Perhaps crows appear smug because they’re so And here’s something: It’s not illegal for Brian Donahue to shoot crows off his front porch. Nearly successful. The key to their success is their resourceall birds are protected under the Migratory Bird fulness, adaptability—in short, their intelligence. Treaty Act of 1918, including their nests, feathers and Humans have long-held antagonistic relationships eggs, but crows are a weird exception. According to with such persistent creatures. We hate rats, pigeons federal guidelines, “Individuals may kill crows with- (“rats with wings”), Canada geese, roaches. We get out a hunting license or permit when [crows] are bored of seeing the same few animals. Floating found committing, or about to commit, depredations down the Clark Fork River on a recent on agricultural crops, or when concentrated in such Sunday, my friends and I saw a bald eagle numbers and manner as to constitute a health hazard perched in a tree along the riverbank and were awed and humbled. We saw or other nuisance.” what may have been the same bird the How many crows constitutes a nuisance? Picture a crow about to commit a depredation: following Wednesday, and halfmocking, half-serious, we rolled our Note the look in her shiny black eye. There are practical reasons to regard crows as eyes and said, “God, a bald eagle pests. A farmer worried about his crops has grounds again. Boring!” Consider the panda, a stubto erect a scarecrow or take them down with a shotgun—but what about the rest of us? What is it about bornly unsuccessful animal—more giant raccoon than bear. Pandas crows we find so unnerving? Vague ideas that they spread diseases are most- seem to hate sex and refuse to eat anyly the stuff of overprotective mothers. Is it some- thing but bamboo. Yet we root for panthing about their blackness? Workers at animal shel- das and spend millions of dollars yearly on spirited camters will sometimes tell you paigns to keep them that black dogs are the hardConsider the panda, breeding. Meanwhile, est to get adopted. Why crows and other corvids are would we disdain black ania stubbornly wildly successful, present on mals? Perhaps for reasons as just about every continent in witless as that darkness is unsuccessful record numbers every year, and unknowable and frightening; so too, therefore, are black animal—more giant we resent them. It seems unfair. We crave the rationed symmethings. During the Black Plague, in the 14th century, raccoon than bear. try of zoos and arks. Too many of one kind of animal means crows were seen feasting on Pandas seem to hate ecological imbalance. It makes human bodies. For all their us feel as though we’ve done intelligence, they’ve learned nothing about reverence— sex and refuse to eat something wrong. It makes us the crows are winning. and for that, we blame them. anything but bamboo. thinkCrows have thrived by borCrows don’t kill humans. Still, we call a group of crows a Yet we root for pandas rowing many of our same strategies. They roost on our “murder.” (Ravens fare a little better. Three or more are and spend millions of lampposts and fences and largely eat what we throw away. merely an “unkindness.”) dollars yearly on It could be that they’re a little The speaker of Edgar too close for comfort. Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” Think back to the anti-drug calls his midnight visitor a spirited campaigns to commercial in which the mus“grim, ungainly, ghastly, keep them breeding. tached father bursts into his gaunt and ominous bird of room, demanding to yore.” At the start, we find the Meanwhile, crows and son’s know where his son learned narrator alone and listless, that drugs were an effective way pining for a woman, Lenore, other corvids are to manage pain and boredom, who is forever lost to him. The raven raps on the door wildly successful, pres- and the son shouts back, “I learned it from you, Dad!” like a person and steps inside. The bird’s behavior is mad- ent on just about every Watching crows fighting one another for the discarded dening because it’s so subtle continent in record french fries we were too stuffed and inexplicable. “Never flitto finish reminds us of someting,” it does nothing but sit, numbers every year, thing we don’t like about ourstare and repeat the word “Nevermore.” Maybe it means and we resent them. selves, and we can’t help but blame them for it. that Lenore will never return. Our relationship with It could be deeper, that there’s no escape from the clinging, unknowable crows wouldn’t be so complicated if they weren’t so dissatisfaction that lives in the hearts of men. Or it damn smart. Mosquitos swarm in the millions, you could truly mean nothing. In any case, the agony kill them with a bloody, satisfying smack and you forcomes from the raven’s merciless taunting, that he get about them. But there’s something about crows knows something we don’t. And he’s not going to that makes them impossible to ignore: The gears in their heads keep turning. tell us.
We’re not that cool. Erick Greene is a wildlife biologist and has been a professor at the University of Montana for the last 20 years. As part of his current research, Greene has been analyzing crow calls in the wild. For this, he works along the Kim Williams Trail with a falconer. The falconer lets loose predatory birds, mostly hawks, who fly through the woods and return to the falconer’s gloved hand. Greene and his associates then record and analyze the crows’ alarm calls and how they’re heard and interpreted by the surrounding wildlife. The calls can be very specific. Crows have different sounds for “hawk flying,” “hawk sitting,” etc., which is alarmingly like syntax. When a predatory bird flies by and a crow detects it, what follows is something Greene describes as a “wave of information” through the forest. Within seconds, all the animals—the chickadees, the squirrels, the rabbits, the deer—know a predator is coming and appropriately panic. Greene’s work illustrates another aspect of crow intelligence, which is their ability to recognize and remember human faces. It only takes one or two trials before crows in the area come to recognize the falconer and identify him as an enemy. Inelegant but true: Scientists solve the problem with disguises.
Missoula Independent Page 15 August 2 – August 9, 2012