Just a Crow

Or "just another damned crow..." is more likely.  We tend to look at crows and starlings as 'trash' birds~ too many of them, too pushy, noisy and grabby.  All true.  How very adaptive they are.   All of those black birds are pushing out our native birds, raiding nests, piercing eggs, hogging food.  Yep.  And we have created the world that supports these survivors.  Many of the beautiful, colorful songbirds that used to be so common, Meadowlarks, for instance, require an environment that exists in very reduced areas now.  We have built, filled-in, added-to, chopped down, fenced and mowed a lot of bird habitat.  Many argue that this is our right as humans.  Whatever you believe, we have created a populous, paved world where many species simply cannot exist.  But crows can.  Starlings can.  I have to admire that.  Crows are so smart.   They look out for each other, defend each other and problem solve. Examples:  there is a family of crows that hangs out on the mowed lawn near where I work.  Crows are really hard to tell apart, but one of these crows has a deformed foot.  I have gotten to recognize this crow.  He and his crew are always around and one or two other crows stay close to the crow with the bad foot.  They watch me as I walk by, and bad-foot crow hops sideways away from me, watching me all the time.  The other two get closer to bad-foot crow till I'm safely past.  There are lots of stories about crows taking care of each other.  "Crow Nation", a wonderful book about crows, tells incredible stories of families of crows and crow relationships.
If you see a big mob of very noisy crows in a tree, look closely in the center and you may be able to pick out an owl or hawk who is trying very hard to be invisible.  Usually the crows just will not quit till the intruder flies off in a huff.  
Crows in Japan learned to crack nuts by dropping them on busy streets and waiting till cars ran over them.  Then, because they figured out the danger of traffic, they learned to wait at the curb with the people till the light changed, THEN go out and harvest the cracked nut.  I watched the video of this. Wow. 

In our yard, I got tired of the crows stealing all of the suet from the feeder.  It would be gone in a day.  I found a feeder where the suet fits inside  a woven metal tube.  The tube sits in a protective mesh which lets in the small birds, so they can safely feed, but not the piggy birds.   The neighborhood crows came, they looked, they stood on it, they stood below it, they pondered.  Then they flew off and never tried again to breach the suet.  They figured  out that they couldn't do it. 

And here's one last thought.  Walking on a street in town and passing crows on a lawn means that you have been close to a wild creature who lives by his wits and survives. I think that's worth our respect.  Even if it's just a crow.

I have to go chase them off the other bird feeder now.