In Greco-Roman myth the crow had originally white feathers (there are indeed albino crows) and was associated with Apollo for its prophetic powers, including an ability to forecast weather events. The words corvus/ cornix/crow, like the ancient Greek korax and korone, were all likely onomatopoetic in origin, mimicking the bird’s distinctive caw (likewise, of course, a "sound-imitative" word). The latter term gives us the avian family name Corvidae as well as our name for the genus that includes crows (from Old English crawe), ravens (generally applied to the larger species, Corvus corax, which grow up to two feet long), jackdaws and rooks. The Romans had two words for these imposing creatures, cornix and corvus. This extraordinary intelligence and social behavior, the bird’s unmistakable cry, its imposing size, and its lustrous pitch-black plumage have all exercised a powerful affect on the human imagination over the millennia. Suddenly a ruckus arose outside and when Alice rushed out, she spotted two of our crows fluttering and raucously cawing over Ipsa’s enclosure to frighten off a huge red-shouldered hawk that was soaring overhead with the clear aim of enjoying a bit of French Bulldog puppy for lunch. On one occasion when Ipsa was a tiny pup, Alice left her in her front-yard pen to go into the house for a glass of water. The crows who share our homestead certainly include Alice and me in the "friends" category, and our French Bulldog Ipsa too. One of the birds, without any training, fabricated tools from three or four parts, "the first evidence of compound-tool construction with more than two elements in any non-human animal." A number of the crows were able to repeat the tool-making process multiple times in later trials, demonstrating an ability to "predict what something that does not yet exist would do if they made it," and then that "they can make it and … use it." In one study, with video footage as proof, a group of eight New Caledonian crows were able, within just a few minutes, to assemble tools from sticks of varying sizes to access treats in an experimental puzzle box. But recent research reported in Smithsonian magazine suggests that these "spectacularly intelligent creatures" possess reasoning skills at the level of a first-grade child and levels of perception previously thought to exist only in humans and other primates. My wife Alice and I have long known that from observing those who inhabit the woods of our lakeside home and occasionally swoop down for a morning hello. Columns share an author's personal perspective.Ĭrows are among the most mindful of birds.
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