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04/12/2006

Betty and Other Crows

Last Friday, I was flipping rapidly through the TV channels
looking for an alternative to the day’s depressing news when I
stumbled upon Animal Planet. I was surprised to see a crow with
a wire in her beak. Sure enough, it was Betty! You remember
Betty – she was the crow I mentioned two weeks ago and in an
earlier column. Betty is celebrated as the crow that, faced with a
delicacy at the bottom of a narrow glass tube, picked up a length
of wire and fashioned a hook with which she retrieved the food
item. The Animal Planet segment showed Betty doing her thing.
A tiny bucket with a handle contained the food item; the bucket
was at the bottom of a glass tube. Betty picked up the wire and
bent it. Holding the wire in her beak and bracing herself with her
foot on the top of the tube, she lowered the wire into the tube and
pulled out the bucket. Betty did indeed know how to fashion and
use a tool to accomplish an objective – one smart crow.

I took the coincidental sighting of Betty as a sign that I should
revisit the subject of crows. Actually, I had decided that last
week but got so wound up with the merger of Lucent and Alcatel
that I had no space left to do justice to the crow. You may
remember that two weeks ago I mentioned that Kevin McGowan,
an ornithologist at Cornell University, had observed that a crow
widowed by the West Nile virus had taken her brood and moved
back in with her parents. After posting that column I was having
a cup of tea in our breakfast room when I heard the distinct
“caw-caw” of a crow in our backyard. This set me to wondering
how McGowan could possibly have been able to determine that a
widowed crow moved back with her parents. So I visited the
Cornell Web site and found a plethora of information about
crows that McGowan has assembled.

The answer to my immediate question about the widow was clear
when I found that McGowan and his students have been
following the American crow population in an area near Ithaca,
New York since 1989. They’ve been climbing trees, some 10
stories high, and tagging young crows in their nests with
different colored and numbered tags. The tags allow the
researchers to follow the birds from the ground with high-
powered binoculars and over the years they’ve followed the
habits and movements of individual crows and families.
McGowan now has records on over 350 crow families.

Crows are not only intelligent but they are also family oriented in
ways unlike most other birds. Most birds feed their young up to
the point where the youngsters are ready to leave the nest and fly.
The parents encourage the young ones to leave the nest, although
I’ve observed in our backyard that some robin parents still dig
out worms to feed to their young on the ground after the latter
have left the nest. Soon, however, the young ones take off or are
chased away by their parents and that’s the end of the family ties.
Crows, however, may preserve those family ties for years.

McGowan has seen crows that hang around for even 5 or 6 years
and help to feed and raise their younger brothers and sisters.
He’s seen as many as five birds on one nest feeding the nestlings.
The older children may also help out by feeding their mother
sitting on her eggs prior to hatching another brood. The average
brood is three babies with the chances being that two will survive
until the next year. This means the family can grow and
McGowan has found that extended crow families of 15 or so are
not uncommon. The older offspring also help out by defending
the family territory and the nest. When a crow finally strikes out
on its own, it may end up with a nest only a couple hundred feet
from its parents’ nest. Close enough that a widowed crow can
move back with her parents and be tracked by dedicated
researchers.

Crows share the tendency of many other birds to sleep in
“roosts”. For crows, the roost is typically a fall and winter thing;
during the breeding season they tend to sleep in their own
territories. I was shocked to find that the sizes of crow roosts
commonly involve thousands or tens of thousands of crows and
that some exceptionally large roosts may contain hundreds of
thousands of the birds. One roost in Oklahoma was estimated by
the State of Oklahoma Upland Game Inventory to number over
two million crows! Obviously, one tree couldn’t hold a million
crows; a roost may range in size from a single tree to a wide area
of trees and/shrubbery depending on the number of birds in the
roost.

