Kromakhy, Master of Ravens and Crows

(137) New Study Says Unfairness Really Ruffles Crows' Feathers

2013-06-17T20:37:00.000+02:00

A new experiment found crows and ravens have a sense of fairness, just like people and dogs.

People, primates and dogs all react negatively when others get a better reward for doing the same work. Now a small study has found that crows and ravens dislike unfairness, too--the first time research has shown non-mammals react to inequity. Knowing which animals do and don't seem to notice unfairness (cleaner fish, for example, don't notice) helps scientists figure out how a sense of fairness evolved.

For the study, published February 20 in the journal PLoS ONE, a pair of biologists at the University of Vienna trained six carrion crows and four ravens to exchange pebble tokens for food. The researchers then created same-species pairs for a series of experiments. When the birds saw their partners getting food for free, without having to exchange tokens, they tended to exchange tokens less often. Sometimes the birds that got the short shrift even gave away tokens, but refused to take their reward.

Other research has suggested that a sense of equity evolved several times in unrelated animals, the University of Vienna researchers write. Knowing what's fair is linked to cooperative behavior in species, they say, and that makes sense with crows and ravens, which form alliances and share food and information.

A paranoid soul might take this as evidence that crows are totally capable of forming a The Birds-style rebellion. Members of the Corvus genus have previously been shown to form hooked tools, use a tool on another tool to get a piece of meat, watch other birds caching foods in order to steal that food later, cache in private (wouldn't you if you were surrounded by thieves?), and reach meat tied to the end of a string.

<a href="http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-02/no-fair-crows-say">SOURCE</a>

(136) As The Crow Flies

2013-06-17T20:17:00.001+02:00

The term "As The Crow Flies" came from British coastal vessels that customarily carried a cage of crows. Crows detest large expanses of water and head, as straight as a crow flies, towards the nearest land if released at sea - very useful if you were unsure of the nearest land when sailing in foggy waters before the days of radar. The lookout perch on sailing vessels thus became known as the crow's nest.

YraggarY

SOURCE

(135) Attack of the killer ravens

2013-05-22T20:32:00.001+02:00

Mail Online:
Attack of the killer ravens: Flocks are suddenly slaughtering lambs - what is going on?

By JANE FRYER, 4 May 2008

High in the darkening sky, a flock of enormous ravens swoop and swirl - narrow black wings stretched wide, heads protruding forward and huge hairy beaks scything through the air.

Every few minutes they let out deep, throaty, honking calls as they soar effortlessly, circling around until, finally, they spot their prey and swoop.

But forget dormice, voles or even small furry rabbits; these sinister looking birds are feasting on something far larger - newborn lambs.

And instead of hanging around for a few discarded bones or a forgotten carcass to pick and claw at, they've started killing live farm animals - by pecking them to death, in horrific scenes reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's The Birds, turned by Alfred Hitchcock into one of the most chilling movies of all time.

Throughout Britain, traumatised farmers have reported a sudden and disturbing rise in the number of livestock being attacked by ravens.

Farmer John Kirk, 50, from Nethybridge, near Aviemore, has lost more than 40 animals in the past few weeks.

"It's like something out of a horror film. They are horrible, horrible birds. They see the young lambs and just fly down and help themselves," he said.

"Sometimes you find a carcass with the eyes and tongue pecked out, but sometimes all you find is the skin. They peck away until nothing is left." And while some animals have been pecked to death, others have been left to die in agony after birds have feasted on their eyes, tongues and the soft flesh of their underbellies.

The worst-hit areas are in Scotland and Wales, but there are also reports of random attacks across the South-West and the Lake District.

The Scottish Isle of Mull has been badly hit, with one farmer losing 20 lambs in a fortnight.

Another, Robert Millar from High Catterdale, Kintyre, said: "We've had 12 to 15 lambs attacked. It's got to the stage where you have to lamb indoors, or you don't stand a chance."

And Jimmy Mills, a farmer from Stratherrick, south of Inverness, has lost seven lambs in just three days: "The lambs are born at 1pm and by four o'clock they've been taken to bits by the ravens," he says.

According to Johnny Hall, of the National Farmers Union of Scotland, it's no longer just lambs: "Raven attacks have become a huge problem across a wide area of the country.

"We have substantial evidence of them attacking adult sheep and calves, too. The attacks are so horrific that it's causing mental suffering to people who find the animals."

The worst thing is, there's not much the farmers can do about it. Ravens are protected by law, so farmers can't shoot them as they would other vermin.

They can be killed on special licence - due to a condition in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 - but only if the Government deems it appropriate.

But farmers say the system is designed for the "odd rogue bird", not the huge swirling flocks of recent months, and are demanding the law is changed.

The question is, why have ravens suddenly started to attack livestock?

Experts cannot give a definitive explanation, but some believe it is simply the pressure on food resources caused by the dramatically increasing raven population.

In parts of Britain (Scotland, in particular) experts believe numbers have increased five-fold since the late Nineties, and according to the RSPB there are up to 6,000 breeding pairs in Scotland - almost half the numbers in Europe.

Davy Thomson, vice-chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, says it is not breeding birds that cause the problem, but immature birds, scavenging in large packs.

"I've seen several hundred birds roosting together, and all they do is hunt one side of the hill and then move onto their next food source.

"Raven populations have increased massively in the past ten years, and it's an absolute nonsense that we can't control them."

However, according to Dr Andre Farrar, spokesman for the Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds: "Some reports of raven attacks may be exaggerated, but they do kill things.

"They make a speciality out of scavenging and eating carrion. In many cases their prey is already dead, but they're highly capable of killing, so sometimes they'll finish it off themselves.

"But they get an unjustly bad press. Any big, black bird tends to come down from history with a load of negatives attached. So the raven has got a burden of cultural mistrust around it."

Such as its association with death, and its supposed supernatural powers of prediction.

Irish folklore has it that each raven contains three drops of the Devil's blood, and anyone who hunted them would be on the receiving end of the Devil's fury and a lifetime of bad luck.

Its status as a bird of ill omen is confirmed by a cameo appearance in Shakespeare's Macbeth - as the King nears the castle at Inverness, Lady Macbeth utters the ominous words: "The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements."

Legend has it that if anything happens to the six resident ravens at the Tower of London - attended by a Yeoman Ravenmaster, and treated to a daily feast of raw meat and blood-soaked "bird biscuit" - England will be invaded.

Aside from all the folklore, they're an impressive foe - up to 2ft long and worryingly adaptable: they can survive in Arctic, temperate and desert climates.

Research published last year in the Scientific American also showed the raven to be one of the most intelligent species on the planet - up there with dolphins and apes and, unlike most other birds and animals, capable of learning from their own actions and from observing others' behaviour.

They're thought to be one of the few birds that can count, and some have even learned to fashion leaves into special tools for extracting grubs from crevices in trees.

In Japan, they were reportedly found dropping nuts onto a dual-carriageway, then darting down to eat them once the cars had cracked them open.

Although older ravens (they live up to 25 years) mate for life and travel in pairs, young birds may form flocks of up to several hundred - collective nouns for ravens include an "unkindness", a "conspiracy", and a "murder" - which swoop on farm animals.

They were almost exterminated during the 19th century, but in the past 20 years have made their dramatic comeback, partially because they have been protected.

As Dr Farrar puts it: "A few years ago, you'd hope to see them only in Scotland, or Wales, but now they're popping up in parts of eastern England - they've even been spotted in Bedfordshire."

But he insists it's not all bad. "Ravens are truly spectacular birds, with an amazing display flight - they flip over into a half-roll and back again when they're flying - and have a deep sonorous croaking call. They're stunning to watch."

Which all sounds rather poetic, but must be scant comfort for the farmer rendered helpless as another dark, swirling, unkindness of ravens starts circling in the skies over his lambs.

SOURCE

(134) Crows capable of a coordinated attack and hunt

2013-05-22T20:25:00.000+02:00

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Crows are one of the few animals not only not afraid of fire, but even using it.

I was once out in the country side. I was resting against a tree after riding my bike for a

couple of hours, eating a sandwich, drinking some water, and watching a farmer in the distance burning a heap of twigs, leafs and branches.

To the right, some 40 meters away from the farmer, was a bush with some crows circling above it

and walking around it, apparently looking for something hiding inside that bush. After a few

minutes I saw what they were after: a young ring dove (or wood pigeon, what's the name?).

A lot of cawing was going on, but the bush was too dense for the crows to get to the pigeon.

Then one crow flew to the heap of burning twigs as soon as the farmer had left, picked up a

burning ember, and flew straight back to the bush where the pigeon was still hiding.

Without hesitation the crow went as far inside the bush as was possible, dropped the burning

ember, and flew off. After a few minutes the bush was on fire, but it was more smoke than fire.

Eventually the pigeon couldn't hold out any longer, and fled from the bush, at which moment all

the crows dived down on him, and quickly killed it by pecking it to death.

I think my lower jaw was somewhere on the ground after I watched this spectacle taking place in

front of my eyes...

(133) Can crows read?

2013-05-22T14:47:00.000+02:00

Can crows read?
7 October 2011

Crows can recognise and ascribe numerical meaning to symbols, a new study shows, suggesting that the unusually intelligent birds may be able to “read” numbers and simple icons.

Crows are known for their extraordinarily good memories, tool-making skills and ability to discern minute subtleties in judging a threat level. It was reported earlier this year that the US military considered using crows to help track down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In the latest edition of the journal Animal Behaviour, Japanese researchers describe an experiment in which eight jungle crows were presented with two containers, one with “2” written on the lid and one with “5”. The “5” container had food inside, while the “2” did not. The crows soon learned to pick the “5” container at a 70% success rate.

Other experiments tested whether the crows could differentiate between containers marked with non-numerical symbols such as shapes. The birds scored a 70 to 90% success rate picking the food-filled container for 19 out of 20 non-numerical symbol tests.

“These results suggest that jungle crows have a natural tendency to select the larger quantities and that decisions were affected by the numerical ratio and stimuli magnitude, indicating the use of analogue magnitude mechanism for numerical judgement,” the researchers said in their paper.

Dr Stephen Debus, a bird expert and honorary research associate in zoology at the University of New England, said the results were interesting but not surprising because crows were renowned for their superior intelligence.

It is unclear why the birds evolved such smarts, he said “but I gather that it is probably related to their complex social organisation and also, being omnivorous in complex environments, they need to be able to find food in novel situations and solve problems in obtaining that food.”

He said he expected the study of crows to reveal more of their skills in future.

“I’ve heard it said that crows can count, and that the usual bird photographer’s ruse of having a ‘seeing-in’ party accompany the photographer to a hide, then depart (leaving the photographer in the hide to photograph the unsuspecting bird), doesn’t work with crows, because they see how many people went into the hide and how many then left. That is, they know that someone is still in the hide and so won’t approach within ‘shooting’ range,” said Dr Debus, who was not involved in the Japan study.

“They seem to know the effective range of guns, too, and the difference between an armed and unarmed person, and that they’re safe and approachable in areas such as cities, where guns can’t be used.”

SOURCE

(132) Crows can count - at least to 16

2013-05-22T12:40:00.002+02:00

Crows can count - at least to 16
January 2006

By NANCY BENNETT

A farmer in England found that every day he went in his blind in the field, the crows would stay away. But once he had left, they would fly into the fields and feed. He brought a friend with him one day to follow him into the blind, thinking the crows would spot one of them leaving and then come down to eat at the crops, thinking that no one was watching.

But the crows knew that a second man was still in the blind. The next day they tried it with another man, then another. The crows counted and subtracted. They knew that someone was still waiting for them in the blind. It was only after they reached 16 men that the crows lost count.

SOURCE

(131) Could Crows Have Helped Bring Down Bin Laden?

2013-05-22T12:31:00.000+02:00

Could Crows Have Helped Bring Down Bin Laden?

May 05, 2011

We’ve all heard now about how a team of U.S. Navy Seals took down Osama bin Laden. But the decade-long hunt for the terrorist leader also got some help from an unlikely partner connected to the University of Washington.

John Marzluff: “One of the experimental branches of research that was used to try to find him was to have crows or ravens of the local area trained to identify his face.”

John Marzluff is a Wildlife Sciences Professor at the UW. A few years ago, the military contracted Marzluff to see if crows or ravens in Afghanistan could help find bin Laden.

Marzluff and his UW team have studied the birds’ ability to recognize human faces.

In their experiments, they wore caveman masks when they captured and tagged crows on campus. The birds apparently viewed that as hostile activity.

Later, when the researchers wore the masks again, the birds would flock and harass them. When they took off the masks, the birds left them alone.

Even after several years, Marzluff says the crows still cause a commotion when he wears the caveman mask on campus.

John Marzluff: “So, they have a long term memory, very acute discrimination abilities, and if a group of crows knew bin Laden as an enemy, they would certainly indicate his presence when they next saw him.”

Marzluff says his funding from the U.S. military ended a few years ago.

He’s not sure whether crows or ravens eventually played a direct role in the hunt for bin Laden. But Marzluff says the military was also interested in using the research for other search-and-rescue efforts.

SOURCE

(130) Do corvids gather for funerals?

2012-09-15T20:49:00.000+02:00

Do corvids gather for funerals?

By Ralph Maughan On September 12, 2012.

Research on scrub jays and anecdotal observations of other corvids shows a large reaction to a dead member of their species-

A study just out on “funerals” held by scrub jays has generated a lot of discussion about what these noisy gatherings of jays around fallen members of their species represent or mean.

It is not just scrub jays, but this kind of avian behavior has been noted by many among other corvids (crows, ravens, magpies, jays). Dr. Charles “Chuck” Trost at Idaho State University has spoken and written about ritualistic appearing gatherings of magpies around dead magpies. Others have noted that crows too have something that looks like a funeral.

The question raised is do these notably smart birds understand death? What are they doing when they gather around dead “comrades” (and often others of their kind)? Are the birds warning of potential danger, but if so why in such a different way than other warnings they give? Is it a mourning and/or farewell? Is this instinctual behavior or learned?

Many will discount any deep meaning to these gatherings, perhaps rightly so, but how do we know something more profound is not going on? Perhaps they deal with death as well or better than we do.

http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2012/09/12/do-corvids-gather-for-funerals/

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Why does it amaze people animals seem to have the same feelings as we have?

It's about time some 'alien' published a paper about our behaviour...

(129) How a crow fools a dog

2012-08-04T21:50:00.000+02:00

I once watched something unbelievable:

A crow wanted to eat the food that was in front of a chained dog on a barnyard.

So he hopped to the dog but stayed out of its reach. Then he walked circles around the pole the dog was chained to, so the chain got wound up and thus shorter and shorter.

Then finally the crow walked calm and relaxed to the food and started eating while the dog was barking his lungs out, lol.

(128) The War of the Crows

2012-07-31T15:04:00.002+02:00

All across Europe, there is a war going on. It's been going on for thousands of years and will probably last thousands more. The stakes are high: the survival or extinction of an entire species. We're talking about the war between the carrion crow and the hooded crow.

