Soar with the crows

Crows can also imitate sounds made by animals or people. You may hear a crow making a sound like a puppy yelping, a cat meowing, or a person laughing.

Today it is generally illegal to possess wild animals, including crows. But in the past, people enjoyed adopting wild crows and trying to teach them to talk. Whitney Dough's pet crow, Andy, could say many different words and phrases, including "hello," "hands up," "I won," and "hot dog."

Usually Andy's chatter was amusing. But sometimes it was embarrassing - such as the time he interrupted a church service. Perched on the branch of a tree outside the church, the bird shouted, "Quiet!" in the middle of the minister's sermon!

"All crows, whether or not they use tools, are clever animals," says Hunt, "and perhaps should be seen less like pests and more like an example of what incredible life natural selection can produce."

In my front yard, the hummingbirds are very businesslike. They zip from flower to flower, sipping nectar before they zoom away. The crows who visit my garden, though, seem to spend more time just having fun.

In the spring I'll often spot crows speeding toward a particular branch of an evergreen tree - a branch that sticks out like a student raising his hand. The visiting crow lands heavily on the branch, which bounces wildly up and down beneath the weight of the bird. Once the swinging stops, the crow flaps away only to rocket in again for another landing.

Young crows - especially yearlings - love to play, researchers say. But Whitney Dough, who observed his pet crow, Andy, for two decades, thinks that all crows are playful.

"Like a kitten or a puppy, a young crow loves to play," he says in his book about Andy, "Fowl Play." "However, that's where the similarity ends, because a crow never outgrows this youthful [tendency]."

Andy especially liked to play tricks on people. Once he snitched the eyeglasses right out of a visiting salesman's hand.

Another time, he pulled all the clothespins off a neighbor's laundry, which was hanging on a clothesline in the yard.

Crows and other members of the corvid family, such as ravens, have been observed tricking predators. The bird may pretend to be sound asleep as a cat or another animal sneaks up on it. Just as the animal is ready to pounce, the bird swoops up into the air, sometimes cackling gleefully at its successful trick.

If you see a crow flying around your neighborhood, watch it for a while. See what it likes to do for fun!

Websites
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, www.birds.cornell.edu/allaboutbirds/birdguide/american_crow_dtl.html

National Audubon Society, www.audubon.org/bird/boa/f18_g1b.html

Books
"Fowl Play: Twenty Hilarious Years with a Talking Crow," by Rev. Whitney Dough.

"Listen to the Crows," by Laurence P. Pringle.

"Wonders of Crows," by Wyatt Blassingame.

Page: 1 | 2