While on my daily afternoon walk a crow dropped a
walnut in front of me so I stepped on it to crush it for him. I had
seen crows dropping walnuts on pavement to break them. When it does not
work they wait for passing cars to crush it, swoop down and eat the
nutmeat.
The next day the crow was there and dropped another nut in front of me. I crushed it.
The day after two nuts were waiting. The crow was atop the power pole
cluckling. I crushed both. The next day there were three so I stepped
on two and took one. Then there were three or four nuts waiting for me
every day and I took one. That was our deal.
It appeared I was working for the crow and he clucks continually as I stomp nuts. When the nuts were gone I was not sure what would happen, but was not be surprised to see him on my deck rail one day.
So I put out a small dog feeding dish with some dog food pellets in it and he would appear twice a day sometimes clucking loudly or even calling to me to put some pellets in the dish. (I am learning the crow language as they have caw-cluck language.)
I thought I was breaking new ground until I saw the video “Super Smart
Crows” on the Discovery Channel website where they documented crows have
a 250 caw-cluck vocabulary according to animal behaviorist Josh
Klein. He works with crows and invented a vending machine where they
can buy food with coins they find on the streets and bring back to the machine.
Josh says $216 million in small change is lost in the US every year and
he feels these machines would do very well. The strange thing is that
you only need to train a few crows in any location as they teach others
what to do and before long you have a flock working for you.
It appears every American loses about 72 cents per year so in an area
with 500,000 people in it one crow change collection machine could take
in $360,000 annually, all in cash with no employees, unions, taxes,
insurance or maintenance other than pellet animal feed, as they like dog kibble, and it requires only vending
machine maintenance, which is low cost. At last a business that really is for the birds.
Adrian Vance
What a great story, Adrian, and a good idea too.
ReplyDeleteThank you!...jd
The sad part of it is that I eventually got to know all four of the family of crows as they would come to my deck for dog food, but one day they left and never returned! They appeared to have just packed up and moved to where I do not know and it was my loss as they were very entertaining.
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel, Adrian. They may be back. Birds are hopeful gifts from God. I love watching them and am fascinated by their constantly swiveling heads and their quickness. They are constantly on the watch for death
ReplyDeleteby kamikaze.
I have thought that as they are entertaining, but where most small animals have such short lives and this is going on two years, I wonder how many of that family are yet alive? Nonetheless, it was in interesting peek into how other species think.
ReplyDeleteI can happily announce that a huge male crow and a smaller one appeared on my deck making a lot of cawing noise, but when I went out to greet them they flew away only to return the next day. I put the dog dish out with some pellets in it and they came back to eat it, clucking all the time they were there. After a few days of this the smaller crow did not appear and the big one would eat some of the pellets, then get a beak full and fly away perhaps repeating this several times. I am sure they are a mated pair and she is on the nest and he is feeding her. I await the day when the whole family shows up and I will then need several dog dishes for all the birds!
ReplyDelete