The hooded crow and carrion crow are two very similar species. So similar, in fact, that up to very recently they were considered by scientists to be a single species. You're probably familiar with one, but not both of these:

Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix)

Also known as the scald crow, or grey crow, the hooded crow is about 46cm in length, 100cm in wingspan. It has a light grey body, black wings and tail and a black head, making it easy to distinguish from other crows such as rooks and ravens. It feeds on dead meat and anything else it can find. It has a harsh cawing voice. It is somewhat sociable, hanging around with groups of other hooded crows.

Carrion Crow (Corvus corone)

The carrion crow is about 46cm in length, 100cm in wingspan. It is pure black all over, making it difficult to distinguish from other crows such as rooks and ravens. It feeds on dead meat and anything else it can find. It has a very harsh cawing voice. It is unsociable, usually seen on its own and rarely with other carrion crows.

The reason that you probably only know one of these two crows is because their territories are exclusive: most places in Europe have one or the other but not both. There is a sharp dividing line between the two. Right on the border you will find both hooded crows and carrion crows, but everywhere else, it is either one or the other. As far as the crows are concerned, the map of Europe is clearly marked out in either black or grey.

The Position at the End of the Second Millennium

Broadly speaking, Hooded crows live in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and Ireland. Carrion crows live in Western Europe and Great Britain. Looking in more detail, we find the battle lines are drawn.

The carrion crow is found in:

•England, Wales and southern Scotland south of a line from Inverness to Arran
•France except Corsica
•Most of Spain
•Portugal
•The Low Countries
•Southern Denmark
•Germany
•The Czech Republic
•Switzerland
•Austria
•Alpine Italy

Hooded crows live everywhere else in Europe.

Why Do Certain Crows Live in Specific Places?

It's no great surprise to find that polar bears live in the Arctic while grizzly bears live further south. The constant snow in the Arctic makes a white coat useful. Further south where it only snows in the winter, a white coat would be as much a hindrance as a help, and the grizzly has a brown coat. It is the weather that marks out the territory of the two types of bear.

Is there something similar which makes a particular area more suitable for one type of crow or the other? Not obviously so.

Looking at Great Britain, we find the hooded crows hold the Scottish Highlands, while the carrion crows hold the lower lands of England. 'Aha!' you might say, the hooded crows are more suited to living in the mountains. But no, looking at Italy, we find the roles are reversed. The carrion crows hold the Alpine highlands while the hooded crows occupy the southern lower countryside.

It can't be temperature either, because hooded crows hold both Scandinavia and Southern Italy, which more or encompasses the full range of temperatures experienced by Europe. On average, Western Europe is milder than Eastern Europe: the range of temperature between winter and summer is less than in the harsh east. So perhaps carrion crows prefer milder climates; but no, Ireland is one of the mildest climates around and is entirely inhabited by hooded crows, not carrion crows.

So the conclusion seems to be that there is nothing that makes any area more suited to one than the other. So why don't we get both throughout Europe?

Gause's Law of Exclusion

GF Gause was a Russian scientist who studied microscropic animals called Paramecium in test tubes in the mid 20th Century. He discovered that if he put two different types of paramecium into the same test tube, with plenty of food, one would wipe out the other. The two types of animal were not attacking each other, they were just consuming the same food. One would be more efficient at converting food into babies than the other and after a few generations, it would be the only one left in the test tube. He generalised this into a rule:

No two species can coexist indefinitely on the same limiting resource.

This is an important principle in the science of ecology. If two species are competing for exactly the same resources (land and food), then one will wipe out the other. This appears to be what is happening with the crows. Since both types of crow are identical in size, strength and eating habits, they are competing for exactly the same resource. One species must be marginally more suited to life as a crow in Europe than the other, and that species will eventually win the war. The other one will die out.

How Will the War End?

The hooded crows seem to have the upper hand at the moment, with more of Europe by area than the carrion crows, but the border area in Scotland is moving: the line is much further north than it was 100 years ago, which suggests that the carrion crows are winning in Great Britain.

Perhaps there is some trait of each crow which makes it slightly more suited to a particular part of Europe than the other species. In this case, things will settle down eventually, and like the grizzlies and the polar bears, we'll be able to talk about two species in two different habitats. But for the moment, it appears to be all-out war!

http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A3347093
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-london/plain/A3347093

(127) Corvid (dream) symbolism in Islam and pre-Islamic beliefs

2012-07-31T14:50:00.001+02:00

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Crow — The crow symbolizes a haughty man who walks arrogantly, a miser, a corrupt person, and a liar. According to religious belief, it once was a human being but was metamorphosed as a result of a curse. In general, sight of one does not augur well. Paradoxically, it sometimes alludes to long life.

• Catching a crow: Will make illicit gains through corruption and arrogance.
• Seizing or winning a crow: Vanity and wrongdoing.
• Owning a crow: Will loot somebody or something.
• Talking to a crow: Will drown in worries, but relief will follow.
• Eating crow meat: Will get money from thieves.
• Seeing a crow at the king’s gate: Will commit a crime and will feel sorry or will kill one’s brother, then repent in view of a verse in the Holy Quran about Cain and Abel: “Then Allah sent a crow scratching up the ground, to show him how to hide his brother’s naked corpse. He said: Woe unto me! Am I not able to be as this raven and so hide my brother’s naked corpse? And he became repentant.” (“Al-Maidah” [The Table Spread], verse 31.)
• Being scratched by crows: (1) Will freeze to death. (2) Will be slandered by unscrupulous persons and suffer tremendously.
• A crow standing on the Kabah, the Muslims holiest shrine in Mecca (Makkah): A debauchee will marry an honest woman.
• Seeing a crow in one’s house: (1) A man is betraying the dreamer by sleeping with his wife. (2) The ruler or one of his men will enter the dreamer’s house against his will or storm it.

Crow — (Carrion crow: cheat; Hooded crow, Jackdaw, Raven: swindle)

A crow in a dream means adultery, narrow-mindedness or concealing one's evil actions or intentions.

In a dream, a crow also represents a stingy, proud, ostentatious and an arguing person.

Hunting crows in a dream means earning unlawful money through deceitful actions and corruption.

Seeing a crow in a dream also means a bad omen and particularly if seen in the fields.

Seeing a crow standing over the roof of one's house in a dream means that one's wife is having a secret affair with one of his friends.

If a crow speaks to someone in his dream, it means that he will beget a son who will grow to be a corrupt person.

If one sees a crow speaking to him in a dream, it could mean suffering from depression, then feeling better thereafter.

A crow in a dream also could signify migration, or separation between beloveds.

Eating the flesh of a crow in a dream means receiving money from thieves.

Seeing a crow standing before the courthouse in a dream means committing an offense and paying the price for one's crime, or it could mean killing one's brother, then regretting it.

If one sees a crow digging the earth in a dream, then it becomes a stronger indication of such a crime.

If a crow scratches someone's face in a dream, it means dying from an illness or freezing to death from being lost in a forest during the winter.

Receiving a crow as a gift in a dream means happiness.

A hooded crow in a dream represents longevity, a wealthy person, elderly people or it could represent wonderment about something when awakened.

A crow in a dream is also the messenger of winter, cold weather and adversities.

Seeing a crow descending upon a noble house means that a corrupt person will marry a noble woman from that house.

Seeing a piebald crow in a dream means an affliction that will befall one's son.

Owning such a piebald crow in a dream means having a bad son.

Slaughtering such a crow in a dream means receiving news from a distant place.

In that sense, if a piebald crow speaks to someone in a dream, it means begetting a son who will grow to be a despicable and a corrupt person.

Seeing a flock of crows inside one's house in a dream means gaining wealth and honor up to the end of one's life.

It also could represent people who speak ill of others or backbite them.

A crow in a dream also represents a vicious fighter who fights just for himself and who is keen at acquiring what he wants, or it could represent a grave digger or bad news, a bad omen, mismanagement of one's life or business, a long journey, trouble, adversities or calling a curse upon someone, adultery or it could represent someone who mixes good with bad qualities.

Seeing a jackdaw in a dream means a bad crop.

Fighting a crow in a dream means fighting someone of such character.

Holding a crow in one's hand in a dream means self-deception and pride.

A crow inside one's shop in a dream means a corrupt person in that company.

Hunting crows in a dream means gains from unlawful sources.

Seeing a crow standing over a grave in a dream means that one will die in that place, or that one will discover something about which he had no knowledge. (Also see Baby crow; Carrion crow; Raven)

Crow — It represents a mischievous person who is a great liar and an impostor. He has no religion.

The same is the interpretation of an old eagle and magpie. Ibn Sirin (RA) says that if a person sees an old eagle in his dream during the day, he will suffer from some serious illness.

Carrion crow — (or any common crow and particularly one with a red beak, or a starling.) In a dream, a carrion crow represents a mighty man, or people who like sharing, or it could mean a disturbance without cause or basis. (Also see Crow)

Baby crow — (Fledgling; Nestling) A fledgling crow in a dream represents poverty, need, separation from one's parents and segregation from one's relatives or clan. If one is experiencing such adverse conditions in wakefulness, then seeing a fledgling crow in a dream means satisfaction of one's needs and reunion with his family. When the egg hatches and the baby crow comes out of it, the parents shy away from their fledgling and remain distant from the nest. Then Allah Almighty will provide the nestling crow with various types of flies to eat from. Once the baby crow's feathers grow, the parents will return to their nest and care for their baby until it commences to fly.

Hooded crow — (See Crow)

Peacock, Crow or Magpie — A peacock may be interpreted as a wealthy non-Arab king who adopts much embellishments and who has many followers. The same applies to a royal white falcon or eagle. But if it is a crow or a magpie, it represents an evil person.

Raven — (Carrion crow; Crow; Hooded crow; Rook) In a dream, a raven represents a high ranking man, a forbearing and a patient person, or a strong and a well feared person. (Also see Crow; Rook)

Rook — (Carrion crow; Crow; Raven) Capturing a rook in a dream means receiving an inheritance, or it could mean presenting the truth before a jury in a court of justice that will be refuted, then presenting the judge with a false version that will be accepted. A rook in a dream also represents a highway robbery. (Also see Crow)

http://www.myislamicdream.com/throwing_stones_crow.html

(126) Cromachy of the crows

2012-04-16T22:29:00.003+02:00

The king of Connacht was said to be a kind person and a man of honor, however he had three absolutely dissolute sons, who once got him into big trouble. Once upon a time his sons happened to annoy one extremely dangerous man - Cromachy named Master of Crows. Known for being an old and very powerful warlock, Cromachy was living all alone in a small house hidden in the middle of dark forest located not so far from the king’s castle. There were a big number of high trees growing around his house, on tops of which, lots of scary ravens had nests. All local peasants held those ravens to be actual demonic creatures serving their Lord. So they always preferred to avoid passing nearby that gloomy and weird place. If anyone of them ever dared to get Cromachy angry and therefore, deserved his curse, one of those scary ravens would necessarily leave its nest to follow that person all his time. It didn’t matter where the cursed one could go, the crow would keep following his way by all means, right up to his death.

Once like many people around, those who have lots of free time, but nothing to do, the royal heirs – Declan, Diarmaid and Daithy – decided to play a monstrous joke with the old sorcerer. They put a stone plate on his chimney, causing his small house to fill with smoke, so that Cromachy was about to give up the spirit.

Enraged like Devil, Cromachy traced them down to the castle and there, at the presence of their old father (whose heartbeat was close to stopping due to such a shameful attitude performed by his sons) he cursed them all. He foretold that the senior prince would grow to become a thief doomed to spend all his life in larceny. The middle prince would become a murderer, who never lets a knife out of his hand. And finally, the junior prince would be a beggar, living on handouts only. Cromachy cursed the old king too, for bringing up such selfish heirs and foretold that the king himself would be doomed to live as long as he gets an opportunity of witnessing how wicked predestined fate will eventually find each of his sons. In other words: the old king was doomed to see with his own eyes all those awful sins and crimes to be committed and done in the future by his cursed offspring.

Being frightened into a fit and feeling total inability to keep hearing such a demonic prediction, the poor father fainted. After some time however, he found himself lying in bed being surrounded by his pale wife and lots of servants whose faces were also very pale and frightened. Suddenly, four huge and devilish looking ravens appeared in his bedroom, once they appeared they immediately sat on four high bedposts around the king’s bed. They began to croak loudly and ominously: Carrh! Carrh! Carrh! The old king tried to bury his head in blankets not to hear their terrible shouts; nevertheless, in the castle it was spreading everywhere. A bit later, it came out spreading outside of the building by filling whole outer territory with dreadful, gloomy feelings that caused all local inhabitants around to start getting headache and losing quietness.

In fact, something dangerous as well as mysterious was felt in the air, besides that wild croaking produced by those four ravens was getting worse, louder, more and more nerve-wracking every single day. The luckless king ordered to send for all known doctors, bishops, philosophers and scientists in hope of asking for help, or at least, for any wise advice. However, none of them proved his ability to find any reliable solution to rid the king of this awful family curse. What’s more, none of them managed to silence the crows even for a moment either! Pretty soon the old king together with his people began to lose weight; their state of mental health got so bad that they all became very close to the point of going mad. The situation inside the castle became so sick and serious that sad news about this royal damnation eventually overcame borders of the Kingdom of Connacht. After some time the news achieved Dark Patrick’s ears whilst he was working on his small potato field among the Donegal Mountains. Having made him very sad, it caused him to leave his work and go to Connacht in the hopes of seeing the king in person and to help him with his troubles.

On reaching the castle, he faced up with several guardians that were standing on duty at the main gates. Dark Patrick kindly asked them to allow him to come in to see the king, instead of it the guardians were about to set their dogs on him. Fortunately, at that very moment the old queen heard a loud noise coming from outside, wondering about its possible source, she decided to come down herself to check on if everything was alright. And indeed, she got to know that noise reason pretty soon. Since her heart was already broken down and filled with unmeasured amount of pain and fears, she was ready to try anyone, anything; even most ridiculous means, in order to get her luckless spouse healed.

‘All the wisest men of this kingdom have already failed to solve our problem, but this poor man does insist on his wish to help us, who knows, maybe I should give him a chance?’ - She bitterly thought to herself allowing Patrick to have an audience with her diseased husband. Once Dark Patrick entered the bedroom he saw the old king lying in bed, looking extremely tired, scared and hopeless, as if he truly was at the edge of madness. He was surrounded by a large crowd of various types of public: lots of doctors, philosophers, scientists, archbishops and numerous ordinary servants. No sooner had all those highly educated men realized the true purpose of Patrick’s appearance, as most of them began to think in an arrogant manner what would be better: to leave the castle immediately with offensive senses inside, or to keep staying there and just laughing at him. Because of their respect for the old king and the queen however, they did decide to stay there, acting indifferently toward that holy fool in rags.

