Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind (22 page)

Crows have no compunctions about eating whatever is available, and items such as insects and sprouting corn form only a portion of their diet. Carrion, particularly in the form of roadkill, is a major source of food for the crow, and it’s a common sight to see these birds on a roadkill or waiting near it until traffic permits them to resume feeding. Fruit, garbage, birds’ eggs and nestlings, baby mice and voles, and a variety of other small creatures are also important food sources for the crow.

Large numbers of crows have been killed in the past, and some still are, largely because of the damage, real or assumed, that they cause. This seems to have had little effect on the crows, which have remained abundant. Ravens are a different story, for they’ve been seriously persecuted at times, not only with guns but also with poison and traps.

This enmity toward ravens probably has at least two causes. The first has to do with feeding habits. Ravens aren’t crop eaters, and hence are much more oriented toward meat than crows. They’re noteworthy carrion eaters, and Heinrich postulates an extremely close relationship between ravens and large predators, such as wolves, polar bears, and cougars. It appears that ravens follow these predators when they’re hunting, thus gaining a share of the kill. Unable to kill large prey, or even to penetrate its hide, the ravens depend on the big predators to open up their kill and provide access to the innards.

Ravens are also known to peck at the eyes of dying animals, including domestic ones, because, in the absence of large predators, that’s all they can get at. Farmers and ranchers, observing this behavior around dying livestock, or ravens around the carcasses of recently deceased animals, have accused them of killing lambs, calves, and even adult animals. Although the ravens lack the capacity, in most instances, to kill large animals, they’ve often been blamed for deaths that are really attributable to other causes. Nonetheless, this belief has led to the persecution of ravens and payments to farmers for reputed raven damage.

In addition to eating carrion, ravens are omnivorous feeders. Garbage, large insects, frogs, birds’ eggs, nestlings, mice, a variety of invertebrates, and other small creatures are prominent in their diet. Fruit, berries, and seeds are also included in season. With their powerful beaks, ravens are also substantially more predatory than crows on midsized prey, including animals at least up to the size of squirrels and cottontail rabbits.

A second reason why ravens have been viewed in such a dismal light is a bit more complex and difficult to explain. To put it in its simplest terms, however, it’s because the raven, as a carrion eater, has been closely identified with death. Although it’s impossible to prove, this may have something to do with the raven as a scavenger of human bodies on countless battlefields down through the ages.

Certainly the raven hasn’t always been viewed in such a negative way. Inuit and Native American legends honor the raven, and the Bible gives it excellent press. Genesis, for example, says that Noah sent forth the raven from the Ark, and the bird went to and fro until the waters were dried up. Likewise, in I Kings, ravens brought the prophet Elijah “bread and flesh” to sustain him.

Somewhere along the line, however, this favorable view of the raven broke down rather badly. Edgar Allan Poe’s portrait of the raven as the herald of doom and despair is undoubtedly the best-known literary example of the raven’s unsavory reputation, at least in the English-speaking world. It’s by no means the only one, however. In the early 1700s, John Gay penned the lines, “That raven on yon left-hand oak (Curse on his ill-betiding croak!) Bodes me no good.” And Sarah Helen Power Whitman wrote of the raven in this fashion: “Raven from the dim dominions / On the Night’s Plutonian shore, / Oft I hear thy dusky pinions / Wave and flutter round my door. . . .”

Fortunately, a more enlightened view of the raven now seems to prevail, at least in most quarters. With protection, both raven numbers and the range of the bird have increased, and it seems likely that this trend will continue.

Added to the raven’s other interesting feeding habits is their caching behavior. Ravens commonly eat part of their food and cache, or hide, some of it in various locations. The usual behavior on bare ground is to dig a little hollow, put a piece of meat in it, and then cover it with leaves or grass. In snow, the raven simply buries the choice morsel and lets the snow fall back to cover it. Heinrich’s studies have revealed two particularly fascinating aspects to this caching behavior.

