While out on my morning walk the other day, I had a close encounter of the corvus brachyrhynchos kind.
Corvus brachyrhynchos is a fancy moniker for the good old American crow, which has to be one of my favorite bird species. Raucous, smart and cocky, the crow is, to my mind, the bad boy of the bird world, which makes him all the more appealing.
My encounter occurred while I was walking by a city park. There was nothing especially memorable about it. Neither I, nor the three crows I spotted in the park, did anything noteworthy. But I enjoyed our little meeting because the crows stood only a few feet away from me, swaggering across the lawn as if they owned the place.
The first thing I always notice whenever I get close to a crow is that it’s a rather large bird. That isn’t obvious when they’re squawking and cawing from a high branch or a rooftop, but it becomes quite clear when you go toe to toe with one of these guys. Granted, they’re not in the same league as birds of prey, but they’re a far cry from chickadees, sparrows and the like. Even blue jays look downright tiny by comparison.
Then there’s that eye. Look a crow in the eye and you can see a bright spark of intelligence there that is lacking, or at least less obvious, in many other birds.
And let’s not forget the plumage. It’s black, of course, but also lustrous. To me, that reinforces the image of the crow as a rebel without a cause, decked out in an armless motorcycle jacket that just happens to be made of feathers rather than leather.
The American crow is a “cunning, inquisitive, vocal opportunist,” according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “It is a mistake to underestimate a crow’s ability.”
The species is now “more abundant than it was when the first European settlers arrived,” the Cornell Lab reports on its web site. “Large-scale persecution during the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth made crows shy of people. They learned quickly, however, that there is safety from guns in villages and cities and that food is abundant there.”
Even experts know relatively little about the species, according to the Cornell Lab. One reason? Researchers would need color-banded crows to answer many of their questions, “but crows are notoriously hard to capture, let alone recapture.”
Yup, that’s the crow all right: too darn sharp to let some pesky scientist stick a band around his leg.
Corvus brachyrhynchos is a fancy moniker for the good old American crow, which has to be one of my favorite bird species. Raucous, smart and cocky, the crow is, to my mind, the bad boy of the bird world, which makes him all the more appealing.
My encounter occurred while I was walking by a city park. There was nothing especially memorable about it. Neither I, nor the three crows I spotted in the park, did anything noteworthy. But I enjoyed our little meeting because the crows stood only a few feet away from me, swaggering across the lawn as if they owned the place.The first thing I always notice whenever I get close to a crow is that it’s a rather large bird. That isn’t obvious when they’re squawking and cawing from a high branch or a rooftop, but it becomes quite clear when you go toe to toe with one of these guys. Granted, they’re not in the same league as birds of prey, but they’re a far cry from chickadees, sparrows and the like. Even blue jays look downright tiny by comparison.
Then there’s that eye. Look a crow in the eye and you can see a bright spark of intelligence there that is lacking, or at least less obvious, in many other birds.
And let’s not forget the plumage. It’s black, of course, but also lustrous. To me, that reinforces the image of the crow as a rebel without a cause, decked out in an armless motorcycle jacket that just happens to be made of feathers rather than leather.
The American crow is a “cunning, inquisitive, vocal opportunist,” according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “It is a mistake to underestimate a crow’s ability.”
The species is now “more abundant than it was when the first European settlers arrived,” the Cornell Lab reports on its web site. “Large-scale persecution during the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth made crows shy of people. They learned quickly, however, that there is safety from guns in villages and cities and that food is abundant there.”
Even experts know relatively little about the species, according to the Cornell Lab. One reason? Researchers would need color-banded crows to answer many of their questions, “but crows are notoriously hard to capture, let alone recapture.”
Yup, that’s the crow all right: too darn sharp to let some pesky scientist stick a band around his leg.
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