Meanwhile Dark Patrick just asked the old king to tell him all his troubles personally, and then he wished him to call on his heirs.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked the first prince as soon as they all appeared in the chamber.
‘Declan’.
‘What’s the curse you’ve deserved from Cromachy?’
‘Cromachy foretold that I’d become a thief to steal throughout my life’
Dark Patrick immediately turned to the scared queen and said to her:
‘Order to send your eldest son to the best school of laws in Ireland, let him become a respectful judge. In case of being a judge, no one lawmaker will ever suspect him!’
At that very same moment, one of the devilish ravens left its bedpost place, let out a shrill shout, spread its wings and… disappeared in the air.

Dark Patrick turned back to the second prince.
‘Well, what’s your name?’ he asked him.
‘My name is Darmid’.
‘What did you deserve?’
‘I’ll grow up to become a murderer that never lets a knife out of his hands’.
Dark Patrick turned to the trembling queen and ordered her:
‘Send your second son to the best school of medicine. Let him study to become a good surgeon, in case of being a surgeon his knife won’t be the knife of a murderer!’
Hardly had he said this, as another raven issued a shrill shout, stretched its wings and flew away through the window.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked the third prince.
‘Daithy’.
‘And what’s your curse?’
‘I’ll become a beggar to live on handouts till my death’.
‘Don’t waste time!’ - Dark Patrick quickly said to the old woman.
‘Send your youngest son to the best seminary. He should become a priest; in this case God will never condemn him for having gratuitous bread!’
Once he said it, as the third raven also issued a shrill shout, spread its wings and got lost in an instant.

Pleasure and patience were slowly filling the royal heart with inner peace and quietness, the old father managed to rise in bed and, out of the blue, he began to cry with happiness seen in his eyes. At that very moment, the fourth and most ominous raven let out a heart-breaking shout that would make any Christian’s hair stand on end, and left the room.

Cromachy’s curse was now fully deceived and therefore, safely avoided by this smart way. Dark Patrick modestly refused all the honors and gifts presented him by the royal family. He also gave up a position of Main Advisor of Connacht that the king himself hopelessly tried to grant him. He said that he was just a poor peasant, no more no less, besides his potato field was already awaiting for his return. He just asked for permission to come back home, and once he received it, he left the castle. One thousands of envious eyes watched him leaving the kingdom, moving toward his little house lost among the Donegal Mountains.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is an ancient Irish saga. One of those about Dark Patrick’s chronicles.
(Simplified translation from the Russian language)
Russian origin is taken from: “Through the magic ring.” A Book of British Folklore Collection published in the former USSR over 20 years ago.

http://karabasan.livejournal.com/20911.html

Cromachy of the crows. Old Irish Saga. Read by Amy Rosenberg. The king of Connacht was said to be a kind person and a man of honor, ...

http://karabasan.podfm.ru/karabasan/7/download/Cromachy_Echo.mp3

(125) Cleverer than a child of four.

2011-12-23T23:21:00.005+02:00

Cleverer than a child of four, the birds who can read your mind

Fascinating experiment shows members of the crow family, known as corvids, aren’t just among the cleverest birds, they are smarter than most mammals
By Nicky Clayton

--

Aesop had the measure of crows.

In his fable, there was a wise old mother crow who finds a pitcher with only a little water in it.
Desperately thirsty, the intelligent bird drops small stones into the container, raising the water level until it is high enough for her to drink.

The story might be 2,500 years old, but the Ancient Greek author clearly understood how the crow’s mind works.

For when we recreated the experiment in our laboratory in Cambridge, the birds did exactly as Aesop described. Without being taught the details of the task, they picked up stones and dropped them into a tube of water — raising the water level.

This experiment is part of a research programme which has proved that members of the crow family, known as corvids, aren’t just among the cleverest birds, they are smarter than most mammals.
In fact, their intelligence rivals that of apes — who, along with crows, are able to do tasks that three and four-year-old children have difficulty with.
I’ve been fascinated by birds for as long as I can remember, and for me, the magic lies in their movement.

The Aesop’s fable experiment was designed to see if corvids (the family of birds that includes crows, jays, ravens and jackdaws) have causal reasoning — the awareness that one event leads to another.

In our study we placed a wax worm — the larva of the wax moth, and a favourite snack of corvids — on the surface of the water in a tube, just out of reach of the crows’ beaks.

When we presented the birds with the tube and a pile of stones, they put stones into the tube to raise the water level, until they could reach the worm. Later, we gave them just the tube and the wax worm — and they flew off in order to get their own stones.

In other experiments we gave two of our jays — the highly intelligent and charismatic Romero, and smarty pants bully-boy Hoy — a choice of two types of object: dense rubber ones that sink and foam ones that float.

After they’d had some time to play with the objects, they worked out that it was the rubber objects they needed to put into the tube to have the same effect as the stone. They did not make the right choice all of the time but they dropped the rubber objects in many more times than could be attributed to chance.

What is amazing about this is that these birds are not natural users of tools in the wild, so this is not a skill that natural selection has crafted over the centuries.

I don’t know whether the birds use the weight or the texture of the objects to decide which will raise the water level, but when we did a similar test with children aged four to ten, the younger ones didn’t work out the solution.

Yet another experiment has shown that birds have what is called ‘theory of mind’ — in short, the ability to see the world from another bird’s point of view.

Out in the wild, jays and other corvids will hide food in the ground. We experimented with them, hiding food in two types of tray — one full of pebbles which was noisy when disturbed, and another full of sand which was quiet.

If other birds couldn’t see them hiding the food because they were behind a screen, but could still hear them, the jays picked the sand and were as quiet as mice when they buried food. But if other birds were watching, or if they were on their own, they realised that it didn’t matter how noisy they were.

This looks like very intelligent behaviour — deducing what others will or will not know from what they have seen and heard. Of course it could be an evolved instinct, because birds need to hide food to survive.

But there’s a second more striking example of their intelligence — one which instinct alone cannot explain.

If the birds were being watched when they hid their food, they rushed to move it to another hiding place as soon as the other watching birds were out of sight.

However, they did not bother doing this if no other birds had actually seen them hiding the food. And crucially, the birds only moved the food after they’d been watched if they had experienced theft in the past — if another bird had stolen food from them or if they have seen another bird steal food.

Since there are also hand-raised birds in our care which have never experienced theft and which never move the food, this rules out blind instinct and proves that such behaviour is learned.

A third experiment showed that birds have the ability to plan ahead.

Results showed hand reared birds who have never experienced theft so never move or hide their food (pictured are a pair of Green Finch, not included in the experiment) in a suite of three interconnected rooms for a period of six days. At night, the bird was locked into one of the three rooms.

In the morning, food was served in one room but not in the others. For the first three nights, we put the bird in the room where no food was served in the morning. For the next three nights, it was put in the room where food was delivered.

Then, we gave the bird the opportunity to plan ahead, by giving them enough food for one meal and some surplus.

We wanted to know if they would remember which room didn’t come with breakfast, and realise that they should stash the food in that room for the next morning.

We found that the birds stashed food in the ‘cheap motel’ room — even though there was only a 50-50 chance that they were going to spend the night there. This sort of planning ahead is not trivial — young children struggle with it.

There are many examples of corvid intelligence from around the world. In the wild, New Caledonian crows use twigs to reach insects in crevices.

But in a study at Oxford, a New Caledonia crow called Betty went further and took a straight piece of wire, fashioned it into a hook and used it to get food. Faced with an old problem, she worked out a new solution. And our rooks are able to do just the same.

Not all birds are as clever as crows, although parrots might be quite smart.

These findings have fascinating implications.

People used to believe that the high level of intelligence we see in humans and apes evolved only once on the planet, but if it occurs in distantly related groups — the common ancestor we share with birds lived 300?million years ago — it suggests this intelligence evolved more than once.

This means that we may have other intelligent lifeforms on earth that we are not aware of. And because birds’ brains are very different from mammal brains, it raises questions about what kinds of brains support intelligence.

There are other contenders for considerable intelligence in mammals — such as dolphins and elephants. What they and birds all seem to have in common is that they are long-lived and have huge brains relative to body size.

These birds have long ‘childhoods’, with lots of opportunities to learn from parents. And they are all highly social.

It has been argued that one thing that gives rise to intelligence is living in social groups. It means you have to think about what others are doing all the time.

As mammals, we have overlooked the intelligence of non-mammals. Perhaps we should show more respect — for if evolution had unfolded differently we humans might have been mere curiosities to our beady-eyed corvid masters

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2070461/Cleverer-child-birds-read-mind.html

(124) The raven flies, over my pounding head

2011-12-23T23:17:00.002+02:00

(I wrote this in 1988, after awakening from a crazy dream.)

The raven flies, over my pounding head
and he lands on a tree near the church
the air is so thick, you can see it
as he stares from his lofty perch

An omen, I think
as I watch him, watch me
his eyes cut and pierce my brain
spinning spiral circles
I am now so madly certian
he informes me with his eyes
that I'm insane.

Black billed bird with eyes of onyx
fire in his soul
leave me now with no chains of power
I need not your help
on my path to be whole

It's all in a relative motion
beyond to the graveyard below
now I awake from my daze
make my escape through the haze
to the only relief that I know.

So what's this game
that you play in the dark
it's a riddle to some
you know it means that you're marked
I've seen you before
but I don't know your name
the story is old
but always the same

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTaZNFu7ut0&feature=related

(123) The Crowman (Pagan Altar - lyrics)

2011-12-17T03:15:00.002+02:00

"Beware the Raven that stands alone, the one that watches and waits,
Beware that unguarded moment, that subtle twist of fate.
It may just be the eyes of the Crow man".

You see a group of dancers in the street
Dressed up to look like chimney sweeps.
But under the feathered hats and ragged clothes
There hides the Crow man.

Faces blackened out so you cant see
The colour of the soul that lies beneath.
Behind the painted masks that hides their faces.
There hides the Crow man.

People gather round to cheer them on
And laughing joins in the dancing throng.
Unaware of the dark side behind it
They don't know what's really going on.
It's part of a ritual from the past
The dance of the Crow Man

Down through the ages down through the years
At springtime the crow man will always appear.
To feed the earth with the blood of the chosen
To ensure life's circle for the following season!
To replenish the earth by the taking of life
In the Crow mans ritual blood sacrifice!

In the crowd he'll see a person all alone
And point with an ancient Runic stone.
The spell is cast and only death awaits them
No one to miss them when they're gone
With no family to mourn or to care
They're now part of the Crow man.
"Beware the Raven that stands alone, the one that watches and waits,
Beware that unguarded moment, that subtle twist of fate.
It may just be the eyes of the Crow man".

You see a group of dancers in the street
Dressed up to look like chimney sweeps.
But under the feathered hats and ragged clothes
There hides the Crow man.

Faces blackened out so you cant see
The colour of the soul that lies beneath.
Behind the painted masks that hides their faces.
There hides the Crow man.

People gather round to cheer them on
And laughing joins in the dancing throng.
Unaware of the dark side behind it
They don't know what's really going on.
It's part of a ritual from the past
The dance of the Crow Man

Down through the ages down through the years
At springtime the crow man will always appear.
To feed the earth with the blood of the chosen
To ensure life's circle for the following season!
To replenish the earth by the taking of life
In the Crow mans ritual blood sacrifice!

In the crowd he'll see a person all alone
And point with an ancient Runic stone.
The spell is cast and only death awaits them
No one to miss them when they're gone
With no family to mourn or to care
They're now part of the Crow man.

(122) Ravens Use 'Hand' Gestures to Communicate

2011-12-01T17:34:00.003+02:00

By Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor. Date: 29 November 2011

Ravens use their beaks and wings much like humans rely on our hands to make gestures, such as for pointing to an object, scientists now find.

This is the first time researchers have seen gestures used in this way in the wild by animals other than primates.

From the age of 9 to 12 months, human infants often use gestures to direct the attention of adults to objects, or to hold up items so that others can take them. These gestures, produced before children speak their first words, are seen as milestones in the development of human speech.

Dogs and other animals are known to point out items using gestures, but humans trained these animals, and scientists had suggested the natural development of these gestures was normally confined only to primates, said researcher Simone Pika, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany. Even then, comparable gestures are rarely seen in the wild in our closest living relatives, the great apes — for instance, chimpanzees in the Kibale National Park in Uganda employ so-called directed scratches to indicate distinct spots on their bodies they want groomed.

Still, ravens and their relatives such as crows and magpies have been found to be remarkably intelligent over the years, surpassing most other birds in terms of smarts and even rivaling great apes on some tests.

"[What] I noticed when I encountered ravens for the first time is that they are, contrary to my main focus of research, chimpanzees, a very object-oriented species," Pika said. "It reminded me of my childhood, when my twin brother and I were still little and one of us suddenly regained a favorite toy, which existence both of us had forgotten for a little while. This toy suddenly became the center of interest, fun and competition. Similar things happen, when ravens play with each other and regain objects."

Beak gestures

To see if ravens communicated using gestures, scientists investigated wild ravens in Cumberland Wildpark in Grünau, Austria. Each bird was individually tagged to help identify them.

The researchers saw the ravens use their beaks much like hands to show and offer items such as moss, stones and twigs. These gestures were mostly aimed at members of the opposite sex and often led those gestured at to look at the objects. The ravens then interacted with each other — for example, by touching or clasping their bills together, or by manipulating the item together. As such, these gestures might be used to gauge the interest of a potential partner or strengthen an already existing bond.

"Most exciting is how a species, which does not represent the prototype of a 'gesturer' because it has wings instead of hands, a strong beak and can fly, makes use of very sophisticated nonvocal signals," Pika told LiveScience.

Origin of gestures

Ravens are known to possess a relatively high degree of cooperation between partners. These findings suggest that gestures evolved in a species that demonstrates a high degree of collaborative abilities, a discovery that might shed light on the origin of gestures within humans.

"Gesture studies have too long focused on communicative skills of primates only," Pika said. "The mystery of the origins of human language, however, can only be solved if we look at the bigger picture and also consider the complexity of the communication systems of other animal groups."

As to whether or not these findings suggest that ravens are smarter than dogs, "I am not an advocate of proposing that a given species is smarter than another one," Pika said. "In my view, all species have adapted to distinct social and ecological settings and niches, and thus, a given species might behave in a distinct situation 'smarter' than another one in the same situation and vice versa. In my opinion, it is much more interesting to investigate why one species can solve a given task better than another one and how and why this behavior evolved."

Pika and her colleagues would like to further explore what other gestures ravens use and what their meaning and function might be. Pika and Thomas Bugnyar detailed their findings online Nov. 29 in the journal Nature Communications.

(121) Magpies in medieval Europe

2011-10-18T12:30:00.003+02:00

Figure 1. Fox with Birds, including Magpie, Isabella Psalter, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek München [MS gall. 16], fol. 13r, England, 1303-1308.
Reprinted with permission.

