Brainiacs

One of the things I really love about where I work has nothing at all to do with my job (like that’s a shock). When I pop outside for a ciggy (shut up) there’s very often a small collection of crows wandering around the raised garden bed. I adore watching them, they’re utterly enchanting.

I like birds anyway. From the tiny little wrens with such skinny legs you wonder how they work to massive eagles and hawks, I just think birds are awesome. I love their social structures and habits – for example, the white winged chough (which against all logic is pronounced “chuff”) lives in large family groups and because bigger families mean more babies, they kidnap the young birds from other family groups in order to grow their own. Nifty huh?

But back to the crows. They live entire life cycles around the building. A couple of months ago it was all babies screaming for more food. Now they seem to be out on their own for the most part. They don’t tend to worry about me, they’ve seen me out there so much I’m part of the landscape to them now I suppose (and I’ve been known to smuggle them some meat when we have left overs from functions). What really gets me about crows is that they are incredibly bright.

I’ve often seen them hiding bits of food for later on. They dig careful holes and make sure that the holes are properly covered with mulch and things. I’ve seen them walk away, check from a distance and come back to make things just so. I’ve seen them dig with sticks, gather more nesting material in their beak without dropping the bundle they’d already collected… lots of smart things these birds do.

Today however, took the cake. We’ve a couple of those big volcanic type rocks outside the staff door – the kind that’s riddled with interesting holes. Moss tends to grow in these holes when enough dust and dirt accumulates in them. Today I stood enthralled watching a big shiny crow as he (or she) very carefully lifted the moss out of the holes, slipped in a little bit of the food he’d found and then place the moss back into the same hole, sometimes patting it down to keep it in place. I figure while I was watching he hid about 7 or 8 little morsels for later, in the most amazingly secret hiding place I’ve ever seen them use. Brilliant.