Corvid Conversations

The other morning I went out to hang the bird feeders and heard a soft, repetitive call that turned out to be a male goldfinch, molting into his bright yellow and black breeding plumage, high atop a tree in my yard singing to a female high in a tree at the front curb. She, too, was changing into breeding plumage - from winter brown to yellow and green to better blend into the foliage while on her nest. I was eavesdropping on pair bonding.

This morning, I eavesdropped on something very different. This was not pair bonding but a loud conversation, such as what I hear when people are running or bicycling together, to the point of being aggravating. I was on my back porch and was hearing fish crows - eight of them, as it turned out - atop another yard tree. This was not the angry or alarmed cawing of crows when a hawk is in the vicinity. This was just crow talk - a short, nasal caw that sounds like "uh-uh." After a while they flew off to another tree and them eventually left the area. 

Fish crow, Cape May, NJ, 2011 (RE Berg-Anderson)

Crows, of the corvid family, are social creatures. Where you see one, you'll usually see (and hear) more, sometimes in very large flocks. In that way they are similar to their cousins the blue jays, which also travel in noisy family groups.

In my part of the world there are two kinds of crows. There is the American crow and the smaller fish crow. The American is what we think of when we see a "crow" - large, raucous, chasing predators or other, unwanted creatures away, ripping apart garbage bags for what's inside.

As the name implies, the fish crow can be found near water. That is where I saw my first one many years ago. These all-black birds are otherwise hard to differentiate from the American crow unless you hear them or see the two types together - the American is always larger. (Their cousin the raven is larger still.)

That I am seeing and hearing fish crows at all in my neighborhood is a relatively recent, semi-disturbing phenomenon.

All crows are omnivores, meaning they'll eat anything from berries to garbage to dead chipmunks. They are active in the morning when they are hungriest. That is when you will hear them the loudest as they scope out easy to access food sources.

It may not look like it, but jays are related to the corvid
family. (Margo D. Beller)

When I was a kid growing up in coastal Brooklyn, I knew that if I saw gulls whirling in the skies above my house there must be a storm approaching, forcing the birds inland. Now that I live much farther inland, I see gulls all the time. These gulls have learned it is much easier to dive into the open dumpster behind a fast-food place than to fly over the open ocean looking for fish.

The fish crows have learned this, too.

In my area there are several distinct groups of fish crows clustered in the vicinity of food places with lots of garbage going into the dumpsters. The group closest to my house, which centers itself on the local Quik-Chek, sometimes flies along a brook that flows behind the neighbors' houses across the street. These are the ones I hear in the morning, particularly on garbage pickup day. There is another, larger group that hangs out in an area on the edge of town where they can fight the gulls to pick from the dumpsters behind a supermarket on one corner, a fast-food place on another corner and a shopping mall including several food places on a third. (A restaurant is going up on the fourth corner.)

So the crows, like the gulls, are following the garbage because members of the corvid family are very smart and they know where the pickings are easiest and most fruitful. Suburbia provides lots of favorable habitat conditions, including abundant food.

Take the fish crow pictured above. My husband (MH) and I were in Cape May, NJ, one September and I heard a fish crow calling outside our motel room. I looked out the window and there it was, perched on the railing. I opened the door. It did not fly off. In fact, it looked at me with what I would say was a very human look of expectation. MH took its picture. It still didn't fly off. We realized it was sitting on the railing of our balcony room waiting for us to provide its breakfast, the way many other occupants of this room (and perhaps others) had been doing possibly for generations. 

Even though this crow was literally within sight of the Atlantic Ocean, it was waiting for us to serve it. We went back inside and eventually it flew to another railing where maybe the occupant would be more generous. 

Fish crow on the beach with laughing gulls, which also
like to pick garbage out of dumpsters. September 2013
(RE Berg-Andersson)

(There are many reasons I don't feed birds, aside from what I put into feeders in the backyard. You could say I'm selective in what birds I care to feed or that I don't feel the need to show my human mastery over dumb critters, as I see many do. But mainly it is because I know birds like crows will find their own food just fine.) 

Corvids like the fish crow are extremely intelligent. They have large brains capable of memorizing human faces, using tools and solving problems. Young crows will play, swinging from branches or floating in the wind, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab. They are a species far from threatened by hunting or disease. In fact, their numbers are increasing to the point of them becoming a real pest. Luckily for these crows, they are protected by the Migratory Bird Act even though like the Canada geese - another bird that found suburbia to its taste - they don't exactly migrate in the same way as other types of birds such as warblers.