Black with large swathes of white on its breast and wing, the magpie had
some interesting and well-known connotations in the bestiaries of medieval
Europe. These books often included the story of the fox pretending to
be dead, luring the magpies to his body, only to snap them up when they
attempted to eat his tongue. As depicted in the margins of the fourteenth century
Psalter of Queen Isabella of England (Figure 1), or the thirteenth century
bestiary MS Bodley 764, the fox’s treatment of the magpies is
described as “the symbol of the devil, who appears to be dead to all living
things until he has them by the throat and punishes them.” In Richard of
Fournival’s Bestiary of Love, the fox deceiving a magpie is likened to uncaring
men who pretend to be in love in order to seduce women: “A man will
say he is dying of love when he feels no pain or hurt, and these deceive
good folk just as the fox deceives the magpies.” It would appear that just
such an interpretation is intended for the bird in the “Hall of Justice”
ceiling paintings. The magpie appears three times in the ceilings, and is
always found in the vicinity of the Lady: twice on the hunting ceilingand
once on the battle ceiling (Illustration 6, in tree to left of castle;
Illustration 11, top center, left of starred panel; Illustration 15, lower
center). Although there are certainly numerous meanings that might have
been associated with this bird, its insistent visual connection with the Lady
may be intended to convey her position as the focus of the attentions of
several knights, perhaps not all of them with the noblest of intentions.

Magpies are not always represented as victims, however, for outside
the context of the fox story, they are usually portrayed as birds of prey.
This facet of their character is reflected in the fox story itself, their intentions
being to consume the carcass of the fox they believe to be dead. The
magpie, then, can be interpreted as representing both pursuer and pursued.
As such, the bird’s association with the lady indicates far more
than victimization, either of itself or of the Lady; rather, the magpie may
bring resonances of duality and ambiguity, suggesting that the Lady is,
not only the object of male desire, but also a savvy player in the courtly
games that transpire in the ceilings. Moreover, the magpie’s duplicity
may reference the instability and negotiation necessary not only in romantic
exchanges, but also in strategic engagements, a reading that is especially
pertinent to the sensitive relationship between the Nasrids and their Christian
allies.

Careful navigation in the realms of words as well as of actions was
important to both the Nasrids and their Christian neighbors, and further
associations offered by the magpie may also suggest some of the uncertainty
of negotiating across language and culture. In a common Latin bestiary
text, magpies are noted as poets because “they can speak words with
different sounds, like men;” in addition to the positive associations such
qualities would appear to carry, they also suggest a talent for the manipulation
of words, which may be used in the production of effusive and false
praises as well as in the creation of verse. The Latin word for the magpie,
Picus, is interpreted as a reference to “Saturn’s son, because he used them
in foretelling the future.” The text states that “you may think what you
like” of the stories associated with the magpie, such as its purported prophetic
talent or divinity, but “the sound of its voice may mean either the
loquacity of heretics or the discussion of philosophers,” thus implying the
ambiguous duality of the bird’s symbolism. For the Nasrid patron of
these paintings, whoever he may ultimately have been, the magpie may
serve as a reminder that one’s allies can quickly become threatening, and
that being prepared for the words of either the heretic or the philosopher
may protect one’s interests. On a visual level, such ambiguities as those
associated with the magpie may have also served to draw the viewers’ interests
to the animals and the background in general, and attest to the
importance of the background scenes to the overall comprehension of
the paintings.

http://art.okstate.edu/faculty/borland.pdf

(120) Gurdjieff

2011-09-25T07:13:00.001+02:00

G. Gurdjieff:
All and Everything

From "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson." , Chapter X / Why "Men" Are Not Men

"Personally I liked best of all the three-centered beings breeding on the planet bearing the name Saturn, whose exterior is quite unlike ours, but resembles that of the being-bird raven.

"It is interesting, by the way, to remark that for some reason or other, the form of being-bird raven breeds not only on almost all the planets of this solar system, but also on most of those other planets of the whole of our great Universe upon which beings of various brain systems arise and are coated with planetary bodies of different forms.

"The verbal intercourse of these beings, ravens, of that planet Saturn is something like ours.

"But in regard to their utterance, it is in my opinion the most beautiful of any I have ever heard.

"It can be compared to the singing of our best singers when with all their Being they sing in a minor key.

"And as for their relations with others, they – I don't even know how to describe them – can be known only by existing among them and by experiencing them oneself.

"All that can be said is that these bird-beings have hearts exactly like those of the angels nearest our ENDLESS MAKER AND CREATOR.

"They exist strictly according to the ninth commandment of our CREATOR, namely: 'Do unto another's as you would do unto your own.'

(119) The crow had a key role in the sea trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley

2010-04-12T17:50:00.001+02:00

The crow had a key role in the sea trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valleyby Dr Manzur Ejaz, Feb 20-26, 2009, India Asia Online Journal (iaoj)

From time immemorial, legend has it that love sick girls would wait for the crow to bring the good news of a lover’s arrival. The crow’s chatter on the roof was a sure sign that the lover was on his way. In folk songs like “Maey ni kag banairay uttay bolia” (O mother, the crow has spoken), and in many other such songs, idioms and parables, the crow plays a central role as the keeper of secrets.

Folk songs, idioms and collective symbols are handed down to us through a history of thousands of years. Many symbols keep traveling through time in different forms with transformed appearances and rearrangement of vocabulary and even with altering accents. For example in the expression, “Kaawan day aakhey dhor nahin mardey” (Crows can’t wish that animals die), the word ‘dhor’ for animal has disappeared from our Punjabi vocabulary. But this is the precise reason why this expression is extremely important, because it still remains the only key to certain unsolved historical puzzles. Such expressions are of extreme importance in articulating the people’s history of the Punjab as written history mostly revolves around kings and their priestly class.

The renowned Indian historian D. D. Kosambi has successfully employed old rituals, superstitions, idioms and abandoned vocabulary to reconstruct the mysteries of history. Writing about the Indus Civilization he has also given an explanation of the crow’s assumed character recurring in our folk songs. Taking Harrapa and Mohenjodaro, as the two highly developed cities of the Indus Civilization, Kosambi states that they were actively engaged in trading with Mesopotamia – another highly developed civilization dating from 5000 BC. The evidence of exchange between these two civilizations comes by the presence of similar seals found in the archaeological remains of both places. The crow played a key role in this sea trade carried on via the island presently known as Bahrain.

Due to the vulnerability of boats and weak defense against other sea dangers, sailors kept very close to the coastline. However, sometimes powerful waves or sea storms would push boats out into the deep sea, creating confusion for the sailors to determine which way the coastline was located. At such crucial moments the sailors would release a crow to fly into the air. The crow, having an acute sense of the land mass would provide guidance to sailors. According to the Bible, after the great storm, Noah sent a raven to find the nearest land mass. Similarly, he sent a pigeon to find out if the soil of the land was fertile or not. Many other Indian historical accounts show that the crow was an essential guide in sea faring in antiquity. As a matter of fact, lack of reciprocating trade is inferred from the absence of the crow in Mesopotamian seals.

From these historical accounts it is clear that if a lovesick girl is waiting for her sailor or trader lover, known as wanjaras or vendors in folk songs, the appearance of the crow would be taken as a strong indicator of his homecoming. Maybe lovers would paint certain colours onto the crow’s body to send a message to the beloved as well. Furthermore, the crow’s size, structure and shade of blackness changes with varying areas, and its appearance can identify the origin of the incoming traveler. Nonetheless, it is clear that the crow’s romantic or other symbolism had its roots in the economic activity of a certain period.

As sea travel became more stable, the crow’s use as a guide diminished. However, the crow as an economic tool was transformed into a romantic symbol. Or, travelers passing through thick jungles and deserts would still use the crow as a guide to get to the nearest human habitation. As populations in the ancient food gathering societies was extremely thin – sometimes a few persons per many square miles – so were crows. The appearance of a crow may have been an indicator of an incoming guest.

Many other expressions, if not all, related to crows were born out of the economic conditions of a particular historical period. For example, the expression “kawan dey aakhey dhor nahin mardey” as mentioned earlier indicates that it belongs to an animal breeding society where there was a period of extreme scarcity when birds and animals were competing for survival from the same source of food: the animals’ death. If we can determine the time frame in which the word ‘dhor’ for domestic animals went out of the vocabulary, we can highlight the specific range of that period and fill the gaps in our knowledge of our past.

In our language ‘wise crow’ is used both positively, as well as negatively. A whole series of forecasting was stipulated from the direction of one’s position vis a vis where the crow appeared in the morning. One commonly used indicator was the group crowing as a warning of unseen danger. We have seen that during the disastrous Tsunami animals migrated to safe places much before human beings got wind of the storm. No wonder then that the crow, which has been part of human living since antiquity in India, is an important part of its history.

The negative portrayal of the crow indicates the change and development of society into agrarian or industrial. First of all, for the Northern invaders, with fair complexions, the black crow must have been an ugly creature, while the people of the Indus Valley, mostly dark skinned, had an opposite perception of the wise bird. Moreover, after losing its value as a trade guide and forecaster of unseen dangers, the crow started appearing as a symbol of class, inequality and unnecessary infighting or degeneration.

The expression “Kawan toli ikko boli” (crows value everything in a single denominator) indicates a period where a dominating class or ethnic group is usurping everything, not differentiating between precious and cheap commodities or taking away everything valuable and giving meager compensation in return. Or the expression “Kawan tu chutti illan dey aggey” (spared of crows but snatched by vultures) describes a period where the common person is victimized by various levels of the ruling elites.

By the 18th century the crow assumed the character of an uncivilized low class vagabond. The crow appears as a distraction in Bulleh Shah: “Kaan harami charan na dainda ” (The crow does not allow me to husk), and as an undeserved lower class grabber in Waris Shah when he says that society has been turned upside down, where the crows are having a good time in the gardens and the peacocks are forced to look for food among garbage heaps.

To sum up, the crow has been a companion of the people of the subcontinent throughout its long history, and its story cannot be told without examining expressions, idioms and tales associated with the crow among other birds.

(118) Clever ravens cooperatively hunt

2010-04-12T15:57:00.001+02:00

Clever ravens cooperatively hunt
By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

Brown-necked ravens team up to hunt lizards, revealing an unexpected level of intelligence, say scientists.

Ornithologists observed a number of birds acting together to trap and kill their prey in Israel's Arava Valley.

Two of the ravens would fly to the ground to block the lizard's escape route, while the others attacked it.

The behaviour suggests the birds must know what each other and the lizard are thinking, known as a 'theory of mind', say the scientists.

Details of the behaviour are published in the Journal of Ethology.

Professor Reuven Yosef of the International Birding and Research Centre in Eilat, Israel and his daughter Ms Nufar Yosef, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University in Ramit Aviv, observed brown-necked ravens ( Corvus rufficollis ) hunting a large species of lizard called an Egyptian Mastigure ( Uromastyx aegyptius ).

During more than 60 hours observing the birds, they watched nine separate hunts take place at two locations.

In each hunt, a number of individual ravens, or pairs of birds, could be seen. But the birds did not flock together.

However, when they sighted a lizard, the teamwork began.

The birds would wait until the lizard had moved away from its burrow entrance.

Then two birds circling overhead would fly in at high speed, landing at the burrow entrance.

This effectively cut off the lizard's escape.

The remaining ravens then targeted the lizard, pecking at it until they had killed their prey, before tearing off pieces to eat.

Only when the lizard was evidently dead did the two ravens guarding the burrow entrance leave their post, and join in to feed.

"This is a live hunting expedition with the roles spelt out in advance. It is almost like an infantry assault," says Prof Yosef.

The ravens succeeded in killing their prey on seven out of the nine hunts.

Outwitting prey

He and his daughter, a psychologist, believe that the cooperative hunt suggests that brown-necked ravens posses what scientists call a 'theory of mind'.

Initially, each raven must recognise that the lizard, which averages 75cm long and can weigh up to 1kg, is too big to take on alone. The reptile also possesses a heavy spiked tail that can easily injure a bird.

Then for each bird to take part in the hunt, and fulfil a particular role, they must have some understanding of what each other is thinking, and be able to realise that by cooperating, they will share in the reward.

To outwit the lizard, they must also have an understanding of how it will likely react.

Other birds, including falcons, shrikes and Harris hawks, are known to hunt in pairs, with one bird flushing out prey into the path of another.

Such hunts are usually performed by breeding pairs or related birds.

But the ravens do not appear to be related, and seem more tactically astute.

Extraordinary feats

Corvids, the group of birds to which brown-necked ravens belong, have astonished scientists with extraordinary feats of memory, an ability to employ complex social reasoning and, perhaps most strikingly, a remarkable aptitude for crafting and using tools.

Last year, a German team of scientists revealed that magpies could pass the Gallup mark test, an indication of whether they are aware of themselves.

During the test, magpies marked with a coloured sticker under their beaks tried to remove it when presented with a mirror.

So far, only some species of primates have consistently passed this self-recognition test, although more recent studies suggest elephants and dolphins may also respond.

Corvids' tool-use may also rival, and even surpass, that of primates, such as chimpanzees.

Wild New Caledonian crows craft tools to help them secure hard-to-reach food, for example.

Western scrub jays intentionally deceive each other about the location of food stashes, while last year researchers discovered that rooks will team up to solve problems set for them in experiments.

Earlier this year, scientists even showed that rooks will repeat one of Aesop's fables, by using stones in an experiment to raise the water level in a pitcher so it can reach the liquid to quench its thirst.

Brown-necked ravens are a little studied species which breeds across north and central Africa to southwest and central Asia.

It has been able to expand its range in part due to its ability to exploit human settlements built in desert regions.

(Story from BBC NEWS, published: 2009/12/01)

(117) "Hello", the pet crow

2009-05-01T13:55:00.000+02:00

December 19, 1988
Good Bye, Hello
THE COMMON CROW IS AN UNCOMMONLY CHARMING BIRD, SAYS A MAN WHO KNOWS HIS FINE FEATHERED FRIENDS
Bil Gilbert

This is about crows and ravens in general and several individual ones I have known personally. There are about 40 species of what ornithologists call common crows, all members of the genus Corvus. They are distributed over most of the world, have developed some odd local customs and vary a bit in appearance. But functionally they are about as similar as Swedes and Swahilis, and here all of them will be called crows unless there is reason to do otherwise.

Crows, like humans, are omnivorous, able to eat more or less anything that does not eat them first; they are hardy and clever enough to prosper in virtually any environment on the planet, from polar to tropical regions. Since they have always been around us in substantial numbers and have a good many behavior patterns quite similar to our own, we have been keeping crows under surveillance for a long time (and, very likely, vice versa). To give our side first, here are some observations and thoughts about crows:

They have big brains, larger in proportion to their size, than any other avian species. Behavioral investigators in laboratories have given many laudatory testimonials to how well crows solve puzzles, manipulate locks and keys and learn to do simple counting exercises. In the field, where they are free to do as they please, crows have been found using tools and weapons held in their beaks. They employ sticks and spines as picks and probes. British bird-watchers trying to get at ravens' nests have been repeatedly showered with stones intentionally aimed at them by the dive-bombing birds.

