Someday I will come up with a good reason why I am friends with the neighbourhood Crow . For now , I can say that it started when I looked up from my office window to see this big pile of crows hanging out on the roof of an flat building nearby . I had learn that these fauna , part of a larger phratry of razz send for corvids , were among the smart creature in the world . If they were that intelligent , I want to meet them . How could I get those awesome fauna to come call me ? I decided to ascertain out .
Six months by and by , I have made admirer with about seven gasconade and two lowly , brightly - colored corvids called scrub John Jay — one of whom consume out of my manus . Like many scientists who study these animals , I ’ve become convinced that these creatures are not only smart , but also have a possibility of psyche .
When I begin trying to make friends with the vaporing , I did n’t have sex much about these birds other than what I ’d read in popular account . I imagine they like shining things ( which change by reversal out not to be true ) , and I ’d heardCornell bird watcher Kevin McGowansay on NPR that they like peanuts . So I take a great piece of shiny tin foil and wrap it around the wooden railings on my balcony , stashing some peanuts underneath it . Whenever I see the crow , I would whistle and wave and stand next to the enhancer . Yes , I ’m sure I looked like an cretin , but apparently they noticed .
One morning while I was in bed , I heard a caboodle of thunk and the sound of undulate feathers . When I came out to the balcony , I could see that the crows had ripped subject the foil and taken the peanuts . I continued with this routine for a while , and eventually they would come to get their peanuts when I was working . I ’d follow them advance lento down the railing , one oculus on me , then snatch the peanut . Every twenty-four hour period , a group of three would come to eat — two seemed to be a mated pair , and the third I nicknamed Whitey because he had a bad bloodless patch on one offstage . He seemed to be quite old and debile , and had a hard time set down and exact off . I left a mickle of peanuts out for Whitey on a lower inveigh where it was well-fixed for him to bring down . He and his two flock acquaintance would plunk up the peanuts in their beaks , then flee into the tree where they would hold the peanut against a branch with one claw and nag it loose for the ball inside .
This became our daily act . Here you’re able to see a video by Bruce Bourque showing how brag ( and one chaparral jay ! ) consume the goober he put out .
Hiding and Stealing
Along with the crows came two small , obnoxious bird with bright naughty wings and fluffy gray knocker . They were lightning fast and would take hold of two or three peanut in the time it took Whitey to get up the gumption to land and pluck up just one . The crows would yell at them — aw aw aw ! — and the trespasser would skreak back — ack ! ack ! ack ! It was a confrontation , and I was micturate that these little guys were stealing my friend ’ intellectual nourishment .
Here ’s a video showing the sort of birds I saw , by Seth Herbey . So I pop out reading up on these blue-blooded razzing and get a line that they are scrub jays , also members of the corvid kinsfolk . They ’re quite smart , just like their crowing brethren , and are famous for their abilityto veil nutrient in up to 200 concealing places and think of them all . investigator have read that they alsoseem to think of when they hive up their food , returning to food that vitiate chop-chop earlier than to nutrient ( like peanuts in the shell ) that keep for a long metre . Once I have sex this , I set out ascertain the jays more nearly . certainly enough , they would grab a peanut and race somewhere nearby — the neighbour ’ lawn , the backyard bungalow violent storm trough , our flower bed , various Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree — and shroud their food for thought . The crows would always follow them .
The foliage - drop dead storm toilet was a favorite hiding place , and the Crow take off hang out on the roof next to it , rooting through the leaf for the jay ’s stashes . It make to the point where I ’d put out peanuts and the brag would just hold back for the jays to grab them , and then follow them and see while they hid the monkey nut . This isthieving conduct that scientists have study for many years , and they ’ve key out that scrub jays have a substance abuse of concealing nutrient , then get going back and obscure it again elsewhere , especially when they love they ’re being watched . In this path , they take in the commentator into thinking the food is hidden in one smudge when it has actually been moved somewhere else .
Some scientists say that the jay ’s ability to figure out that they are being watch by potential thieves picture that they have a theory of idea — in other words , they can mock up another bird ’s intellection to themselves , and cipher out what its motive might be . It also shows thatthey can plan for the future , since they not only make these caches of food but maintain them by moving them around to fritter the crows who want to pilfer .
Mobbing
One day , Whitey and his two friend stopped coming around . I surmise that plausibly Whitey died . For a while no newfangled Crow came around , but I did witness an amazing crow assemblage . A chemical group of about nine crows gathered on the rooftops of the tall flat building ringing my backyard . A couple of them were dead tremendous — I ’d never seen them in the neighborhood before . They all started calling back and forth to each other — aw ! aw ! — and they were clearly communicating . One would set out with two vociferation , then the others would reply with two . Then they would each squall out three times in a dustup . I felt like I was watching a council of crow elders or something .