Why do crows and other birds form roosts? Apparently, nobody
knows the answer. Speculations range from the crows seeking
protection from predators by sleeping in large numbers to the
idea that the birds share or seek information about good foraging
sites or even roost in or near good food sites. Near a good food
site, they can have a hearty breakfast before going off to forage
for a wider variety of foodstuffs. Typically, near the end of the
day, the crows don’t just head for the roosting site but an hour or
two before roosting will gather together in noisy groups, where
they chase each other and fight or just make a lot of noise
chattering. These groups then head for the roost where things
usually quiet down for the night.

In the past, crows generally roosted in rural settings outside of
town but today it is common to have roosting crows in the towns
or cities. In urban settings, it seems that the crows prefer
roosting in areas that are well lit at night instead of the darker
sections of town. The move to the cities may illustrate the
intelligence of the crows, which may have figured out that people
in cities don’t usually have guns to shoot them and/or that there
aren’t as many Great Horned Owls in the city. The owl likes to
dine on crows if given the opportunity. By choosing well-lit
areas for their roosts, the crows can see any predators more
clearly.

McGowan has observed that in roosts in the darker country
settings the crows settle and quiet down rather quickly. In the
well-lit city roosts, there is more noise and birds will flit from
one tree to another more often, unconcerned about unseen
predators. Another possible advantage to city roosting is the fact
that it is warmer in cities than the surrounding countryside,
sometimes as much as 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit.

Crows have a tough time starting out, most not even living a
year, either dying in the egg or as nestlings. However, once
they’ve survived the first year, the outlook is much better.
McGowan’s American crows average around three years for the
females and about five years for the males before they start
breeding. A real Methuselah was a 29 year-old American
crow, the oldest known wild American crow. The second oldest
known was just shy of 15 years old, so the record holder was
probably quite exceptional.

McGowan also has had the opportunity to check out the old
adage “to eat crow”. If you’re humiliated by having to admit a
mistake, the expression implies that you won’t find the taste of
crow to your liking. McGowan has had crow on several
occasions and found it to be “just fine”, its dark meat comparable
to wild duck. I would suggest, however, that you not try to bag a
crow for your own tasting without checking the hunting laws in
your locale. Discharging firearms in an urban setting is generally
not looked upon with favor!

Allen F. Bortrum



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Dr. Bortrum

04/12/2006

Betty and Other Crows

Last Friday, I was flipping rapidly through the TV channels
looking for an alternative to the day’s depressing news when I
stumbled upon Animal Planet. I was surprised to see a crow with
a wire in her beak. Sure enough, it was Betty! You remember
Betty – she was the crow I mentioned two weeks ago and in an
earlier column. Betty is celebrated as the crow that, faced with a
delicacy at the bottom of a narrow glass tube, picked up a length
of wire and fashioned a hook with which she retrieved the food
item. The Animal Planet segment showed Betty doing her thing.
A tiny bucket with a handle contained the food item; the bucket
was at the bottom of a glass tube. Betty picked up the wire and
bent it. Holding the wire in her beak and bracing herself with her
foot on the top of the tube, she lowered the wire into the tube and
pulled out the bucket. Betty did indeed know how to fashion and
use a tool to accomplish an objective – one smart crow.

I took the coincidental sighting of Betty as a sign that I should
revisit the subject of crows. Actually, I had decided that last
week but got so wound up with the merger of Lucent and Alcatel
that I had no space left to do justice to the crow. You may
remember that two weeks ago I mentioned that Kevin McGowan,
an ornithologist at Cornell University, had observed that a crow
widowed by the West Nile virus had taken her brood and moved
back in with her parents. After posting that column I was having
a cup of tea in our breakfast room when I heard the distinct
“caw-caw” of a crow in our backyard. This set me to wondering
how McGowan could possibly have been able to determine that a
widowed crow moved back with her parents. So I visited the
Cornell Web site and found a plethora of information about
crows that McGowan has assembled.

The answer to my immediate question about the widow was clear
when I found that McGowan and his students have been
following the American crow population in an area near Ithaca,
New York since 1989. They’ve been climbing trees, some 10
stories high, and tagging young crows in their nests with
different colored and numbered tags. The tags allow the
researchers to follow the birds from the ground with high-
powered binoculars and over the years they’ve followed the
habits and movements of individual crows and families.
McGowan now has records on over 350 crow families.