Crows are obviously, incessantly and raucously communicative. Ordinarily, they employ a hundred or so meaningful expressions and gestures, but individual birds will creatively alter these root sounds and movements to expand their working vocabularies. Many crows are talented, enthusiastic mimics and, like PBS commentators or wine critics, are apt to sprinkle their conversations with foreign mots. I have known crows who used phrases they have picked up from cicadas, ducks, dogs and humans. That they can do the last is well known. There is no reason to believe that the raven did not quoth "Nevermore." And if indeed the bird did, the poet probably took it too seriously. I am persuaded that ravens don't know or much care what they are saying in such cases, but that they shout things like "Hello, Jake," mostly for the gaudy effect.

At times crows are notably, even hysterically, social. In the part of the world where I live—central Pennsylvania along the Mason-Dixon line—at the end of the working day during the fall and winter most of them gather in large flocks, sometimes consisting of as many as 75,000 birds. Then they roost together in clusters of trees, cheek by jowl, and spend the night gossiping, wrangling and sometimes sleeping. Come spring, however, the birds go off to look for single-family nesting territories. Once established in a nest, they are very secretive about its location. In the manner of New Jerseyites who have come by a ranchette retreat on a quarter of an acre in the Poconos, they belligerently drive off all trespassers, regardless of size, species, color or creed.

In principle, crows are monogamous, mating for life, which can last 20 years or more. Males and females both work at nest building and may take turns incubating the eggs and feeding the young. However, their principles, like ours, are sometimes violated, and at times they will do things that would be called adultery or rape if, say, a TV evangelist did likewise.

We can only guess at the motives of other creatures and can describe them only by making figurative analogies based on our own experience. It is therefore impossible to say with certainty why a crow will lie flat on its back and juggle a pinecone or toss and retrieve stones or perform acrobatics in the air or on the ground. It certainly looks as if it is playing, as we might say, engaged in an impractical and unnecessary, but agreeable, activity. Also, crows are known to do drugs, apparently (one must admit, in keeping with the foregoing reservations) for fun. Case studies of sporting and junkie crows will be provided in due course, but before that, some consideration should be given to the reverse perspective—what crows may know about us.

As is apparent to anyone who has tried to approach these birds, they clearly have learned that humans can be dangerous. However, this information does not terrify crows as it does many less bold and astute beasts. To the contrary, judging from their actions, they may well regard people in the way it is thought early people regarded fire—as a tricky but, on balance, magnificent gift of the gods.

The spread of what is sometimes referred to as civilization has been a disaster for some species, and even we have at times had doubts about whether its rewards are worth the price it exacts. In pursuit of our various agricultural, commercial and domestic interests, however, we have turned vast tracts of the planet into habitat that is much more attractive and richer for crows than was the howling wilderness. Thanks to us, the short-term prospects are that this world will become a better and better one for these birds.

In Arctic regions where I have sometimes gone, there are days when the only other living things to be seen are ravens, glumly pecking away at ice floes or glaciers, trying to get at frozen lemming scraps and such. The toughness and ingenuity of these Arctic-dwelling birds is impressive, but these ravens are atypical. To see many more—and more adaptable—ravens than are found in the Arctic wilderness, go to Fairbanks, Alaska, or Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, or similar modern northland communities that have dumpsters and landfills. In addition to the abundant refuse they offer, the streets of such towns are paved with the equivalent of raven's gold: road kills, mashed pizza, french fries, kiwi fruit parings and other loose garbage, which ravens find as nourishing as iced lemmings and much easier to get at.

Within 60 miles of where I live, I know of seven crow roosts, those big winter bedroom complexes. One of them is in a genuinely rural area, a woodlot surrounded by dairy farms, which are always good sources of crow chow. The other six are either in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area—the largest, a roost of about 10,000 birds, is hard by the Capital Beltway—or in sizable outlying towns such as the Maryland communities of Frederick and Hagerstown. Each of the urban roosts is close to a shopping center, and in each place the birds perch at night in trees left standing or planted by developers.

Besides being convenient to rich deposits of food, these roosts are especially secure ones for the birds. You can say what you want about crime in our cities, but the authorities there have pretty much stamped out recreational gunning, which traditionally is a much greater threat to crows than are shoot-outs between cops and robbers. In contrast, that old-fashioned rural roost I know has old-fashioned country problems. Fairly regularly, by the look of the carcasses on the ground, it is visited by people who have so little excitement in their lives that they can find nothing better to do than blast away at crows with shotguns. Longtime residents of the area say the roost has been there for decades but seems to be decreasing in size, presumedly because of the sport shooters. Since the environs of Baltimore are rapidly pushing in this direction, however, things may be looking up for these rural birds. Quite possibly there will soon be a nice shopping mall with security guards near the woods.

Our cities and suburbs are beautifully, if unintentionally, laid out for crows—open glades, good for foraging, mixed with nicely spaced trees, which provide protection and nest sites. On the ground below are windrows of paper, plastic and fabric remnants that are suitable for nest building. (Some crows' nests I have seen suggest that Styrofoam cup scraps are currently a fashionable construction material.) Richard Banks, an ornithologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Washington, has become avocationally interested in this matter. He thinks that there may be more crows' nests in his neighborhood of Alexandria, Va., than are found in any other comparably sized area in the U.S.

The movement of crows from the country to the city is of major consequence to them, but the rural birds have also made some minor idiosyncratic adaptations. For example, certain English crows have taken to hanging around English ice fishermen. When the anglers go off to warm up, leaving the holes in the ice unguarded, the birds come down, haul up the lines, beak over claw, and take whatever bait or fish they find on the end of them.

There are some aggravating gaps in a report from Moscow published last summer, but according to the dispatch, authorities in Moscow decided back in the 1970s that there were too many pigeons in their city and, for reasons inexplicable to them, too few crows. In hopes that crows would destroy some of the pigeon eggs and nestlings—as they tend to do—some crows normally found in Siberia were brought to the more temperate Moscow region. As of 1987, Pravda reported, the Muscovites had a new and peculiar set of problems: "Since their introduction the crows have proliferated...and have taken to sliding down the gilded cupolas in the Kremlin's historic churches, inflicting serious damage on several of them." The account goes on to say that the crows also have begun "bombing the glass roof of the GUM department store in Red Square...." The ammunition? "Heavy stones," Pravda reported. "The store has tried replacing the glass covering with a specially reinforced transparent roof."

Not to mock Soviet science, but the activities of the Moscow crows reflect some of the normal interests of crows. There is a trout stream running through the property where I live, and crows who have shared the premises often occupy themselves by picking up stones and dropping them into the creek. Now, it is well known that crows will throw shellfish on rocks in order to break them open and get at the meat, but they plainly do not consider the pebbles ingestible items. Rather, it seems that they drop the pebbles for about the same reason we sometimes idly toss stones into the water—because it is entertaining. Perhaps the Moscow crows at first mistook the GUM roof for a pond, but unable to create splashes, they continued to drop stones on it because the bounces and thuds were amusing.

One time, outside a cabin in southeastern Alaska, I watched a raven repeatedly slide down the side of an ice-covered woodpile. A dozen times or so the bird spread its wings for balance, sat on what passes in a raven for its butt and careened to the ground, then picked itself up and did it again. For creatures of such tastes, the golden dome of an ancient church would be to a frozen woodpile more or less as Lake Placid is to a backyard sled run.

On the face of it, the relationship between crows and humans is very one-sided. We provide them with good food, residential areas and, apparently, recreational facilities. In return we sometimes kill them for sport and, less often, eat them. However, there is another aspect to the relationship, which tends to balance the equation. It is the nature of crows that they are among the best and easiest of wild animals for people to know and become attached to intimately. According to cuneiform notes left on clay tablets around 2500 B.C. and attributed to Gilgamesh, the legendary Mesopotamian leader, he had a companion raven. So did Eric the Red, the Viking explorer-hero. Legend has it that Eric and his men, rowing furiously, followed their bird across the North Atlantic to discover Greenland.

These ancients were probably not the first—and were certainly not the last—to live voluntarily with crows or ravens. Everyone I have known or heard about who has had such an experience with one of these birds seems to remember it vividly and consider it exceptionally gratifying. I, for one, have had—and been had by—crows for more than 50 years. There are a number of people and three dogs who have meant more to me than any of the crows, but I have liked all of the crows better than most dogs and some people.

Take, for example, the crow of this past summer. The bird was hatched in a box elder that stands about half a mile from the end of one of the runways of Washington's National Airport. He had apparently fallen from the nest a week or so before he could fly. An old friend of mine, a good one, was walking nearby and came upon this bird, and knowing that I was without crow, brought the bird to me in Pennsylvania.

Young crows are much easier to take care of than are most wildlife orphans. They do not cower or cringe but from the beginning are bold, noisy creatures with enormous appetites. This one arrived on a late May morning in a large cardboard carton. When the box was opened the bird immediately started squawking for food. Knowing he was coming, I had mixed up a batch of crow chow—hard-boiled eggs, canned dog food and oatmeal—which is as good as anything else for young birds and convenient to get into them. The way to feed a young crow is to put a gob of chow on a finger and shove it down the bird's more or less perpetually gaping gullet. The finger approximates the beak of a parent bird and triggers the swallowing reflex. While stuffing young birds in this fashion, my custom is to yell "Hello!" at them. If cackled a bit, this word has a crowish ring to it. In a day or two they recognize and respond to "Hello," which has therefore been the working name of most of the crows with whom I have lived.

Crow formula is easy to make, but young birds will ravenously consume—and thrive on—anything reasonably edible. A few weeks after Hello was up and about, the various people feeding him added up what they had given him in a two-hour period—seven fingers of basic crow mix, a dozen white grapes, two bits of peanut-butter sandwich, seven earthworms and parts of two crawfish fetched for him from the creek.

Another good thing about the management of crows: They do not need to be confined or restrained. I have known possessive people who, fearful of losing crows, have kept them throughout their lifetimes in cages or with clipped wings, which prevents them from flying. I consider this wrong for practical, rather than moral, reasons. The birds may adjust and make the best of their imprisonment or mutilation, but they are never fully crows. Therefore the people around them are not so fully rewarded and instructed as they might be.

During Hello's first few days with me and my family in Pennsylvania, an effort was made to keep him inside a workshop so that, while still flightless, he would not fall victim to a car or to dogs and cats, who were still learning about his protected status. In the shop he built up his strength by hopping and flapping around the room, picking up and throwing down nails, small screwdrivers and anything else he could lift. Although he would have had a less varied array of things to fiddle with in the wild, he would have been doing about the same had he been leading an ordinary crow's life.

The wing feathers of a young crow, which power flight, develop more rapidly than do those of the tail, which serves as a steering and braking device. Consequently, when the birds first leave the nest they can fly to nearby trees, but because of their still imperfect navigational equipment, they are not able or inclined to go very far. This is convenient for the parent birds, who continue to feed and instruct them for several weeks after the youngsters have left the nest. Birds in this stage of their development are aptly called branchers. (No systems, not even natural ones, are perfect. Young crows, by accident or because of overconfidence, regularly stray too far too fast, and end up—like Hello—on the ground, where they are vulnerable to predators.)

By the time he was six weeks old. Hello was an advanced brancher, active around the yard throughout the day. He was strong enough of wing to fly fairly well in a straight line or a bit upward, but still so short of tail as to be awkward and uneasy about landings. Because of his special circumstances, this created some problems. He would get himself into the upper branches of a 40-foot spruce, for example, then do what he would have done had he still been in the box elders near National Airport: open his mouth and squall pitifully, demanding that someone fly up with food. None of us did, of course, and driven by the desperate fear that starvation was imminent (a fear that grips young crows every hour or so), Hello would finally screw up his courage and attempt to come down to the shoulder or arm of a potential feeder. Sometimes he hit the mark, but just as often, because of his stubby tail, he did not. To avoid getting smacked in the face by a flailing crow and to keep him from crashing to the ground, it became the standard practice to stand alongside a clipped boxwood hedge when offering food to him. The bushes made a soft pad for his crash landings.

Though not generally fancy fliers, crows are very strong, enduring ones, as Hello became by midsummer. Even so, they are among the most terrestrial of birds, spending a great deal of time on the ground, where they do a lot of feeding, and where they are agile and seem much at ease. Even after he was a competent flier, Hello remained a willing and able walker. His home here was a 10-acre clearing on the side of an undeveloped, heavily wooded mountain. If Hello chose to follow somebody into the woods, he did so by flying from tree to tree, where the going was easier for him than on the brushy ground. In the clearing, however, he usually went on foot at a brisk waddle, which was good enough to keep pace with a person walking slowly. If the crow fell behind, he would take a few flaps to catch up or would land on a head or shoulder and ride along for a while. In part, this was a foraging tactic, a method for staying close to prime food sources, but some sociability may also have been involved. Among themselves, crows are habitually gregarious and we were, at the time. Hello's crows. Since we showed no inclination to join him in the air, he stayed with us on the ground.

I have a large German shepherd, Zenas, who seldom is more than a few paces away from me. Thus, Hello often walked with Zenas or—after they became well acquainted—rode on him. A crow and a hundred-pound dog strolling side by side are attention-getters; even more so is a dog walking along with an anxious expression on his face and a crow balanced between his ears. First thoughts tend to dwell on what an unnatural thing this is; second thoughts are quite the opposite. A crow riding on a dog's head, like the tip of an iceberg, only hints at the complex of natural elements upon which this uncommon relationship is based.

Zenas is a steady dog, a fine example of the kind of willing, servant-companion that 10,000 years or more of domestication has produced. One characteristic of a good dog is that he will put up with improbable fellow beasts—and even people—who he has been given to understand enjoy the protection of the human who has the dog's loyalty. Thus Zenas can be absolutely trusted with two house cats, though they sometimes tease and taunt him. There are also some barn cats around, working rodent hunters, who do not have household status or immunity, and the dog will chase and kill them as prey when he can. He tolerated the crow simply because it was another of my unfathomable idiosyncrasies. If I had somehow come by a companion bumblebee—an insect that Zenas especially despises—he would have probably done the same.

As for crows, they may become companionable, but this is a matter of individual adaptation, not genetic programming. Hello had come to accept us and, to an extent, Zenas, as odd crows (he had been imprinted, as behaviorists say). The dog, not being much good as a source of food, was considered an inferior but safe and sometimes entertaining crow in drag. Beyond using him as a mount, Hello pulled Zenas's tail and ears with his beak, fiddled with his collar and sometimes groomed him. (An English fancier of crows and dogs reports that when the three of them went walking, the crow, if permitted, would carry the spaniel's leash in its beak.)

Then there is the third party to this interspecies byplay, the person, who is the necessary catalyst. Though we have sometimes abused other creatures shamefully, for as long as there have been stories or reports of the human race, we have yearned to know what C.S. Lewis once called affectionately the "other bloods." The why of it is too large a question but the fact of it, our urge to have compassionate relationships with other animals, is as definitive a characteristic of our species as is our ability to do sums and build shopping centers. Crows are so bright and brassy that they often make you laugh and feel good. But they are also forever making you wonder—about them, about yourself and, if you keep at it, about the world in general.