That was when a new bird emerged on top of one of the roofs . It was a gorgeous mortarboard , with a pallid breast and vast , brown - blemish backstage , which it open at one point to an astonishing wingspan . It stood there silently on its box while the crows called . What the hell was this ? I enquire . I decided to render to participate , since apparently non - corvids were at this party . When one line-shooting issued his vociferation , I would whistle back with the same number of sound the whole bunch was make . ultimately , after about ten minute of the Crow and I calling back and forth , the mortarboard take off in a graceful arc , and the whole flock shot after him .
I later learned that I ’d unwittingly enter in amobbing . Here , you’re able to see a video of a hawk being mobbed by two crows , taken at Drew University in New Jersey . Hawks are the crow ’s innate enemy , deplete their testicle and babies , and crow from unlike good deal will occasionally ring together to chase a hawk out of their territories . This particular hawk had been hunt in our locality , and I ’d caught him go away the remains of half - eaten pigeons in our backyard a couple of times . So the Crow had finally band together to chamfer him out . I feel distressed about this — urban hawks are uncommon , and this had understandably been his territory — but it was also a canonical part of how ecosystems work . brute compete with each other for resources , and these Crow wanted to protect their materialisation .
afterward , I watched two scrub jays chase a lone crow away from the tree diagram in my backyard when they wanted all the peanuts I ’d put out . Jays mob crow all the time . Sometimes , triumph mob each other . Mobbing is part of the corvid way .
Love and communicating
presently after I started feeding the scrub jays , I realized that they were a mated pair . distaff scrub John Jay make a distinctive call , often called a “ rattle . ” ( you could hear it in this TV from Lorcan Keating ) . So I was capable to key the female person by her call , and by the fact that she was far more curious and brave than her mate . She would take the air justly up to me on the rail and hold off for her peanut . So I come out to pop the question her goober from my hand . She took one ! Sometimes , I would just stick my hand out of the sliding spyglass doorway with a groundnut in it , and she would swoop down , take hold of it , and launch herself back into the sky by pushing off from my finger . She never quite landed on me , but she always rust out of my hands now . And , I might add , she ’ll eat out of the hand of anybody who comes out of my office door with a peanut . Her checkmate prefers to seat in the tree and dive for the peanuts I throw .
I ’m not the only somebody who has befriend a scrub John Jay like this . I love this video by Rachel575 , where she chats with a scrub jay who like to come in into her flat for peanuts .
One sidereal day , the female scrub jay showed up with a small cracker in her mouth . She position it down right next to me on the railing , then hop over to grab her groundnut . I ’m not altogether sure if she think of to bring me the redneck , or if she draw a blank about it in her excitement over the monkey nut . But as bird watcher John Marzluff note in his bookGifts of the Crow , it ’s moderately usual for these birds to bring odd presents to their human Quaker . If crows do it , I would assume that jays might do it too .
A new flock of crows start hang out in my backyard about a month ago . There are four of them , and they are all clearly juveniles : small , crazily curious , and awfully clumsy . Unlike their predecessors , who would gracefully outdo up peanuts and snap them open while equilibrize in the tree diagram , these crows will wing elsewhere ( usually to a roof ) to crack the peanuts opened and collation . But they do like to visit by sitting in the backyard trees , or sometimes on the rail where I put out peanut for them . Often when they arrive they ’ll stick out somewhat accusingly on the rail , looking right at me . “ Where are the damn peanuts ? ” they seem to be asking .
One of them I ’ve nickname Stretchy because he loves to sit in the tree near my windowpane and do crowing yoga . He ’ll stretch one wing , then the other , then each leg . He ’ll pull one wing low , loop his wooden leg over it , then scratch his head . It ’s insanely endearing . One day I went outside next to him to stretch too . When I go around my arms out , he jumped off , watching as I tardily stretch my ramification . Then he went back to dilute his wings . Were we communicate ? Who the hell do it ? It was fun , though .
Scrub jays be given to flow out in paired pair , while bragging form flocks made up of family line members . That ’s why crows impose my backyard in flocks . After observing both mathematical group for a while , it was clear that they had pretty complex relationship . The two jays push sometimes , screaming and chasing each other down the whole block of backyard next to mine . They also act . One of the jays care to chase its quarter .
UC Davis bionomics researcher Teresa Iglesiasdiscovered that jays also hold noisy “ funeral ” when they discover a bushed scrub jay . Here is a video recording she took of what the scrub John Jay did when they observe a dead jay in her friend ’s backyard .
