The other day I was walking down by the Westchester Children’s Museum trailer at Playland, when I noticed two crows gathering up small branches and flying with them up to the top of a nearby pine tree.
By Bill Lawyer
The other day I was walking down by the Westchester Children’s Museum trailer at Playland, when I noticed two crows gathering up small branches and flying with them up to the top of a nearby pine tree.
That got me thinking about the fact that I’ve been noticing a lot more crows lately than in the previous few years.
When I first moved to Rye in 1969 it seemed as though crows “ruled the roost.” I’d see and hear them from early morning till nightfall. There are two types of crows that are native to this area: the American crow and the fish crow. The larger ravens native to areas further north are close “cousins.”
While American crows are all over Rye, the fish crows, as their name implies, live mostly along the Long Island Sound shore and Blind Brook.
In my years as Director of the Greenburgh Nature Center, I got to know a lot about crows. We worked with a group of wildlife rehabilitators to whom we would forward injured wildlife, including a fair number of crows.
Crows can eat just about anything, and they frequently get hit by cars while trying to pick up road kill on highways.
One baby crow came to us after it had been made homeless by arborists cutting down a tree with a crow’s nest high up in the branches.
A teen-age Greenburgh Nature Center volunteer and neighbor offered to take it home and raise it. She named him “Charlie.” After Charlie got his wings and flew the coop, he stayed close by.
We could recognize him for several reasons. First, he walked with a slight limp from his fall from the nest. And second, because he had been raised by humans, he was very friendly and liked to hang around with us.
He would follow us along the trails, and he would be particularly attentive when we’d eat lunch at one of the Center’s picnic tables.
Charlie developed his own entourage of wild crows, and they would often perch nearby. After we finished our lunch, Charlie would check out the table for crumbs or leftovers. If there were any, he’d call out to his crew, and they’d come flying in from all directions.
Because of Charlie I began to research crows. Scientists have been studying them for many years, so there’s no shortage of information out there.
There is a lot of folklore associated with crows, as well. They’re sort of like the avian version of the wily coyotes.
The scientific research shows have a remarkable ability to get food, even making the tools to assist them. They build their nests high in evergreens to guard against predators.
One of my scientific educator mentors is Bernd Heinrich, who is now professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont. Over his career he has carried out extensive research on a wide range of topics, and he has written books and made films to help bring his findings to the attention of the general public.
Two entire books were devoted to ravens, which he studied on forested property he owns in Vermont.
As a New York Times book reviewer put it in 1999 while discussing Heinrich’s “Mind Of The Raven”:
“Bernd Heinrich is no ordinary biologist. He’s the sort who combines formidable scientific rigor with a sense of irony and an unslaked, boyish enthusiasm for his subject, and who even at his current professorial age seems to do a lot of tree climbing in the line of research.”
Through his research professor Heinrich has converted much of the folklore and speculation about the crow family into testable, documented data.
While crows can be seen as the epitome of successful wildlife adaptation, even they have their Achilles heal. In their case, it’s West Nile Virus. Starting in 1999 this virus has caused a huge decline in crow populations. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab (COL), over 5,000 died in the New York area in four months that year.
But, according to the COL, Viruses that kill their hosts too quickly can thwart their own chances for survival. “There was a lot of genetic variation kicking around in this virus,” researcher Wesley Hochachka said. “The only strains able to survive and keep marching westward were the ones that weren’t as lethal.”
That’s why it’s encouraging that crows now seem to be making a comeback — right in our backyards.