Free Crows by Candace Savage Page A

“In all my life, I’ve never heard such horrible, bloodcurdling
screams as the crows made at that nest.” The male flew away after a minute or two, but the female stayed behind and, for the next four hours (until Caffrey reluctantly left), tended a surviving but injured nestling by nuzzling it, picking up its neck, and preening the side of its head. All the while, the crow uttered mournful-sounding ooh s.
    Caffrey doesn’t pretend to know what the bereaved bird felt, though as an onlooker, she herself was moved to tears. And she has even more questions about the remarkable behavior of another female. Remember the story of XT, the male crow near Oklahoma State University that in 2001 was ousted by his son and took up with the widow next door? That widow, known as AM, was a special favorite of the researchers because they never knew what she would think of next. On one occasion, for example, when a climber scrambled up to her nest, she let go at him with a barrage of angry caws and then flew up into the tree above him and proceeded to hammer at a branch.“I could see she was totally pissed,” Caffrey says, “and I thought the hammering was a displacement activity,” or a way of letting off steam. Instead, AM kept banging away until she broke off a pinecone, which she then picked up, carried into the air, and launched at the head of the intruder. “Direct hit! Bam!” By the time the poor climber was back on the ground, AM had dropped three more pinecone bombs, two exactly on target.
    AM had four chicks that spring. When banded, three of them looked healthy and they soon fledged, but the other was sickly and did not flourish.
One day, Caffrey received an SOS from one of her graduate students, Tiffany Weston, who happened to live across the street from AM’s nest tree. The little runt was walking around on her lawn. What to do? The researchers knew from experience that if they left the chick on the ground, it would not be long before a dog or cat picked it off. But they were also reluctant to interfere with natural process. As a compromise, Caffrey suggested catching the baby crow, feeding it a meal of dog food, and then lifting it up to safety on a branch.
    ➣ The house crow of India is “always chaffing, scolding, scoffing, laughing, ripping, and cursing, and carrying on about something or other,” Mark Twain wrote. “I never saw such a bird for delivering opinions.”

    Even though the crow could not yet fly, that little bird could run, and it led Weston on a noisy chase around, under, and through the bushes. Meanwhile, all the cawing and commotion had attracted the attention of its mother, AM, who was not impressed by the sight of a human pursuing her offspring. Cawing wildly at the top of her lungs, AM flew repeatedly at Weston, with an ominous rush of wings, and landed a solid blow to her head. When Weston fled into the house with the nestling to feed it, AM stared at her through the window and continued to yell.
    Once the chick had eaten, Weston brought it back outside and threw it high in a tree, and things calmed down. The next day, however, the youngster still did not seem to be thriving (it hung on for another couple of days before disappearing, presumably dead), and AM again took up her grievance. She renewed her vigil at Weston’s window and stalked her from room to room. “It was the spookiest thing,” Caffrey recalls. “Tiff would come out of the living room and walk to the kitchen and AM, who had been peering through the living room window, would follow her around.” Sometimes AM cawed loudly; at other times, she was eerily silent, just looking and looking. This went on for the next four days, until Weston made a previously planned move to a house in another neighborhood. “It was amazing,” Caffrey says. “We liked AM a lot.” Sadly for the researchers, she and her family all disappeared in 2003, at the height of a West Nile virus outbreak.
    Zora Neale Hurston performs the Crow Dance, date