Gabi's relationship with the neighbourhood crows began accidentally in 2011. She was four years old, and prone to dropping food. She'd get out of the car, and a chicken nugget would tumble off her lap. A crow would rush in to recover it.... As she got older, she rewarded their attention, by sharing her packed lunch on the way to the bus stop....
Gifts showed up sporadically - anything shiny and small enough to fit in a crow's mouth. One time it was a tiny piece of metal with the word "best" printed on it.....
"If you want to form a bond with a crow, be consistent in rewarding them," advises John Marzluff, professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington.... "There's definitely a two-way communication going on there.... They understand each other's signals."
February 26, 2015
"Each item is individually wrapped and categorised.... There's a miniature silver ball, a black button, a blue paper clip..."
"... a yellow bead, a faded black piece of foam, a blue Lego piece, and the list goes on. Many of them are scuffed and dirty. It is an odd assortment of objects for a little girl to treasure, but to Gabi these things are more valuable than gold...."
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12 comments:
What a tuned in soul has that little girl. She must be a joy to have around. Lucky mother.
This is pretty interesting. There was a girl in our old neighborhood that had a similar rapport with chipmunks. They wouldn't bring her gifts, but they would come close enough for her to actually touch them. Her parents weren't a fan; they were concerned about possible diseases. But it continued for a few years, until she grew up and, I guess, became interested in other things.
Animal rights and the Shawshank Redemption...
I came across a tidbit, which is the animal rights wacko story of the millennium. According to the Internet Movie Database, an animal rights organization monitored the filming of scenes involving the crow to make sure it wasn't harmed. No problem, but it didn't stop there. During the scene in which the crow was fed a maggot, the activists objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot. It required that the film use a maggot that had died from natural causes.
The little vignette that EDH has just recounted and the sociocultural world-view it represents is a proxy for everything that is wrong with modern society..
Crows and blue jays. Great birds! I believe they are closely related.
BTW, Those are cashews in that fifth photo, not peanuts. Lucky crows.
Yes, yes it does.
Crows, ravens, jays, and a few others are all corvids. Very bright birds. Bernd Heinrich has a number of nice books about them.
Sounds like the contents of your basic geocache.
Has all the makings of a Stephen King story...or a Disney remake of Hitchcock's The Birds.
kzookitty
It brought to mind a book I'm currently reading, The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss. It's an odd little book that is really an extended character study of a peripheral character from his Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy. Auri, who lives in the subterranean areas under the University, also collects odd bits of bric-a-brac. The main difference is that her collection wasn't given to her by crows. Still, a timely story for me.
What about the bacteria on the dead maggot? Who speaks for them? Who defends their rights? Their silent screams will echo into eternity. . . .
This is how an Ornithologist gets made. Am really happy to read that it's a Family undertaking.
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