Crows are surprisingly smart
The drawing from Marzluff and Angell's 2012 book here shows Betty, a Caledonian crow, bending a hook in a piece of wire, to get from down in a tube a tiny basket of food. I find this astonishing and a little bit spooky – shades of Hitchcock's 1963 movie, "The Birds". Real birds, if they are smart as crows, can dominate by much smarter moves than simply mobbing, although they are also masters of such gang attacks.
I was told by a lady who read this book and knows from her experience years ago that crows are extremely demanding pets, causing unceasing mayhem. She told me their crow could not be stopped from pulling the clothes pins off a neighbor's line. The neighbor solved her problem of wet clothes on the ground by killing the crow.
Here's an excellent hour Nature documentary about crows that shows John Marzluff's research:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=sL60e42A924
A year ago minus one day I read another good book about crows that was published three years earlier (2009):
Crow planet: essential wisdom from the urban wilderness,
by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.
Here's the picture(s) of the cover I posted in Flickr:
Crows are surprisingly smart
The drawing from Marzluff and Angell's 2012 book here shows Betty, a Caledonian crow, bending a hook in a piece of wire, to get from down in a tube a tiny basket of food. I find this astonishing and a little bit spooky – shades of Hitchcock's 1963 movie, "The Birds". Real birds, if they are smart as crows, can dominate by much smarter moves than simply mobbing, although they are also masters of such gang attacks.
I was told by a lady who read this book and knows from her experience years ago that crows are extremely demanding pets, causing unceasing mayhem. She told me their crow could not be stopped from pulling the clothes pins off a neighbor's line. The neighbor solved her problem of wet clothes on the ground by killing the crow.
Here's an excellent hour Nature documentary about crows that shows John Marzluff's research:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=sL60e42A924
A year ago minus one day I read another good book about crows that was published three years earlier (2009):
Crow planet: essential wisdom from the urban wilderness,
by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.
Here's the picture(s) of the cover I posted in Flickr: