In The Company Of Crows

By Curtiss Clark

 

For almost a decade, a couple of sheet metal crows perched on the opposing posts of our front gate, bracketing the approach to our front door with their dour expressions of skepticism and disappointment. We were never quite sure whether their doubtful demeanor was intended for the occupants of the house or those who might approach it. Then they were stolen one night early last fall.

Kate and I had installed the pair on the gate believing that they would bring good luck ­— a belief that was based on hope rather than any real scholarship on our part. Now, realizing that they ultimately lured a thief to our front gate, we know that our hope was unfounded.

Crows are widely seen as emblems of mischief or forces of darkness in the divinations of various cultures, stretching all the way back to ancient Rome. Native Americans have portrayed them as tricksters. On the British Isles, crows were often the subject of rhyming aphorisms portending both bad and good luck: A crow on the thatch, soon death lifts the latch, or Two crows I see, good luck to me. And if you believe a story repeated on crow folklore sites around the Internet, they used to release two crows together at wedding celebrations; if the pair flew away together, the couple would have a long life together, and if they flew in different directions, the couple would soon follow suit. (Crows, being extremely social creatures, could be counted on to render a favorable verdict on the couple’s prospects every time.) While we miss our metal crows, Kate and I are at least consoled to know they flew off together, even if it was in the back seat of a thief’s car.

Fortunately, we still have plenty of opportunity to observe crows around our place. Currently there is a group of five American crows that preside over the neighborhood, which includes fields, woodlands, and backyards. During the day, you can either hear them or see them almost all the time. Now, in the middle of winter, they are very easy to spot in the pale winter sky, or in the open web of branches in the giant maples around the house, or in their strutting administration of the snow banks near the barn, where we have scattered some corn for them to share with the blue jays and squirrels. And their caw-aw-aw vocalizations carry the better part of mile on a still day. (Crows are excellent mimics and have been taught to “talk” like parrots by some people who have domesticated them.)

I like the crows, even though they steal eggs from the nests of songbirds and tend to be thuggish when it comes to the other small creatures that share their territory. Much has been made of their intelligence. There are plenty of videos on YouTube documenting their tool-making and problem-solving abilities. And there are stories about crows teaming up with cats to kill and consume small birds, or crows dropping tough nuts in the path of cars and then swooping in to collect the prize from their crunched shells. What impresses me most, however, is the crows’ devotion to one another and their teamwork in getting themselves and their group through another day, one way or another.

About three weeks ago, Kate and I heard a great crowmotion in the field and saw our group-of-five mobbing a red-tailed hawk. (Hawks and owls are natural enemies of the crows, and chasing them from their territories is always a priority.) The hawk had snatched what appeared to be a mouse or a vole from the field and was trying to savor its meal in peace perched in a low branch of a maple tree. The crows quickly surrounded the hawk on nearby branches and slowly began to tighten their circle. The clearly apprehensive hawk swiveled its head back and forth, trying to keep an eye on the nearest interloper. As soon as a crow saw it was not being observed, it advanced a foot or two, squeezing the raptor’s comfort zone, until one got close enough to execute an impertinent pluck on the hawk’s prized tail.

The red-tail had had enough. It dropped its meal and fled. The dead rodent barely hit the ground before one of the crows had snatched it up (for a victory party?), while the other four took wing and fell in behind the hawk, barking taunts, administering twisting aerial pecks, and otherwise showing the red-tail the horizon.

Despite their cunning and intelligence, crows don’t always win the day. And they don’t just brush off their losses. In her latest book, Crow Planet, Seattle-based naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt describes accounts of “crow funerals” at which a community of crows clusters around a fallen bird to observe the loss “in perfect silence” — a rare state for these voluble birds.

Sometimes I think our species is hampered by our big brains, our facility with language, and our conceptualizing about past and future. There is so much grace in the natural world – even in the persistent presence of sudden death by happenstance, hunger, or predation. Its secret lies just beyond our understanding. I find myself looking to crows, who now seem to be everywhere in this spare winter landscape, to help mediate that tantalizing gap in my all-too-human perceptions.

Putting my faith in a trickster… I think I now understand those looks of skepticism and disappointment that once graced our gate.

(Seventy-five essays in the Field Notes series by Curtiss Clark can be found at www.field-notebook.com.)