I don’t know what they’re doing. I just know what they’re up to.
Yesterday when our personal crows (Dickens, DooDah, Auxiliary Dickens, and Ancillary DooDah) came by for their daily peanuts, which we are insisting they ask for in some manner, because we’re self-centered attention junkies, Dave had himself a notion. It was much like the notion of feeding vegetables to your dog under the table. He had a stale quarter of a sandwich left that he didn’t want, and he thought maybe DooDah would.
DooDah did. DooDah scooped up the entire sandwich, about the size of drink coaster, and flew off with it. It isn’t a great idea. Bread mustard salami cheese peperoncinis mayonnaise. Nothing in that sandwich is good for birds, but it isn’t all that good for humans either, and in any case we don’t make a habit of it.
I watched her set the sandwich down and poke at it and maybe retrieve some particular element and then she picked it up and stuffed it into the soft soil near a patch of arugula. Then she found some dead leaves and carefully placed them on top. Well! Corvids cache nuts, seeds, and salami sandwiches! Awesome.
Today I looked up in time to see DooDah flying in with a familiar-looking sandwich about the size of a drink coaster in her beak. She went straight to the bird bath and put it in. Then she carefully peeled apart the layers and set them side by side to soak. All righty then. Softening it up.
And then—then—she put it back together in the original order, with all the corners lined up. The cheese was missing. I think she’d pulled that out first thing. She picked up the perfectly recombobulated sandwich and took it over to the soft soil and poked it in. Put a few leaves on top.
And then Ancillary Dickens came by and moped around, kicking at some leaves. “There’s nothing to eat,” he complained. He took a few aimless walks around the patio and got closer to DooDah. “There’s nothing to eat,” he said, again.
DooDah shook herself and straightened a belly feather. “Did you check the pantry?”
“There’s nothing in there.”
“Oh, now. Look harder.”
“There’s no cheese,” he said. Kicking.
“For heaven’s sake. There are rooks in the United Kingdom that would be thrilled to have the stuff you turn your rictal bristles up at. I don’t know why I even bother.”
“Eww, you said rictal!”
“You are such a child.”
“Chuckie’s mom gives him Mexican.”
“Maybe you should go live in Chuckie’s mom’s tree. There’s Mexican a half block away. You could get up off your dead cloaca and hit the dumpster if you don’t like what we have.”
He kicked at some more leaves. “I’m not all that hungry.”
DooDah walked over and poked him hard in the head, just for drill. “Did you poop today?”
“Thirty times.”
“Well go poop again. We’re not having anyone backed up just before nesting season.”
Kick. Kick.
“There’s nothing to do.”
“Excellent. Because the hawk-harassment posse is looking for recruits. Plus I could use some help gathering twigs for the new nest.”
“The new nest? That’s not for another month.”
“And we need someone on peanut dispenser surveillance. That back door over there. When it opens, peanuts come out. I can’t be on it all the time, because unlike some people, I have things to do.”
“I’ve got things! The guys and I are thinking of going downtown to roost early.”
“Are you. ‘Roost,’ is it.”
Kick. Kick. “Is there any more salami?”
Oh, you are so fortunate to have been accepted into a murder! A multitude of crows flies over our house every morning just after sunrise, on their way from their roosting area (which looks to be somewhere by the Delaware river.) Occasionally, a group of them will land in our trees and quark at each other, but they never come down to eat the cracked corn that I put out on the driveway for the doves and squirrels. (I never thought of making them sandwiches, but if I did, the squirrels would snap them up first.) Whereas when they “caw”, it seems like a warning sound, their “quarks” sound gentler and like they are conveying information to each other: “Potlatch in the field by Marini’s Produce. Pass it on.” I have seen large groups of them gather in fields in the spring, and it amuses me to think that they are having a potlatch so that the youngsters can get together with everyone and maybe find a mate.
I’m starting to like every little thing about them. This group of four knows us well and if we’re walking home from somewhere they’ll pick us up a block early and do a swoopy in front of us to let us know they’re there. Now I have peanuts in all my pockets. My laundry is a mess.
This makes me like you even more than I already did. I’m sure you read about the scientists who would capture crows to tag them and keep track of them. The crows would recognize the scientists who captured them and attack them whenever they saw them. Furthermore, they would tell the other crows about them and point them out, so that the scientists were bombarded not only by the original crows, but by total strangers. So they started wearing Dick Cheney masks in order to capture and tag them. Let Cheney take the fallout.
Your murder obviously knows you and loves you.
John Marzluff is now famous for determining that crows recognize individual human faces and everybody talks about how intelligent crows are. And they are. But Studley could do the same thing with a brain the size of a Tic-Tac and I personally believe almost all birds can do it. We’re the ones that are oblivious to being observed.
It’s so lovely to know the birds and animals as individuals. In our pond, we have a crowd of goldfish from tiny brown ones to big fat orange ones. Only two have names: Mr. Freckles and his girlfriend, Maybelline. Freckles is a calico fancy man, silver and gold with black spots and flowy, wafting fins and a nearly transparent tail almost as long as he is. He swims peacefully beside his love, Maybelline, who is a solid pinkish white with startling dark orange lipstick. It is a strange delight to see them as the ice retreats. They made it through. And somehow, so did we.
Yay Mr. Freckles and Maybelline! We’re going to wish we had some of that ice later.
I watched a raven bury a golf ball ‘for later’.
At least she didn’t sit it. I since read that crows don’t necessarily bury stuff so much as disguise it, using something they’ll recognize later. So what I saw was precisely that. The sandwich was not buried.
I LOVE this! I miss my crows. How do you know which is which?
I know which ones are Dickens and DooDah because nobody else pretends to be our crows, and DooDah has fluffier pants. And in season she is the chucklehead with many dialects. The other two I can’t tell apart but they’re easily cowed by D&D, and all four hang out together. Basically I really can’t tell them apart but I’m guessing pretty hard. Now Studley was easy.
Do you shell the peanuts or put them out still in their shells? I’ll try peanuts when my crows start coming back.
Peanuts in the shell. They don’t have any trouble with them and they make a nice POINK! on the patio so they can home in if they weren’t paying attention.
I have tried luring crows to my platform feeder but the Bluejays always get here first in a frenzy of weighing each peanut and carrying them off. I have seen the crows in the tree watching.
Bonnie, have you tried putting par of the peanuts out and letting the jays take them, and when they fly off (laughing), put the rest out for the patient crows?
Beth
I had such a magical experience today! I was making lunch and heard a more raucous than usual bunch of crows. Then they were accompanied by blue jays. I went outside to see what they were on about, and saw them mobbing a raptor in a tree in our backyard. It looked even bigger than a red-tailed hawk, so I got out my binoculars, and lo and behold — I had a bald eagle in a tree in my backyard! He stayed for quite a while before he got annoyed enough to move on. Definitely my best birthday present ever! (Needless to say — lunch was late.)