One winter several years ago I noticed that every day, after I had filled my bird feeders, a flock of crows would come to feed within about five minutes. I could not understand how these birds always seemed to know just when I had placed the seed out.
It wasn’t as if they were all sitting there waiting, because I would quickly look around to see if any crows were nearby before I filled the feeders. I really did not want to feed these large black birds because I didn’t feel that they needed my handouts to survive (not to mention that they have big appetites).
After puzzling over this for a while, I finally decided that there had to be at least one crow watching for me every day, and that this crow then alerted the others to my activity. So, acting upon my intuition, I started searching the sky more diligently than I had done before as I walked to the feeders and started refilling them. Sure enough, I would often spy a lone crow flying away from the direction of my yard.
Sometimes it was winging its way silently across the sky, but sometimes the solitary bird would be cawing. Within minutes there would be cawing from the distance and then very shortly thereafter a gathering of crows would appear for my handouts.
Apparently my local crows had realized that a moving red object—that would be yours truly in her bathrobe—came out of the house at this location every morning and at that time distributed food. Although I came out every morning, I did not always show up at the same time.
Thus the only way for the crows to take advantage of my generosity was to post a sentry that could alert the others at whatever hour I made an appearance. Indeed, in winter with the leaves off of the trees, I was able to sometimes spot a crow perched in a tree in the forest (at some distance from my yard) before it flew off to gather the flock.
So I was right, but this seemed hard to believe. It was time to do some research!
It turns out that the feathered creatures in the Family Corvidae (crows, jays, and magpies) are considered to be the most intelligent of all birds. Experiments with captive American Crows have actually shown that they can count up to three or four; they quickly learn to associate various symbols with food; and they are good at solving puzzles and “performing astonishing feats of memory.”
Thus it’s quite possible that the crows around my yard had managed to associate me with food, and remembering that I put food out every day, solved the puzzle of how to take advantage of this. They made it one crow’s duty to be on the lookout for me daily.
In other words, the quickest early-morning route to nourishment for at least one group of Corvids in Virginia (those crows near my house) was definitely “as the [sentinel] crow flies!”
Naturalist Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). If you have a question about plants or animals, or gardening in a nature-friendly manner, send it to [email protected] and please watch for an answer in this paper.
