Gifts from Crows

Crows, in my estimation, are something akin to tumbleweeds.  I mean, they are relatively cool and interesting sometimes, but when you get a bunch of them collected together they are mostly a nuisance.  Like tumbleweeds.

Crows don’t sing pretty like western meadowlarks.  They are not festively colored like western tanagers.  They are not swift and agile as mountain bluebirds.  They will not take seeds from my hands as will the chickadees.

Crows are workmanlike.

The other day, I chanced upon a story about a woman in San Francisco who befriended—by her own estimation—two families of crows.

The woman, Melinda Green, started feeding the crows congregating around her Marina District apartment.  She has been feeding them for three years.  Early on, the she and the crows settled into a routine where they watch her apartment and don’t fly in to collect treats from the windowsill and fire escape until she has raised her curtains.

In exchange for the food, the crows began bringing gifts.  The crows have left Melinda pieces of a champagne bottle, gummy bears, colorful rocks, bones, nuts and strange bits of antique electronics.  In the three years, she has watched the original (parent) crows teach their offspring the same rules for the feeding and gifting.

Okay.  I like that.

And such gifting by crows has been documented before.

Why, I wonder, to they leave the particular things they do?  Do crows imagine some special value in the shiny objects given to Melinda Green?  Why not eat the gummy bears themselves?  What do they find—or imagine Melinda will find—valuable in the electronics?

But here it is.  I am a rock collector.  Any birds willing to bring me pretty rocks are pretty cool in my estimation.  Giving her rocks makes sense to me.

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: UPI