Crows are not only intelligent but they are also family oriented in
ways unlike most other birds. Most birds feed their young up to
the point where the youngsters are ready to leave the nest and fly.
The parents encourage the young ones to leave the nest, although
I’ve observed in our backyard that some robin parents still dig
out worms to feed to their young on the ground after the latter
have left the nest. Soon, however, the young ones take off or are
chased away by their parents and that’s the end of the family ties.
Crows, however, may preserve those family ties for years.

McGowan has seen crows that hang around for even 5 or 6 years
and help to feed and raise their younger brothers and sisters.
He’s seen as many as five birds on one nest feeding the nestlings.
The older children may also help out by feeding their mother
sitting on her eggs prior to hatching another brood. The average
brood is three babies with the chances being that two will survive
until the next year. This means the family can grow and
McGowan has found that extended crow families of 15 or so are
not uncommon. The older offspring also help out by defending
the family territory and the nest. When a crow finally strikes out
on its own, it may end up with a nest only a couple hundred feet
from its parents’ nest. Close enough that a widowed crow can
move back with her parents and be tracked by dedicated
researchers.

Crows share the tendency of many other birds to sleep in
“roosts”. For crows, the roost is typically a fall and winter thing;
during the breeding season they tend to sleep in their own
territories. I was shocked to find that the sizes of crow roosts
commonly involve thousands or tens of thousands of crows and
that some exceptionally large roosts may contain hundreds of
thousands of the birds. One roost in Oklahoma was estimated by
the State of Oklahoma Upland Game Inventory to number over
two million crows! Obviously, one tree couldn’t hold a million
crows; a roost may range in size from a single tree to a wide area
of trees and/shrubbery depending on the number of birds in the
roost.

Why do crows and other birds form roosts? Apparently, nobody
knows the answer. Speculations range from the crows seeking
protection from predators by sleeping in large numbers to the
idea that the birds share or seek information about good foraging
sites or even roost in or near good food sites. Near a good food
site, they can have a hearty breakfast before going off to forage
for a wider variety of foodstuffs. Typically, near the end of the
day, the crows don’t just head for the roosting site but an hour or
two before roosting will gather together in noisy groups, where
they chase each other and fight or just make a lot of noise
chattering. These groups then head for the roost where things
usually quiet down for the night.

In the past, crows generally roosted in rural settings outside of
town but today it is common to have roosting crows in the towns
or cities. In urban settings, it seems that the crows prefer
roosting in areas that are well lit at night instead of the darker
sections of town. The move to the cities may illustrate the
intelligence of the crows, which may have figured out that people
in cities don’t usually have guns to shoot them and/or that there
aren’t as many Great Horned Owls in the city. The owl likes to
dine on crows if given the opportunity. By choosing well-lit
areas for their roosts, the crows can see any predators more
clearly.

McGowan has observed that in roosts in the darker country
settings the crows settle and quiet down rather quickly. In the
well-lit city roosts, there is more noise and birds will flit from
one tree to another more often, unconcerned about unseen
predators. Another possible advantage to city roosting is the fact
that it is warmer in cities than the surrounding countryside,
sometimes as much as 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit.

Crows have a tough time starting out, most not even living a
year, either dying in the egg or as nestlings. However, once
they’ve survived the first year, the outlook is much better.
McGowan’s American crows average around three years for the
females and about five years for the males before they start
breeding. A real Methuselah was a 29 year-old American
crow, the oldest known wild American crow. The second oldest
known was just shy of 15 years old, so the record holder was
probably quite exceptional.

McGowan also has had the opportunity to check out the old
adage “to eat crow”. If you’re humiliated by having to admit a
mistake, the expression implies that you won’t find the taste of
crow to your liking. McGowan has had crow on several
occasions and found it to be “just fine”, its dark meat comparable
to wild duck. I would suggest, however, that you not try to bag a
crow for your own tasting without checking the hunting laws in
your locale. Discharging firearms in an urban setting is generally
not looked upon with favor!

Allen F. Bortrum