After Hello began rounding up much of his own grub in the woods and fields and was no longer incessantly begging, he would sometimes fly down, sit alongside one of us and flatten out so that he could be gently rubbed. If someone obliged him and continued for 15 minutes or so, it induced in him what appeared to be a trancelike state—his eyes closed, his head lolled and his wings drooped. Among themselves, crows will often preen each other but so far as I know, nothing they can do approximates this sort of stroking. Yet there was something in the nature of Hello which enabled him to put this all together—that we had the proper hands and inclinations to produce a sensation he found agreeable.

When things were quiet, Hello would fly down to a convenient shoulder and make gurgling, clucking, even cooing sounds, which were quite different from the ones he used in conducting ordinary business. He kept at this longer and seemed more interested if the person responded by murmuring things like "Where have you been, Hello? That's a good crow. Say it again, Hello." Eventually, he began to experiment with, but never quite mastered, the magic sound of his own name. As noted, crows are mimics by nature. Even so, this voluntary, seemingly purposeful behavior is another wonder.

Crows are great baublists. They appear to covet and will certainly snatch and carry off bright, shiny objects, including, in my experience, spoons, spark plugs, coins, pencils, eyeglasses, rings and beads. Ethologists (students of animal behavior) say this apparent fondness for trinkets is simply an example of misguided foraging activity. Being omnivores, the argument goes, crows peck away at everything, testing for edibility. They also habitually create caches of excess food, as squirrels do with nuts. This theory is true and explanatory up to a point; but I happen to think it underestimates the learning ability of crows. All the crows I have known can clearly tell, after a few experiments, the difference between, say, a small pair of pliers and a crawfish. Yet they will go on messing with the inedible pliers.

Early on, Hello discovered that I always carry cigarettes in my shirt pocket. He thought much better of this habit than many people do these days. He would sit casually on my shoulder at first, as if he were there for some other purpose; then he would drive his beak into my pocket, spear a Kent III and fly off with it dangling from his beak. (Crows seldom carry objects in their talons.) As a defensive measure, I took to turning the cigarette package upside down. This worked until he became strong enough to grab and fly off with the whole pack, scattering Kents, which cost eight cents each, as he went. Then I began carrying the cigarettes in my pants, which somewhat curtailed the loss but taught him to pry into these pockets, where he was sometimes able to find and extract even better objects, on the order of car keys. While he still had his cigarette habit, though, he tried eating them, but soon found tobacco unappetizing. Thereafter, he simply played with them, tossing Kents in the air, catching them in his beak or talons, dropping them when he tired of the game. Perhaps, like a smoker, he was perpetually hopeful that the next cigarette would be tasty, but there is no evidence of that. What seems from observation more plausible (if anthropomorphic), is that the cigarettes and perhaps the act of getting them gave Hello satisfaction roughly related to that which we think of in ourselves as aesthetic.

One Sunday afternoon toward the end of July, when a good many people were coming and going, Hello did two bizarre but thought-provoking things that may or may not have been causally connected. Having frisked several visitors and been suitably admired, the crow lost interest in the party, which by then amounted to half a dozen people sitting around in lawn chairs talking. Hello flew off and was not seen for an hour or so. Later somebody who had gone for a walk came back and said we should look at the crow who was doing something weird in a patch of sand along a driveway. What he was doing was anting, which most crows occasionally do, but which Hello had not been seen doing before. Anting commences when a crow finds an anthill, squats down and wriggles around on it. Hello had apparently been at this for some time when we found him, for there were crawling, wounded and smashed ants all over his body.

Ants produce and will exude—when they are crushed, for example—formic acid, a pungent, acrid substance. One school of thought holds that crows roll in ants in order to smear themselves with this acid, which may act as a repellant to body parasites. Others speculate that the substance has a strong sensual, or even consciousness-altering, effect on the birds. Derek Goodwin, a leading British ornithologist and author of Crows of the World, the standard reference on the species, has written that when "anting at high intensity [crows] do so with great apparent concentration...and give the impression of being less alert than usual to other stimuli."

To put it another way, if a teenager showed up looking like Hello did as he ecstatically writhed in the hill of red ants next to the driveway, a parent would start delivering lectures about just saying no. (There is a natural historian named David Quammen, whom I know to be a fine essayist and who mutual acquaintances say is personally a good guy; I have never liked the man, however, because he has made a lot of clever, insightful comments about crows that I wish I had thought of first. About anting crows, Quammen has written in his book Natural Acts: "They revel in formication." He has also said—damn him!—that crows may be overqualified for their evolutionary station in life, and thus boredom accounts for some of their odd behavior.)

After using up the anthill, for all intents and purposes, Hello rejoined the social circle in the yard. However, he was so quiet and subdued that for a time no one paid any attention to what he commenced doing next—hopping around to drinking glasses, sipping the dregs of Fuzzy Navels, a refreshing orange juice and peach schnapps beverage popular in these parts. By the time he was noticed, the crow was wobbly and he'd had, as the expression goes, a snootful. Cut off from the sauce, the crow went unsteadily to the creek, splashed himself and drank a little pure water. Then he flew off and was not seen for the rest of the day. Nor did he appear in the morning, as had always been his custom. The unusual absence was a matter of concern and guilt because of our negligence in allowing a bird already stoned on ants to overindulge in Fuzzy Navels. But he showed up at about noon, apparently in good health and spirits.

The timing was probably coincidental, but soon after his fling Hello's routine began to change. During his first months he had always been close at hand during the day and had spent the nights in a spruce near the house. As the summer passed he began to disappear during the middle of the day, and the periods of absence expanded to the point where, by the middle of August, he was usually around the house for only a couple of hours each evening and morning. When he was with us he was social, chatty and affectionate, as always, but clearly our activities were no longer enough to hold his undivided attention. This pattern of behavior generally develops in free-ranging companion crows. Probably it is connected with a seasonal restlessness that affects all crows. As the summer wanes, the separate family groups merge and there is a shift of territory as the birds begin forming the large winter roosting flocks.

The breaking-away process is hard on those who know they are being left behind—like watching the last days of a youngster's childhood—but it tends to sharpen the appreciation of what remains of things as they once were. This was particularly true in the case of Hello, who began doing something that any crow can undoubtedly do but none I have known has done so memorably. After Hello began roaming, my wife and I got in the habit of drinking our morning coffee while sitting on a stone wall by the creek, calling him to join us. "Hello, Hello," we'd call to him, and at first he came in conventionally, banking through the trees. Then one morning we first saw (but could not immediately identify) him half a mile or so up in the air as a small black spot against the mountain. Maintaining his altitude, he swung directly overhead and then started down, turning tight spirals, making back flips and side slips, until he dropped lightly onto the wall beside us. Thereafter, about two mornings out of three until the last one, he made the same sort of dramatic entrance.

There was no practical need for these acrobatics or, for that matter, for him to join us in any fashion. Perhaps doing so was simply his pleasure. Certainly it was ours. The aerial display was in itself a marvelous thing, but there was something else. Having a crow—so much another blood—dive out of a high sky to sit down beside you creates a powerful feeling of connection, a sense that there can be and has been a natural mingling of naturally alien essences. Something of you is in the consciousness of a crow up in the air as something of him stays with you on the ground.

There are risks inherent in these relationships, not the least of which is the fear that they will end tragically. Various companion crows I have known, precisely because they were companions, have roosted in ill-chosen places and been eaten by raccoons; have been trapped in cars and smothered: have been so innocent as to make sitting targets for a mindless stranger with a .22. But as far as any of us knows, the end of Hello came about as it should have. He dropped down one morning and then went off with our son and granddaughter, who were taking a hike on the mountain. Hello stayed with them, flying from tree to tree, now and then riding on their shoulders until they returned to the house. He had a bite to eat and flew off again. None of us has seen him since.

For a few weeks after Hello left, I would shout "Hello!"—not so much hopefully but reflexively—at passing crows, none of which acknowledged me. As with a great summer vacation, though, the sense of loss, which is very strong immediately after a crow has gone, passes. What remains are memories and feelings of gratitude about what a fine time was had.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1068116/index.htm

(116) Birds react to human gaze

2009-05-01T13:51:00.003+02:00

[ Anyone who ever stared at crows from a distance will know, but now scientists have discovered this fact too... ]

A new study of jackdaws shows that these crow-like birds react to humans watching them, changing their behavior depending on who is looking and how the gaze moves.

"Jackdaws seem to recognize the eye's role in visual perception, or at the very least they are extremely sensitive to the way that human eyes are oriented," said Auguste von Bayern one of the study's authors from the University of Oxford.

The study, published in Current Biology, found that hand-reared jackdaws took significantly longer to retrieve food if a human was staring at the food than if the person was looking away. The bird would only react in this way if the person was a stranger and therefore potentially threatening.

The jackdaws were also able to interpret certain eye movements and hand gestures from the humans to find food that had been hidden, such as finger pointing or moving eyes. The jackdaws were unable to read communication that was static, however, such as an unmoving stare or a tilted head.

The discovery is particularly surprising since other intelligent species, like chimpanzees and dogs, have been found to be insensitive to staring or eye movement, according to von Bayern. Instead, these species appear to depend on other forms of communications, such as head or body orientation or movement. They do not appear to comprehend eyes as communicative organs.

"We may have underestimated the psychological realms of birds," von Bayern said. "Jackdaws, amongst many other birds, form pair bonds for life and need to closely coordinate and collaborate with their partner, which requires an efficient way of communicating and sensitivity to their partner's perspective."

The researchers hypothesis that jackdaws respond to human eyes, because unlike many species they use eyes to communicate with each other. Similar to human eyes, jackdaws' have a dark pupil surrounded by a white iris.

Jackdaws are corvids, the same genus as crows and ravens, and are one of the smallest birds in this genus. Highly sociable, they live in large hierarchal groups and are one of the only known species to have been observed giving and sharing food frequently.

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0406-hance_jackdaws.html

(115) Crow Nuisance, Crow Delight

2008-09-05T21:21:00.000+02:00

Crow Nuisance, Crow Delight
By Joe Deegan, July 30, 2008

As children growing up in Riverside, my friends and I were captivated by crows, big birds that were bold. We used to see how close we could creep toward them, while they seemed to contemplate our attention before flying away. What were they cawing about us?

Not long ago, the following email message arrived in the Reader offices. “Originally, the only crows I had ever seen,” observed the writer, “were at Death Valley. Now, they are all over La Jolla, walking on my wooden roof with scratchy nails, standing in the treetops, doubtless robbing babies from nests of other birds, leaving huge poops down the side of my house and on the front sidewalk. How come they have moved in such numbers to the coast? We used to have mostly raucous mockingbirds, but now it’s crows. There must be a reason for this migration.”

There must be a reason all right, but local bird experts aren’t sure what it is.

One of them is Terry Hunefeld, who has just returned from leading a seabird-watching expedition past San Clemente Island, 110 miles into the Pacific. “There are birds far out on the ocean, such as albatrosses,” he says, “that people never even see from land. They sometimes fly for thousands of miles before coming down.”

In contrast, crows tend to be stay-at-home birds. But if the La Jolla emailer is correct, they must have once left their inland habitats, right? Yes, Hunefeld tells me, in the early to mid-1980s, many of them suddenly seemed to pick up stakes and move into urban and coastal San Diego. Why they did it then, but not earlier, nobody adequately explains.

Crows seemed rarely to venture farther west than places like Poway, Lakeside, and El Cajon. “Those areas, and especially oak and riparian woodlands, were their native habitat,” says Hunefeld, who is 56 and retired from the real estate–training business. (He has always liked to spend time outdoors and, about eight years ago, got a serious case of bird-watching fervor.) “And even though San Diego was becoming a metropolis for a long time, it’s a mystery to ornithologists why the crows waited to move into the city, why they didn’t do it in the 1960s or 1970s, for instance. And why did it happen so quickly in the 1980s and 1990s?”

Hunefeld is most familiar with crow populations of the coastal valleys of Oceanside. He has been the compiler for the Audubon Society’s Christmas bird counts there for the past several years. “In Oceanside, 20-plus years ago,” Hunefeld tells me, “the count would average several hundred crows. In the late 1990s, it was up to 1000, 1400 in 2006, and when we counted last December, it was 1900.”

For further information on crows, Hunefeld refers me to Philip Unitt’s San Diego County Bird Atlas. Unitt is the curator of the Department of Birds and Mammals at the San Diego Natural History Museum. According to the atlas, American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) “nest in the crowns of trees with dense foliage.” Originally, coast live oaks in foothill areas were their favorites, but now that crows have moved to town, they inhabit “palms, pines, Italian cypress, and especially eucalyptus. In groves of such trees, crows nest colonially.”

In winter, crows gather in large flocks and roosts. Despite their more recent urban lifestyle, the highest concentration of crow populations in San Diego County, according to the bird atlas, is still “at the east end of Lake Hodges.”

Susceptibility to West Nile virus has become a particular hazard to crows. The virus “appeared in New York City in 1999,” says the atlas, “and is spreading rapidly across North America; crows have already been decimated in parts of the eastern United States.”

Other corvids are rooks, jays, and common ravens (Corvus corax). It is easy to confuse ravens and crows. But ravens are much bigger birds than crows, says Terry Hunefeld, in length, weight, and wingspan. Ravens have a shorter beak that’s somewhat like a “Roman nose,” and their wings are pointed, unlike those of crows. Ravens have longer tails than the fan-shaped crow tail. When the cousins fight, the single great advantage crows have over ravens is greater maneuverability in the air.

Ravens have long been local residents. “After the house finch,” according to Unitt’s bird atlas, “the Common Raven is the most widespread breeding bird in San Diego County. It occurs in all habitats, from beaches to mountaintops to desert floor. The change in the raven is less dramatic than that of the…crow, but the raven too is on the increase, aided by man-made…food sources…road kill, and…nest sites like buildings, bridges, and power-line towers.” They nest, for instance, in the California Tower in Balboa Park.

Crows are more communal than ravens. It’s hard to tell the male crows from the females. Both, together with extended families, take care of their young in nests at common roosts, which may be home to hundreds of crows. Egg laying in the San Diego region occurs roughly from the second week in March to mid-May. The incubation period is 18 days, according to the bird atlas.

Many people think of crows as a great nuisance. “They definitely can be annoying,” says Hunefeld, “especially in the evening, when they are calling to let each other know where they are.”

No matter what other people think, Hunefeld seems to be as fascinated with crows as with other birds. He concedes that he goes out bird-watching every day for one unique chance — to spot exotic birds. “Birds from the East Coast sometimes fly in here,” he says. “They just make a wrong turn during their migrations. And every once in a while, we’ll see Asian birds that, like the birds on our Pacific Flyway, go to Alaska for the summer. Then they just go back down the wrong coast.”

But crows? “Due to their cooperative and social nature, they may be the smartest bird out there,” says Hunefeld. “Crows will call warnings to each other and, in small groups, will chase away competitors.” They fight them off for food but will stand watch while their own family members eat.

“Crows are scavengers and will eat just about anything,” says Hunefeld. “So they are predators on the eggs and young of other birds.” They inhabit residential neighborhoods because they get lots to eat from picnics in parks, french fries and pieces of doughnuts on the sidewalk, and half-eaten burritos thrown from car windows. They help clean up refuse.