First, ravens have excellent short-term memory both for the precise location of their own caches and for the places where they’ve observed other ravens caching food; however, their memory for caches is poor after two weeks and almost nonexistent after a month. Second, ravens will make false caches—that is, apparently create a cache, but deposit no food in it. This behavior seems designed to reduce pilferage of caches, especially by subordinate ravens, which frequently attempt to steal the food cached by more dominant ones.

Ravens are far less gregarious than crows. Often solitary, they also commonly travel in pairs or very small groups, and are rarely found in large assemblages except in special circumstances, as when numbers of them gather around a carcass. That’s not to say that ravens are antisocial birds, though. Indeed, Heinrich has documented behavior indicating that ravens may have rich social interactions among siblings or members of small groups, and I personally observed a group of them interacting in the following incident.

One day in early summer I heard what were distinctly raven calls emanating from the lower part of one of our pastures. I thought little of it at first, but my curiosity grew as the uproar became more and more prolonged. Even more curious was the fact that the ravens seemed to be stationary. Finally, after additional time had elapsed, I walked down to the pasture to investigate.

There, close to the woods, I found five ravens relentlessly harassing a thoroughly bewildered young red fox. No matter which way it turned, the ravens flew at it to drive it in another direction, herding it back and forth with great effectiveness. I watched for a few moments, then moved a bit closer, at which point the ravens suddenly broke off their chase and flew away. The young fox, as yet unharmed, promptly scampered into the woods.

Just what did this mobbing behavior signify? It seemed clear to me that the ravens were cooperating in this venture, whatever its purpose. Did they intend to kill the fox, or were they merely enjoying a bit of bullying? From their extremely aggressive behavior, I speculate that, given a little more uninterrupted time, they would have completely exhausted the fox and ultimately killed it.

There are other unanswered questions, as well. Were the five ravens a family, or were they merely a group that had assembled temporarily to attack the fox? If not family members, were they ravens that recognized one another and associated or cooperated with each other from time to time? Clearly there is still much to be learned about the behavior of these complex birds.

One other particular facet of raven and crow behavior that I’ve been able to observe extensively is their inordinate fascination with golf balls. We hit golf balls off our patio into the field below the house, and that has generated a number of incidents involving both crows and ravens. Likewise, we’ve experienced some unusual encounters between crows and golf balls on the golf course.

On several occasions we’ve watched ravens below the house, picking up golf balls and carrying them about. Sometimes they’ve pecked at them briefly, and other times not at all. Twice we’ve watched a raven walk about from ball to ball, picking them up and dropping them. That performance was immediately followed by quite different behavior: in each instance, the raven gathered dried grass with its beak and covered up a number of the balls. We were able to observe this activity in great detail through binoculars, since the ravens were only a hundred yards from the house.

The astonishing thing is that although I marked the location of these covered golf balls with great care, using a variety of landmarks, I had the devil’s own time finding the balls—and some I never did locate! In each instance, the raven took only a moment to cover each ball, yet the job was done so cleverly and thoroughly that the ball became virtually invisible.

At another time, a raven “played” with several of the golf balls—then picked one up in its beak and flew straight to the broken top of a large dead maple along the side of the field. We were watching through binoculars and clearly saw the raven deposit the ball in the hollow in the broken top before taking wing again.

What these ravens were exhibiting was, of course, caching behavior. However,
why
they wanted to cache golf balls is another question. The obvious inference is that the ravens thought the round, white balls were some type of egg. Still, they had pecked at the balls, carried them about, and otherwise manipulated them with their beaks. It’s difficult to believe that these seemingly intelligent birds would be fooled for very long into thinking that a golf ball was an egg.

It seems more likely that the egg like shape and appearance of golf balls trigger an innate response in the birds. Even though the ravens “know” from experience that the golf balls aren’t eggs, the balls nonetheless arouse their curiosity and elicit a degree of possessiveness that leads them to cache these strange objects.

