunteer is stunning.

2) More artistic news; Artist Michael Anthony Simon uses spiderwebs to make sculptures, from Io9. There are a few additional webs here, on Beautiful Decay. Supposedly, he has a website somewhere, but I can't find it. If you do, let me know!

3) I've seen this BBC snippet before, but it's still pretty amazing: Wild crows in Japan use cars as nutcrackers. Some of them even know how to wait for the light to change. Crows in other parts of the world have used the same technique and other variants, so it's not a one-time deal. This PBS documentary, A Murder of Crows talks about it somewhere, but I don't remember the time stamp. Of course, I think the whole program is worth watching anyway.

4) And on a revolting, but fascinating, note, here's a Nature article on a Wasp Larva that Disinfects Its Roach Host. That's right. The emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa),a parasitic wasp, exudes disinfectant while it munches its unwilling host. There's even a video on the site because the scientist who decided to study this, Gudrun Herzner of the University of Regensburg in Germany, installed a plastic window in the paralyzed cockroach so she could view the proceedings.

5) On a more peaceful note, here's a New York Times article about The Immortal Jellyfish, the scientist who studies them, and he town where he lives. The Turritopsis dohrnii doesn't die when it gets old; instead, it becomes a polyp and grows up all over again. At the moment, the only person actively raising the jellyfish (which need a lot of attention if they aren't going to die ordinary, starvation or filth-induced deaths) is Shin Kubota, in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. The jellyfish is interesting in itself, but so is the article, which was just plain fun to read.

Happy as Clams

Actually, I suspect the clams in question aren't very happy.

The crows, on the other hand are having the time of their lives.

Crow Calls

A crow calls on the sand.

A Murder of Crows: Nature Show

They've got the full episode of A Murder of Crows up. It's absolutely fascinating. I remember reading in Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven about how excited he was when he put food on a string and the raven figured it out and pulled it up right away. Tests have gone past that--this has a bit where the researcher puts one tool on a string and the crow has to pull that up and take it off in order to reach another tool which can then be used to reach the food.

Also, there's a lot on facial recognition and on crows teaching their young. Take a look:

A Murder of Crows ~ Full Episode | Nature

Crows in the Park

Bird Battles II

Once upon a time, there was a crow. He was sitting by the sidewalk, minding his own business, when a photographer came along and annoyed him.

Wanting nothing more than a little peace, the crow flew up onto a nearby roof.

There was a jay already there who did not like the idea and called him any number of insulting names.  She even flew off and scolded her mate into coming to help which, after a few minutes, he did.

The two took turns dive-bombing the crow, never quite touching him, but never really leaving him alone, either.

It was most annoying.

Bird Battles

There is a single dead tree overlooking Bartlett Park that is much loved by the crows; my guess is that they like being able to survey their domain.

Unfortunately for them, there is also a hawk who likes the same tree, and no sooner had they settled down for an evening of gossip than the hawk (a red tail, I think) arrived to spoil the fun.

They chased him away, clear over to the Albertson's parking lot, where he settled briefly in the palm trees. They didn't like that, either, so they kept on heckling him.

Whereupon, he turned around and flew right back to their tree.

Then the whole process had to be repeated, with single crows diving as near as they dared and cawing their alarm until the rest joined in, the haw flew off, they settled, he came back, and so on.

Of course, there were times when all the bigger birds were gone. The smaller birds then took advantage of the peaceful interlude to settle down on the tree themselves--and start quarreling over who got to sit on which branch.

Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson

More a meditation on birds and life with birds than a nature book, Corvus is well worth the time spent reading.

It is partly the tale of Chicken, a rescued rook living with Woolfson and her family in Aberdeen, and partly the story of humans learning to live with a whole succession of birds, from the author's initial dovecote, through a handful of parrots, a handsome jay, and, of course, Chicken herself.

I repeat: This is not a nature book; I was initially disappointed in the book because it failed to follow in the footsteps of more scientific studies of crows and their kind, limiting itself to brief quotations from the larger studies.

Once I realized that, however, I loved the book for itself, for its account of a life spent observing the birds in the house, for Woolfson's own love of the birds, and for her own quiet, constant, and intense observation of the world in her house and yard. That intensity and the ability to communicate it makes the book a winner.

And I still want to know more about Chicken!