The gasconade will sometimes help each other , or sneak behind each other ’s binding . One Corvus I call Clumsy because he always bump over several peanuts before manage to snag one off the railing . When he issue forth alone to feed the peanuts , he always claim as many as possible and races away . But when Stretchy add up , he ’ll stand over the peanut vine offer and call to his good deal . Soon all four will be there , including Clumsy , knocking the peanuts around and eating until I stop feeding them .
I never feed the birds before noon , because they are improbably noisy and I do n’t want them bugging our neighbors in the morning . The jays and crows seem well aware of this . They never show up before about 12:30 attend for peanuts . The Jay will often expend much of the afternoon returning every time of day to model next to the windowpane and expect at me , puffing up their feathers so they front like they ’re de - rezzing and then coming into focus again . I ’ll watch them clean the down on their chest of drawers , occasionally eating a bantam nit they happen there , and marveling at that goofy way they have of scratching their heads . It ’s a kind of companionship .
Theory of Mind vs. Series of InstinctsA recent article issue in PLoS , “ Corvid Re - hoard Without A possibility of creative thinker : A Model , ” illustrate the odd duality between scientists who come on the question of bird intelligence . In it , a group of researchers suggests that scrub jays who re - cache their food for thought after being observed by other birds ( like the jays do when the crows are look on ) are n’t doing it because they know the Crow might steal . In other words , they have no theory of judgement that allows them to take the crows ’ view and suppose at their motivation . Instead , say the research worker , jays just have an inherent aptitude that make them get more accent out when they are being watched by other birds . Then , when they get stressed , they have the urge to re - hoard their food . This would suggest that jay engage on a less sophisticated stratum in some way . They do n’t actualise what the crow might do , and they do n’t even jazz why they are re - caching . They just get stressed out and have the urge to re - cache and then they ’re done .
Many scientists , like Gifts of the Crow author and scientist Murzluff , take the paired power point of view . Murzluff think that crows and other corvids have a theory of mind , which reserve them to understand and anticipate the deportment of other creatures around them . This is why , for example , crows are able-bodied to figure out that it ’s a unspoiled idea to salvage for food on the Seattle ferrying between cars — they ’ve seen people pitch nutrient out the windows before , and anticipate they ’ll do it again . It ’s why scrub jay know that the crows are watching them to seek to steal their peanuts . crowing also utilise tools , bend sticks to turn them into hooks for retrieving intellectual nourishment .
They play , as you may see from this video of a crow surfing on a snowy roof in Russia .
And they ’ll even fee other animal , as this pet gasconade does with his wienerwurst and true cat sidekick .
Their highly - develop brains — dissimilar from mammalian ’s but no less complex — seem capable of planning for the future ( hoard ) , suppose at motivations and acting accordingly ( re - cache food ) and problem work ( tool economic consumption ) .
Do crows , John Jay and other corvids share with human beings the ability to know themselves and bed other creatures too ? Or are they just roleplay on instinct , which we err for more complex thought formula ? It ’s impossible to say for certain . But there is no doubt that they are passing intelligent , social brute , who count human being among those creature they are uncoerced to trust .
Memory
One of the most fascinating facts about vaporing is thatthey have excellent facial recognition abilities . They dive - bomb masses who hurt them even years after the injury , and they will deliver to people who fertilize them for eld too .
I recently catch back from a long trip , and I inquire if the scrub jay and crows would remember me . They did . A few time of day after I walked into my study , the scrub jays land on the railing and and buck me looks that say , “ Give me a groundnut now , human . ” When I stepped outside with the peanut , the female jay protrude dancing . She lead in a tiny rotary and jump-start up and down . Then , for the first time , she landed on my hand and stayed there for just a 2nd before snatch her peanut and zapping off . I fling her partner a Arachis hypogaea , and he dive for it , then flew next door to tap it into a hiding spot at the sharpness of our neighbors ’ lawn .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNRAjEe9t1w
Here ’s a great TV by HollyCalifYankee where he show a scouring jay eat on out of his hand in tedious gesture .
A few minutes later , all four of the crow gang landed on the leg that is closest to my balcony . It bowed under their fuse weight . Normally they would n’t all share the leg , nor would they land so close by . I ’m not sure you could say they had missed me , but for sure they ’d missed those earthnut . I put some goober out for them in their favorite place , and before I ’d even gone back inside , they ’d whirled down to grab as many as possible .
I watched from behind the glass threshold , admiring the light on their plume . And laughing at Clumsy , who ’d piled up way more Arachis hypogaea than he could stockpile in his hooter , misplace many in the process . But he prevent trying over and over to make the staring honker - quick stack . If merging once a day to divvy up food make a friend , then these corvids have definitely become mine .
Top photo by SipaPhoto viaShutterstock
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