In view of this demonstrated fondness for golf balls, I wasn’t surprised to learn that a large number of ravens disrupted a championship golf match in Iceland by swooping down and pirating balls. In fact, they did such a thorough job that the match had to be moved to another location! Neither does it seem strange that at the Yellowknife golf course in far northern Canada, close to the Arctic Circle, ravens make off with between two hundred and three hundred
dozen
golf balls a year just from the driving range.

Crows also have a thing about golf balls, though it takes a slightly different form from that of ravens. On several occasions we’ve seen crows pick up a golf ball or two, but they seem to lose interest in them faster than the ravens do. Moreover, crows don’t exhibit the raven’s caching behavior, so they made no attempt to hide the balls.

On the other hand, crows have long had a reputation as mischief-makers because of their propensity for collecting a wide variety of baubles, especially bright or shiny ones. On one particular occasion my curiosity was piqued by a black object partially hidden in the foliage of a tree along the edge of the field. Wondering whether it was a crow, a raven, or a black cat, I put the binoculars on it.

At that moment the crow—for that’s what it proved to be—flew down into the grass and probed with its beak for a few seconds. Then it took flight, holding a shiny white golf ball securely in its beak. The last we saw of the crow, it was disappearing into the distance, the ball still firmly clamped in its beak. It probably was transporting the intriguing object back to its nest. Along the same lines, I recently found a golf ball several hundred yards deep in our woods, where it seems likely that another curious crow dropped it.

At least in this area, crows seem to delight in living around golf courses. No doubt the admixture of woods, brush, and mowed areas provides good opportunities for nesting and feeding, plus there are certainly tidbits of human food left here and there as an added attraction. Because of this, we frequently see crows at close quarters while playing golf, largely because these golf-course crows become quite tolerant of humans and let us approach them far more closely than is typical.

A number of amusing incidents involving crows and golf have been the result. On one occasion our older son and I were playing a hole where the fairway adjoins a steep, grassy bank. At the foot of the slope were two crows, facing each other across a golf ball. First one would pick up the ball and drop it, and then the other would do the same. This action went on for quite some time, until we eventually tired of watching it and proceeded with our game. The crows, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying this activity and were still at it when we departed. How long they continued this unusual behavior is anyone’s guess.

On another day I happened to be playing alone, quite early in the morning. By some miracle, I managed to hit a long, straight drive up the middle of the fairway on the first hole. I hadn’t noticed a crow feeding in that vicinity when I teed off, but the ball landed near it, and the startled crow, with a loud exclamation, flew up into a nearby tree. I paid no more attention and trudged up the hill toward my ball. When I arrived at the spot, however, there was no ball to be found, no matter how hard I looked. Neither was the crow in the tree where I had seen it land. Although I have no proof, I’m certain that the crow flew back down and made off with my ball.

Most bizarre of all, though, was a golf-course incident that involved crows, or a single crow, but no golf balls. Our two sons, a friend, and I made up a foursome. All four balls landed on the green, and just as we walked onto it to begin putting,
plop,
a small pebble less than a half-inch in diameter landed on the green near us. We looked up to see a crow, only a few feet above our heads, just departing the scene. We remarked on the incident and commenced putting.

A moment later,
plop,
and the same scene was repeated. A minute or two later,
plop,
and a third pebble descended. Finally, just as we had completed putting and were walking off the green,
plop,
a fourth pebble fell near us. It’s a mystery whether it was the same crow that dropped all four pebbles or whether different members of the same family were involved, although I suspect it was the former.

A far greater mystery is why the crow or crows acted in that manner. It’s difficult to conceive of any biological or evolutionary purpose that could possibly be served by this behavior. Anthropomorphism is exceedingly dangerous, but it’s hard to avoid the notion that the crow, or crows, were doing it out of some sort of pleasurable impulse.