So what exactly were the fish crows talking about so loudly this morning? They could've been discussing the next place where they could get a meal. They could've been telling another crow I couldn't see to get out of the area. (There was one American crow calling in the distance.) Maybe they were discussing the weather or whether they should go down the shore for a change of pace. Or maybe they were just idly chattering. 

After they left, I started to hear loud human chattering, and that is when I left, too.

Bird brains

Redbelly in an awkward position. (Margo D. Beller)

Two days after the first nor'easter of the 2020 winter season, I was bundled against the 18 degree (F) cold (14 outside) as I sat on my enclosed porch, waiting for the birds to show up at the three seed and one suet feeders I had put out the morning before as the snow was winding down. With 10 inches of snow on the ground I had left the feeders out overnight, figuring the bears were finally taking a winter nap.

The first birds to arrive were two chickadees. One would fly to the feeder that has a cage surrounding the seed tube. The other would fly over and the first one would fly away until the second fed and left. Obviously, a pecking order at work, but how do they know which is the leader?

A female cardinal came to the open, house-shaped feeder but when a male flew to the other side of the feeder, she flew to a nearby bush. Usually cardinal pairs don't act this way - they share the feeder - but when a second male cardinal flew in and the first one chased him off I wondered which one, if either, was the female's mate.

A white-breasted nuthatch as a house finch waits for it
to fly off. (Margo D. Beller)

Later, a male redbellied woodpecker came to the house feeder. He took a seed, flew to a tree to crack it open to eat, then came back. He completely ignored the suet feeder hanging on the other arm of the pole. After a couple of passes he realized there was a long, perchless feeder encased in "squirrel-proof" metal (squirrels might not get in but I have seen them hang on, if they can jump over the baffle). He flew over, grabbed the metal and was in a more natural position to get seed without having to twist himself around, as he did at the house feeder.

Meanwhile, a smaller male downy woodpecker was enjoying the suet. A female downy (the females don't have the males' red spot on the back of the head), which I had seen on the suet when it was hung on the other feeder pole before the storm, also used the long feeder rather than look for the suet. Was she put off by the male or did she not see the suet?

Finally, a male white-breasted nuthatch came to the house feeder at the same time as a female (whose head has a gray crown rather than a black one). She stayed on the feeder roof and watched the male, waiting for him to leave. Didn't she see the other side was open for her?

I mention all this because at several points I wondered what these birds could be thinking. 

Downy at suet feeder. Woodpeckers don't mind
being upside-down. (Margo D. Beller)

We use the term "bird-brained" to connote a human who is none too smart. But birds have proportionally large brains compared to their overall body and head sizes. With those brains they can remember where they have cached food, where they can find more food (such as my feeders) and how to adapt to situations. 

The first time I used my long feeder, before I realized I needed a pole and a baffle to keep out the squirrels, I hung it in the pear tree in front of my screened porch. I noticed at several points that winter some of the juncos, a black and white relative of the sparrow family, would grab hold of the metal and get a seed. Without a perch, this was not a natural position for a sparrow. But a few of these had figured out they could get the food without competition from the others foraging on the ground. 

Blue jay, like its corvid relatives, is among the 
smartest birds. (Margo D. Beller)

Birds are also smart enough to know how to find the proper roost hole in winter and the materials to create nests in summer. Each Spring robins poke around my ornamental grass garden to take the cut grass I haven't picked up. Other birds have gone into the compost pile if there is suitable material for a nest. Somehow they have learned how to do this from their parents. And, of course, the birds, including the previous year's nestlings, somehow remember how to get to their wintering grounds every Autumn and how to return to their breeding grounds every Spring.

Many have written about the intelligence of certain birds, or try to analyze why they do what they do. Especially now, during the time of coronavirus when people desperate to be out of the house are suddenly discovering the birds around them, this is a popular field.

Among the most intelligent of the birds are the corvids, including ravens, crows, jays and magpies. Corvids are among those that know how to use tools. They have an assortment of vocal sounds that mean different things, a type of language. Naturalist Bernd Heinrich was so fascinated by ravens and crows he wrote a number of books about them.

In researching this blog post I learned scientists turned to grackles to learn how often a bird blinks in flight. It never occurred to me a bird could blink, but I am not surprised grackles were studied. Grackles know how to forage, as I know when there is an invasion of 100 of them in my yard and my neighbors' several times a year. Grackles, like other blackbirds including orioles, are very intelligent. Grackles have learned that after mating season is over there is safety in numbers and more eyes mean a better chance of finding food.  

So are birds smart or silly when they fight over one side of my feeder while the other side has nothing in it, or when they ignore a feeder that might provide them an easier way to eat? My human brain isn't smart enough to provide an answer.