June 10, 2005

• Smarticvs writes about an encounter with a crow, and this sent me off doing pointless research on Corvus brachyrynchos, our pal the American crow.

  (Cue Bachman Turner Overdrive: 'We're an American murder...')

  So in order to make the research less meaningless, here are some crow links, for those of you who'd like to eat these words (eat these crow words, that is). Or something.

  For the Love of Crows is the kind of web site only a biology student or a perseverating Aspie could create. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

  From there, I learned that a crow species in some islands 1000 miles from Australia use tools to catch bugs. They don't just pick up twigs and use them, they actually manufacture the tools.

  There's also this site: Crows.net, set up for collaborative research on the language and culture of American crows. I haven't explored it too deeply, but I'm sure it'll be interesting. Earlier today I was listening in as some crows were obviously ganging up on a raptor on the other side of the hill. I could hear them complaining, and occasionally I'd hear the... hawk? Osprey? Dunno. But I'd hear it complain back. This was all from my back patio, by the way. Eating a PBJ and cheetos and drinking cranberry juice. But I was wondering what a crow-to-English dictionary might reveal about what they were saying, and whether that translated text could be repeated in polite company.

  • 5:55 pm
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