In that respect, crows’ urban existence is similar to their lives in earlier times. Farmers used to hate crows for eating their grain and fruit. But the crows fed on destructive insects at the same time.

On a neighborhood walk, you can often come surprisingly close to crows pecking at something on the ground. If you move in a way they find threatening, of course, they’re gone. “But they also recognize friendly gestures,” says Hunefeld. “When I was a kid, we helped a crow in our classroom to recover from a broken wing. For the next two years, he kept coming back for handouts.”

A number of websites attest to great affection for crows. I attach the following reminiscence entitled “Ball Playing Crows” from crows.net, The Language and Culture of Crows.

Washington State, near Seattle. “Grocery store, strip mall roof. As I approached the covered breezeway I could see several crows, maybe 5 or 6, ‘jumping’ up and down on the roof.… A moment later a super-ball dropped off the roof and bounced into the busy parking lot; three crows quickly followed and chased the ball while it bounced. When the ball came to rest in a gutter one of the crows picked the ball up in her beak and ‘threw’ it. At that point the other crows all tried to catch it. Even when it rolled under cars they would pursue the ball and make it bounce.…

“After about 10 minutes the ‘owner’ of the ball took the ball back up to the roof where I could once again hear the bouncing and jumping. The super-ball was one of the 2” diameter ones; so it was really an effort for them to pick it up and then fly.”

And now I notice on crows.net a possible answer to why crows suddenly moved from the backcountry into the San Diego urban area. “I was driving by when I noticed hundreds of crows gathering.… They were landing on top of the fence and all the way down covering all the ‘terraces.’ They stood in place all the way to the sidewalk. After a few minutes the area was packed with crows. Two crows were standing in the bicycle path by the street next to the sidewalk. One of them made a sound and all the other crows became silent facing the ones in the bottom. Then the second began making sounds. After about three minutes, the second crow stopped making sounds and the first one made a sound and all the others began flying off.

“The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was that they were in an amphitheater listening to a lecture. I was amazed that they all stayed quiet while the one in the bottom was ‘speaking’ and none flew away during all this time. I was also surprised at how instantly they grew quiet when the first crow made the first sounds and how quickly they left when ‘he’ made the second sound.”

(114) Crows in Japan....again, again, and again...

2008-08-27T17:52:00.001+02:00

New York Times

May 7, 2008
Kagoshima Journal

Japan Fights Crowds of Crows
By MARTIN FACKLER

KAGOSHIMA, Japan — Fanning out in small teams, the men in gray jumpsuits scour the streets and rooftops with binoculars, seeking to guard this city from a growing menace. They look for telltale signs: a torn garbage bag, a pile of twigs atop an electric pole or one of the black, winged culprits themselves.

“There’s one!” a shout goes up.

Sure enough, one of their quarry flies brazenly overhead: a crow, giving a loud, taunting caw as it passed.

This is the Crow Patrol of utility company Kyushu Electric Power, on the hunt for crows whose nests on electric poles have caused a string of blackouts in this city of a half-million on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.

Blackouts are just one of the problems caused by an explosion in Japan’s population of crows, which have grown so numerous that they seem to compete with humans for space in this crowded nation. Communities are scrambling to find ways to relocate or reduce their crow populations, as ever larger flocks of loud, ominous birds have taken over parks and nature reserves, frightening away residents.

It is a scourge straight out of Hitchcock, and the crows here look and act the part. With wing spans up to a yard and intimidating black beaks and sharp claws, Japan’s crows are bigger, more aggressive and downright scarier than those usually seen in North America.

Attacks, though rare, do happen. Hungry crows have bloodied the faces of children while trying to steal candy from their hands. Crows have even carried away baby prairie dogs and ducklings from Tokyo zoos, city officials said.

While no one knows the precise number of crows in Japan, bird experts and government officials in cities across the nation say populations have increased enormously since the 1990s. Tokyo says the number of crows it has counted in large parks rose to 36,400 in 2001 from 7,000 in the late 1980s, prompting a trapping plan that cut the numbers to 18,200 last year. However, ornithologists say that the actual number in Tokyo is closer to 150,000 birds, and that some crows may have moved to different areas to avoid the traps.

Behind the rise, experts and officials say, has been the growing abundance of garbage, a product of Japan’s embrace of more wasteful Western lifestyles. This has created an orgy of eating for crows, which are scavengers. Some steps taken to reduce crows include putting garbage into yellow plastic bags, a color the birds supposedly cannot see through, and covering trash with fine-mesh netting, to prevent large beaks from reaching the goodies within.

Still, the crows have proven clever at foiling human efforts to control them. In Kagoshima, they are even trying to outsmart the Crow Patrol. The birds have begun building dummy nests as decoys to draw patrol members away from their real nests.

“They are trying to outfox us,” said Kazuhide Kyutoku, deputy chief of Kyushu Electric’s facilities safety group, which conducts the patrols. “They aren’t willing to give up territory to humans.”

The birds seem to be winning. Mr. Kyutoku said despite the twice-weekly patrols, which have removed 600 nests since they began three years ago, the number of nests keeps increasing, as have blackouts. The utility says there were three major cutoffs last year. The biggest was in March, when a strand of wire in a nest short-circuited power lines, briefly blacking out Kagoshima’s central port district. In another cutoff, some 610 homes and businesses lost power for 48 minutes when a crow stuck its beak into a high-voltage power line.

Crows have also shown a surprising ability to disrupt Japan’s super-modern technological infrastructure. In the last two years, utility companies in Tokyo reported almost 1,400 cases of crows cutting fiber optic cables, apparently to use as materials for nests. Blackouts have become common nationwide, including one last year in the northern prefecture of Akita that briefly shut down high-speed bullet train service.

“Japanese react to crows because we fear them,” said Michio Matsuda, a board member of the Wild Bird Society of Japan and author of books on crows. “We are not sure sometimes who is smarter, us or the crows.”

The crow explosion has created a moral quandary for Japan, a nation that prides itself on nonviolence and harmony with nature, because culling programs are the only truly effective method of population control.

Tokyo was one of the first to take lethal measures, under the lead of its strong-willed governor, Shintaro Ishihara. Mr. Ishihara angrily ordered the city into action after a crow buzzed his head while he was playing golf, city officials said.

In 2001, the city began setting traps in parks and nature reserves, using raw meat as a lure. In the following seven years, the city captured more than 93,000 crows, which it killed by sticking the meat in trash bags filled with poison gas. Tokyo says the number of crow-related complaints from residents have dropped as a result.

“In the old days, crows and humans could live together peacefully, but now the species are clashing,” said Naoki Satou, the chief of planning in Tokyo’s environmental department, which conducts crow countermeasures. “All we really want to do is go back to that golden age of co-existence.”

Other communities, like Tsuruoka, a city in the northwestern prefecture of Yamagata, have started following suit.

Tsuruoka installed traps last year after about 7,000 crows took over a central park and the playground of a nearby high school, said Soichiro Miura, chief of the city’s environmental measures division. He said students complained of crow droppings so thick they had to use umbrellas, and of birds flying into classrooms to steal box lunches.

While the city said it killed only 200 crows last year, the use of traps has stirred opposition. A local ornithologist, Michiyo Goto of Yamagata University, called for nonviolent alternatives, such as relocating the crows outside the city by building an appealing habitat for nesting, which she said was a brightly lighted area with no underbrush to hide predators.

“Once you start killing them, there’s no end,” Ms. Goto said. “You can’t stop the damage unless you exterminate every last crow.”

(113) Listening to Raven - The Shadow's Role as Guide

2008-06-19T20:42:00.005+02:00

[I originally wrote this essay back in 1996-97, while living in
Seattle. I revised it in 2002 after moving to Tucson and it was published that year at the CG Jung
Page. When it was accepted there, the site was free to anyone who wanted to read the articles. In the last few years, however, they have required
people to register -- and pay a fee -- to access the articles. So I am posting it here for free. It's long, but breaking it up into separate posts
didn't feel right for this piece.]

Listening to Raven:
The Shadow's Role as Guide

In the
beginning, Raven created the world and all the animals, plants, and people we know to exist. But there was only darkness. Raven had not created the sun and
the moon and the stars. There, in the darkness, lived a great chief and his daughter. In a cedar box, the young woman possessed the sun, the moon, and the
stars. Raven coveted these items, and he decided that he would become a hemlock needle in order to steal these treasures from the people. Having become a
needle, and falling into a glass of water the young woman was about to drink, he entered the daughter and became an infant in her womb. He was born into
their family and was greatly loved by both his mother and grandfather.

Raven wanted to play with the treasures in the beautiful
cedar boxes, and he would not stop crying until his grandfather allowed him to play with the boxes. Once he had them in his possession, Raven threw the
stars and moon up through the smoke hole, where they instantly scattered throughout the heavens. But he did not yet have the sun, and he continued crying,
making himself sick, until grandfather gave him the box containing the sun.

He played with the box for a very long time, then suddenly
returned to his form as Raven and flew, with the box, up through the smoke hole. Far away from the village, he found some people living in the darkness. He
asked if they would like to live in light, but they did not believe that Raven, as powerful as he was, could dispel the darkness. So he opened the cedar
box and released the sun into the sky, and the people were afraid, scattering throughout the world. (Adapted from Smelcer, 31-2)

* * * * *

The other morning, just after sunrise, as I sat outside my
apartment, drinking coffee and enjoying the infrequent sunlight in a Seattle winter, I watched two young crows, little brothers to the ravens, play
keep-away with a piece of colored paper. From tree to tree, telephone pole to telephone pole, rooftop to rooftop, one crow chased the other, trying to
steal the worthless piece of paper. This game continued for several minutes before I had to get ready for work, and the game surely continued in my
absence.

From time to time during the day I thought about those crows. I
remembered other times I had watched crows engaged in similar activities, such as hanging upside down from telephone wires, dropping stones and flying down
to catch them before they hit the ground, or playing "king of the mountain" on top of a telephone pole. I have always felt a connection to crows
and ravens, the shadowy birds, a bond that lives beneath waking awareness most times, but often surfaces in dreams or in poems. In the nine years I lived
in Seattle -- a city where crows may be more numerous than in any other American city -- I had many opportunities to observe the behavior of crows, to watch them mate, hunt, and, most of all, play.Â

Watching crows at play, I understand why
the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest portrayed the crow and raven as trickster figures in their myths. Crows love to play, and because of their
superior intelligence and relatively simple lifestyle, they have many hours of free time in which to pursue their love of games. In fact, they not only
play among themselves, but they have been known to play with members of other species, pecking at a sleeping dog's ears, pulling on the tail feathers
of other birds, amusing themselves at the expense of others.

David Quammen suggests, only slightly tongue in cheek, that crows
are bored, that they have outgrown their evolutionary niche. Another writer, Candace Savage, has documented example after example demonstrating that crows
and ravens, already considered the most intelligent birds, may also be more intelligent than many of the highly regarded mammals such as cats and monkeys.
With all this brain power, their love of play, their tightly knit family groupings, their preference for life-long mate pairing, and a rather complex
ability to communicate with sound, crows are intriguing creatures. It is no wonder that in regions where crows and ravens are common, the indigenous
peoples often placed these birds in the role of creator, although like coyote in the Southwest, a creator with a sometimes troubling sense of
humor.

* * * * *

As shown in the Tlingit myth at the beginning of this discussion
(variations of this myth are common among other tribes in Alaska and northern British Columbia), crows and ravens are often associated with darkness, most
obviously due to their black feathers. In many traditional myths, from both this continent and Europe, Crow is a bringer of knowledge. The Norse God Odin
has two ravens, Hugin and Munin, representing thought and memory, who each day fly over the earth and return at sunset with news of what they have seen. In
one of the Greek myths, Apollo turns Raven (who serves Apollo as Hugin and Munin serve Odin and was originally white), to black after Raven returns with
news that Apollo's beloved was cheating on him. There are two themes in this myth. The first, and most important, reveals the raven as a messenger, as
a creature capable of revealing what is unseen; the secondary theme is a variation on the clichÃ© of killing the messenger. No matter how raven/crow became
black, though, the reality is that we now associate these birds with darkness, as messengers of knowledge brought back from the unknown, often with a sense
of foreboding or evil (remember Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven").

Because the crow and raven are black, and because birds are often
associated with soul or spirit in mythology, I like to think of Raven (using the capital to denote the archetypal raven) as symbolic of the human shadow.
More precisely, Raven represents the role of the personal shadow as a wisdom figure. To my knowledge, there has been little or nothing written about the
role the shadow can play as a wisdom figure. In the Tarot, the Hermit, a shadowy personage living apart from other humans on his mountain and carrying a
lantern, is associated with wisdom gained through isolation. This card speaks to the isolation one must court in order to meet one's shadow. Just as
the Hermit offers light in the darkness, so, too, the shadow can bring light to those hidden regions of the human psyche, if only we can confront and
befriend that aspect of ourselves.

Approaching the issue from another perspective, that of Alchemy,
the raven can be seen as an exterior manifestation of the alchemical nigredo, the dark, base material from which the major opus begins (see
Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis). Jung's Psychology and Alchemy contains an illustration (230) that depicts the raven as a nigredo
symbol, and throughout this volume as well as the other alchemical works of Jung, similar images equate crow or raven with dark aspects of the psyche. Just
as the integration of shadow elements into consciousness is the first step toward individuation, working with the nigredo is the first step in the
psycho-spiritual transformation of physical lead into spiritual gold. In my own experience, and from various mythologies, Raven is an archetypal figure
associated with that process of transformation.

Whether one is working with the Western Gnostic/alchemical
tradition, or with the mythologies of various peoples from around the world, Crow and Raven are consistently associated with the dark aspect of the psyche,
the shadow. As Jolande Jacobi points out, all things unconscious, including shadow elements, are often projected onto objects or persons in the outer
world, or into the liminal space of dreams. The entire shadow may be embodied in the figure of a crow or raven in dreams, or in a coworker whose every word
or action is annoying. But sometimes, the shadow can contain a figure who is benevolent, a kind of guide who helps one face the shadow, and in doing so,
take away its ability to act autonomously.

* * * * *

Several years ago, during a period in which I had fallen in love
with a young woman, I began to have dreams with Raven as a central figure, always watching, often silent. These haunting dreams persisted over a span of
several months and frequently seemed more real than my waking life. In nearly every variation of the dream, I was empty at an interior level, searching for
meaning, for connection, for some understanding of my isolation. Raven was always nearby, a presence that produced in my dream-self a sense of anger, of
being judged. Even in waking life, I had a vague awareness that something ominous and/or portentous was beginning.

As the months progressed, my relationship with the young woman
deteriorated. The dreams continued, accompanied by a creative burst of new poems in which Raven assumed the same role as in the dreams. Also during this
period, I launched myself into a serious exploration of the writings of Carl Jung as part of some research I was doing on the poet William Everson. I had
encountered Jung's ideas a couple of years earlier, as a psychology student and in an art history class, but the academic atmosphere in my college did
not admit any influence from Jungian psychology -- B. F. Skinner and Carl Rogers reigned supreme. So now, as an English major, but still with a driving
need to understand the psychological processes that can create brilliant poetry and fiction, I immersed myself in Jung's writings, first and foremost
looking into his conceptions of the structures of the psyche. Upon reading about the shadow, I immediately knew there was more to those dreams than I had
previously understood, but, as yet, I couldn't put the pieces together.

