Crow in the Snow

So, thanks to Janice for sending me the following link (which she in turn got from Steve Brown's site: thanks, Stan!). It shows a crow playing in the snow with a game obviously of its own devising. That is, it's taking some kind of lid it's found, flying with it to the top of a steep roof, and then tobogganing down, wings flapping all the way. Then once at the bottom, it fishes the lid back out, flies back to the roof-peak, and does it again. Notice how it takes care to get the lidright-side-up. From the voices of the people recording this, it must be taking place in Russia (though it cd also be Ukrainian for all I know).

So: as impressive as it is seeing how smart crows are as shown by their ability to make tools to get food, somehow it's even more human to see one inventing a game with its own rules.

Here's the link. My wife insists I made hee-hee-hee noises all through watching it, which I deny.

--John R.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUBMSnHH7hc

Crows Ate My Pecan Pie

So, being a Southerner, love of pecan pie is part of my heritage. It's one of the things I really miss from before the low-carb Atkins days, and when I'm back home in Arkansas I try to go by the Magnolia Bake Shop and pick up at least one of their little (tart-sized) pecan pies. There are plenty of high-carb recipes that can be re-created in low (or at least lower) carb versions, but the corn syrup (=liquid sugar) plus the high-carb crust that make up two of the three essential ingredients of pecan pie had me stymied.

So, when Janice suggested I try it with Tupelo honey instead of corn syrup, I thought that had real possibilities. I made a low-carb (ground nut) crust, replaced the corn syrup that makes up the bulk of the pie with diabetic-friendly honey, and laid on the pecans on top with a generous hand. Since I wasn't sure how well the honey mixture would set compared with the corn syrup, I made them in tart form in little clear bowls rather than a whole pie (less messy to eat if it came out runny).

The results? Golden Honey Pecan Pie. Pretty good for a first effort: looked and tasted pretty much like pecan pie, but with a distinct dark yellow rather than brown coloration and an aftertaste of honey. So, discovery number one: it's possible to pull this off, though the recipe needs refining. Discovery number two: wow, these things are filling. Next time I should use smaller bowls (maybe the ramekins) so each individual serving is about half this size.

Unfortunately, having made them before Thanksgiving and then shortly afterwards being strickened with flu (which in my case mainly hit the stomach and, shall we say, digestion), I realized today that the two remaining ones have been sitting out on the counter for a week and a half. Having just recovered from stomach distress I didn't want to risk their having started to go bad, but just throwing them out seemed a pity. So, seeing how eager the birds have been the past few days for edibles in these first cold days of hard frost in the morning,* I decided to give them to our fine feathered friends (thinking that scavengers like crows wd have stomaches better suited to deal with any potential problems). First I pulled out all the pecans, washed them off, and chopped them up, thinking that these at least would be welcome. Then I scooped out the gooey center and crumbled ground-nut crust and decided why not? Put them on the other side of a little plate from the nuts and placed it on the ground out back beneath the suet feeder.

An hour later it was all gone. First came the chickadees and the juncos, but I also saw a flicker hanging round and, not long afterwards, a crow flying away from the empty dish. So I did the same with the second tart-pie. And sure enough, when I next checked back the little plate was bare once again.

And that's not even taking into account the goldfinches, juncos, chickadees, and red wing blackbirds (and yesterday a pigeon!) visiting the balcony itself. My work here is done.

For now.

--John R.

*just yesterday morning I'd been horrified to find little drops of frozen blood in the frost atop the balcony railing by our finch feeder. I assume the sudden frost of the night before had damaged one or more little bird's feet, though it seemed clear that whatever had been hurt had been able to move around a good deal. Also the two hummingbird feeders had been frozen, so I microwaved one a bit and cleaned out the other and filled it with fresh hummingbird juice (and was rewarded by seeing a hummingbird at it within a few minutes).

One good thing to come of this, though, was that I put out more finch food than usual to give them a little extra energy against the cold. Which meant I no longer had enough to make it all the way to the weekend. Which meant I had to drive over to Wild Birds Unlimited in Burien and buy some more Finch Mix, during which I got to pet their resident cat, Miss Millie.

On the way back, saw a hungry-looking hawk in a bare tree not too far from here, which made me wonder if on second thought the blood-drops might not have been from a raptor-strike at our feeder. No feathers though.

Crows Show Brand Loyalty

Having now finished IN THE COMPANY OF CROWS AND RAVENS by Jn M. Marzluff & Tony Angell,* have to say I don't think they succeeded in proving their thesis, which was that just as crows adjust their behavior over time to take into account changes in human culture, so too human culture has been influenced in major ways by crows.

Even so, the book is still well worth reading. The best anecdote was an experiment thought up and carried out by one of the authors' eight-year-old daughter. As is well known, crows love french fries. So she put some french fries in a McDonald's bag, and some in a plain brown paper bag. The crows went for the McDonald's bag first every time (IN THE COMPANY, page 225). It's probably not so much that they recognize the logo as that they understand the significance of the whole ensemble -- logo, color of the bag, &c.

For those interested in the topic, Candice Savage's BIRD BRAINS: THE INTELLIGENCE OF CROWS, RAVENS, MAGPIES, AND JAYS [1995; pb. 1997] is not just highly readable but full of beautiful photos (as one would expect from a Sierra Club book). I don't think it's seeped into our consciousness yet that corvids are the smartest of all birds, but this book makes a good case for it. Visually, my favorite image was of a crow scolding a bald eagle from only a foot or so away (page 73); the eagle looks astonished, as if it can't quite believe what it's seeing. I can relate to this one from personal experience; once in a long while I'll see a bald eagle in this area, and most of those times it's being harassed by a number of crows. There's also a bald eagle who likes to perch in a tall tree by the shore in Des Moines, and it always has a cohort of crows in the branches above and behind it fussing at it.

A much deeper look into corvid behavior can be found in Bernd Heinrich's MIND OF THE RAVEN [1999], which carefully documents raven behavior, both from his captive birds and observation in the wild (e.g., on trips to Yellowstone, Greenland, &c). You have to feel sorry for the ravens who went through some of his experiments (like the time he put on a bear suit and went into their cage on all four to see if they'd recognize him. He says they showed great distress, which would pretty much be my reaction if the person who fed me started crawling around on all fours and growling). Still, a fascinating read.

I've not yet been able to bring myself to read SEEKING THE SACRED RAVEN: POLITICS AND EXTINCTION ON A HAWAIIAN ISLAND by Mark Jerome Walters [2006], which I picked up in a bookstore in Hilo last September -- a detailed account of the failed attempt over a decade or so to save the last few Hawaiian Crows from extinction in the wild. While we were on the island I tried to visit the aviary/sanctuary where the last survivors of the species (fifty or so birds) are being bred in captivity, but apparently it's not open to the public. More on this one later.

--JDR


*book #2660 in my ongoing reading list.


current reading: THE BLACK CAMEL by Earl Derr Biggers [1929], one of the Charlie Chan series.