*
* * * *

The most common understanding of the shadow maintains that this
aspect of the unconscious Self contains all the dark and unacceptable traits we have repressed because they are unpleasant. But this is only partly true.
The shadow, specifically the personal shadow, contains all aspects of Self that have been repressed or not admitted to consciousness. This
includes positive traits, aspects of ourselves--such as creativity in men or assertiveness in women--that are not socially accepted, as well as the more
commonly labeled negative traits.

For most of us, the shadow aspect of our consciousness remains
unknown, unconscious. As mentioned above, everything that is unconscious is projected onto some object outside of the ego. By projection, I am referring to
an automatic, unconscious process in which something that is unconscious in the psyche is attributed to an object (a person, image, or figure of dreams) as
though it belongs to that object. From this definition, the shadow becomes a fertile darkness we need to admit to consciousness in order to prevent it from
distorting the way we view the world. But if we allow that the shadow also contains positive traits or aspects of our psyches of which we are not
conscious, it then becomes a possible light that can help us lead a more fulfilling life.

To be more specific, I believe that we each contain a type of
Guide figure, a psycho-spiritual complex focused around an archetypal aspect of Self that, if recognized, can serve to guide us through difficult periods
of the individuation process. This Guide image has been incorporated into the Tarot deck as the 14^th trump of the Major Arcana, known as
Temperance (Waite), Art (Crowley), or the Guide (Old Path). The 14^th trump plays an important role in the Fool's progress through the Major
Arcana: the card is associated with purging, right action, testing one's self, and the proverbial trial by fire (Alli, 191). The idea that these
challenges are functions of the Guide is intriguing, and suggests that the best away to deal with a crisis or trauma is not to avoid it, but to face it and
go through it.

In most people, this archetypal Guide aspect of Self remains
fully unconscious or is relegated to the shadow. But, like all shadow elements, it can and will become present when the archetypal energy in the psyche
reaches a critical mass. When a complex -- "an emotionally toned group of representations" in the psyche
that originates in the unconscious, and centers around an archetypal element (Jacobi 7) -- acquires so many
associations that it can longer remain submerged, it can displace the persona as the ego's interface with the world. (The classic example is the young
man with a "mother complex" who only chooses as partners women who will act in the role of mother for him. The complex has assumed control of his
actions, and until he can name it and make its sources conscious he will not be able to choose a woman based on any other criteria.) The important thing to
recognize, however, is that complexes are "intrapsychic," and as such, have at their core an archetypal element.

If there is buildup of psychic energy, and one is unable, or
unwilling, to actively admit the presence of the Guide archetype into conscious awareness, it may manifest as a projection out in the world or in our
dreams. The archetype may show up in the form of a mentor who happens along when one is in the depth of a crisis, or, in my case, as a raven who appeared
repeatedly in my dreams. In the latter case, not only is the Guide making its presence felt, it is doing so with the full impact of the shadow. The Guide,
in my dreams, was both sourced in and a symbol of the shadow, and it demanded that I acknowledge and integrate my shadow into
consciousness.

Years later I finally made the connection between my Raven
dreams, with the corresponding poems, and the shadow's capacity to act as Guide, to reveal "right action" by activating unconscious elements
that seek admission to consciousness. I believe there often exists in the individual a complex of emotional and/or archetypal energies that can come to
awareness through a connection with objects or events in the physical world, a notion Jung termed synchronicity. In the world of poetry, T. S.
Eliot suggested the term objective correlative to designate a pattern of objects, events, or actions that can awaken in the reader an emotional
response without the author having to state the connection directly. When I was first exposed to Eliot's idea, I liked the psychological quality of it,
which seems absent in most approaches to literary theory. As I have used the term in literary criticism, an objective correlative is composed of events or
objects in the physical, external world that become associated with a complex in the unconscious (archetype/shadow) to produce some form of psychological
awakening. Since then, I have become much more familiar with the concept of synchronicity and have adopted that term for the idea I originally acquired
from Eliot. As Jung pointed out with his story of the golden scarab, recognizing an association is often enough to begin the process of healing a
previously unconscious wound.

In an older version of the Tarot deck, the Marseilles Deck,
Temperance is depicted as a blue-haired angel wearing a red flower on her forehead and pouring liquid from a blue vase into a red vase. A simple reading of
the card would suggest that the blue vase is spirit and the red represents flesh, with the white liquid perhaps symbolic of the energy created when these
two aspects are mixed. The combining of two liquids can also be read as the union of any pair of opposites, male/female, light/dark, fire/water,
conscious/unconscious, and so on. The figure of the angel, however, is a bit more difficult to read, especially considering the proliferation of, and
specious interest in, angels over the last fifteen or so years. Sallie Nichols, in Jung and Tarot, offers this interpretation:

Angels have
long been seen as winged messengers from heaven, meaning psychologically that they represent inner experiences of a numinous nature which connect man
with the archetypal world of the unconscious. These winged visions appear in our mundane lives at crucial moments, suddenly bringing new insights and
revealing new dimensions of experience. (250)

The images of this deck most likely date from Renaissance France,
so it is understandable that the 14^th trump would be depicted as an angel. Modern versions of the Tarot have updated the Christian imagery to be
more universal in its application, including the Tarot of the Old Path, which names the 14^th card The Guide and depicts a figure who is largely
androgynous.

The importance of this card remains, however, its correlation to
an archetype in the unconscious mind. Jung, in Alchemical Studies, defines angels as "personified transmitters of unconscious contents that
are seeking expression" (82). He goes on to explain the consequences of not listening to the voice of this interior guide:

But if the conscious mind is not ready to assimilate these
contents, their energy flows off into the affective and instinctual sphere. This produces outbursts of affect, irritation, bad moods, and sexual
excitement, as a result of which consciousness gets thoroughly disoriented. (82)

Essentially, this defines the Guide's relegation to shadow
and the resulting projection of the turmoil created when unconscious elements of the psyche seek expression but are thwarted. Most of us have suffered
through periods like this in our lives, as I have in the dreams described above.

There is one more connection between the shadow, the angel/guide,
and the crow/raven. In discussing an alchemical work by Senior (De chemia), Jung suggested that ravens "represent the helpful spirits or
familiars who complete the work when the skill of the artifex has failed him. They are not, as in Faust, beautiful angels but dark messengers of
heaven, who at this point themselves become white" (Mysterium Coniunctionis 77). The artifex is the alchemist attempting to bring together
opposites (black/white, male/female, animus/anima, and so on) as part of the major opus. When the alchemist reaches the limits of conscious/ego ability,
the unconscious sends forth a dark, angelic guide, the Raven, to aid in the completion of the task, to bring the needed material from the unconscious mind.
The raven is a projection of the shadow, as Jung has identified the bird in other places (Psychology and Alchemy 134, Alchemical Studies
198). Having achieved the task of completing the work of the artifex, acting as the shadow to bring the necessary elements into consciousness, the raven is
purified and becomes white.

So, crow/raven is identified with the shadow and also is
identified with the archetypal Guide figure in the psyche. As we have seen, the shadow often contains this archetypal figure, which, if not integrated into
consciousness, can project itself into our dreams or out onto the world. The task of the Guide is to draw attention to those aspects of the unconscious
that are hidden and are seeking admission to consciousness, and through confrontation with the shadow, to bring the psyche one step closer to
wholeness.

* * * * *

I'd like to refer to the Tarot, once again, to understand the
role of the Guide in the "individuation process," Jung's phrase for the process of accessing and integrating unconscious elements of the
psyche into consciousness. The Temperance card follows the Hanged Man (12), whose role is surrender to processes working in the psyche, and then Death
(13), which signifies the falling away of old forms, the death of ego. With Temperance following these two crucial phases, the stage is set to begin the
third and final process of the Tarot Path: entry into the realm of Self-Realization. The Guide makes itself felt only when the energies of the psyche have
reached the point when its presence is necessary.

As the individuation process occurs in each person, there can be
moments of crisis when a complex of the unconscious mind breaks into awareness. According to Jung, "complexes always contain something like a
conflict-they are either the cause or the effect of a conflict" (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 79). Unless the presence of the complex is
so disruptive as to require intervention, the assumption is that its breakthrough into awareness signals the psyche's readiness to resolve that
conflict. The integration of a complex into consciousness, with the corresponding dissipation of its conflict, destabilizes the ego for a time. This
destabilization of the ego is sometimes experienced as a kind of death. With the transformative energies released in the dying of the ego, the Guide serves
as that aspect of the psyche that can lead one toward the final stages of growth. Once the Guide presents itself, it will always help the Hero along the
journey (Nichols 253).

Once we recognize the presence of the Guide --
whether as an angel, a crow, or a mentor figure -- and become familiar with its
energy, we can then access its wisdom through active imagination, Jung's method of engaging the archetypal figures in the psyche. There are a variety
of approaches to this project, mine being the creative process out of which poetry emerges. For me, the act of engaging language and allowing it to carry
psychic content to the page is a form of direct access to archetypal energy. Another valuable approach is through the generation of myth, either personal
or transcendent. Through writing a personal mythology, one is able to contextualize events and actions, and give them a place within a narrative structure,
thereby providing meaning to what otherwise may have seemed meaningless.

Essentially, you become a character in a story, and the plot of
the story is your life. Significant events can be written with all the detail and omniscient view that an author has when writing a novel. By writing about
a traumatic or ecstatic event, you can establish its importance in the plot of the life story, and possibly access previously unconscious awareness of the
event. The essential element, in order for mythology to be effective, is that it be believed, that it hold a central role in the understanding of one's
life.

The myth with which I began this discussion explained several
things for the Tlingit, not least of which was how the sun, moon, and stars were placed in the heavens. Remembering back to the end of the myth when the
people, frightened by the sun, scattered throughout the world, it also explained the existence of peoples all over the world that recognize Raven as
creator.

If we look at this myth at a universal level, Raven, as both
shadow and Guide figures, brings light to dispel the darkness. At the most basic level, we may see darkness as symbolic of the unconscious mind, the
unknown, and light as symbolic of consciousness, the known. Of course, Raven uses trickery to conjure this magic, but the Guide, coming as it so often does
from the shadow, is not always a purely benevolent figure; it also manifests, as we have seen, as the Dark Angel. In fact, the projection of the archetypal
Guide is sometimes meant to confront the psyche with its own shadow, as the Raven dreams did for me. In Greek mythology, it was Hermes (the Roman Mercury)
who performed this Trickster role, both as guide between this world and the underworld, and as Patron of Thieves. Hermes is nearly always depicted as
winged, thus furthering in Western myth the association of bird imagery with the ability to bridge the worlds of known and unknown. If the bird appears as
crow or raven, so much the better -- we then know we are engaged in the process of bringing the shadow to consciousness.

In the Bible, when the rains stop and Noah wishes to find dry
land, he sends a raven to bring back a sign, but the raven does not return until later, when all the waters have receded. So Noah then sends a dove, which
at first returns unable to find land; sent out again seven days later, it returns with an olive twig (Genesis, 8.6-10). Putting aside the fact that it was
Raven who found dry land in the Babylonian Flood myth, and that Judaism had to differentiate itself from that tradition by having a dove find dry land, it
is clear crows and ravens are not always to be trusted. Ignoring for now the clichÃ© of black (raven) as bad and white (dove) as good, this parable reveals
raven as a survivor and also as a creature not apt to do what it is told. Just as Hermes is Patron of Thieves, crows and ravens are notorious for their
ability and, seemingly, joy in stealing things and hiding them, or using them in a game of keep-away, as I mentioned earlier.

In the myth that began this discussion, Raven uses trickery first
to become human, then to steal the prized boxes. Raven transforms himself into a hemlock needle to enter the womb of the young woman and be born as a human
child. This highlights another talent of Raven and Crow -- shapeshifting. Much like Coyote of the Southwest, Crow and Raven are capable of transforming
themselves into other creatures and things when it suits their purposes. And like Coyote, the results aren't always what were intended. In this case,
however, Raven gets what he wants -- he steals the three boxes and releases the sun, moon, and stars into the
heavens.

When elements in the shadow become so charged with energy that
they make their presence felt in one's life, there is also an element of trickery involved. Unless one actively seeks out the lessons, shadow material
often presents itself as projections into the world. A person will act in such a way that irritates me until I feel anger or frustration. Many times, when
this occurs, it would be prudent to pause for a moment and see if there is anything in the particular behavior that is relevant to my own issues. I might
discover that the behavior that is crazy-making to experience is something I also do, but don't like about myself or that is not conscious. The shadow
has just used trickery to bring awareness to an element of the self that needs attention but is not yet conscious. In this way, the shadow acts as a guide
to awareness.

* * * * *

In my own life, Raven appeared at a crucial transition point. The
unique combination of my first spiritual love relationship and its subsequent deterioration, the burst of creative output that marked my first major phase
as a maturing poet, and the luminous dreams all signaled that time in my life as a critical period of transformation. Essentially, I experienced the trauma
of moving from childhood to adulthood. That period also marked the end of a false self I had adopted after the death of my father, when I was thirteen
years old, and the emergence a truer sense of Self. Because I did not have the father who might typically play the role of Guide for a young man entering
adulthood, my psyche had to devise its own solution to the problem. The presence of Raven in my dreams and poems revealed to me the emptiness of that false
self, confronting me with my shadow in a variety of ways until it worked its way into awareness. It also helped to point me in the direction of seeking out
a more authentic identity.

Since that period in my life, nearly seven years ago, Raven has
often appeared in my dreams, and he still frequently haunts my poems. Over time, though, the tone of Raven's presence has shifted from malevolence to
benevolent compassion. Even in my daily life in the world, I always try to acknowledge the presence of crows and ravens around me as a way to honor the
presence of the archetypal Raven who inhabits my psyche.

Works
Referenced

Alli, Antero. Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's
Guide to Reality Selection. Santa Monica, CA: New Falcon Publications, 1994.

Conger, John P. Jung & Reich: The Body as Shadow.
Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1988.

Jacobi, Jolande. Complex / Archetype / Symbol in the Psychology
of C.G. Jung. Trans.

Ralph Manheim. Bollingen Series LVII. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
UP, 1959.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Alchemical Studies. Trans. R.F.C.
Hull. Volume 13,

Collected Works. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
UP, 1967.

-----. Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Trans.
R.F.C. Hull. Volume 9, Part 1,

Collected Works. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
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-----. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Trans. W.S. Dell
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-----. Psychology and Alchemy. Trans. R.F.C. Hull.
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Quammen, David. Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and
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Savage, Candace. Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows,
Ravens, Magpies, and Jays. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1995.

Smelcer, John E. The Raven and the Totem: Traditional Alaska
Native Myths and Tales.

Anchorage, AK: Salmon Run Books, 1992.

~ William Harryman