The crow story
Our offices just moved a couple of weeks ago, and aside from any apparent benefits our local Vice President got from having his whole team in walking distance from him, I got something I've been wanting for almost 12 years: a first floor window office.
What's the benefit of a first floor window office? I'm glad you asked. It means I can put a bird feeder on the outside of my window!
So last Thursday I had lunch with Vince, and afterwards we wandered over to Wild Birds Unlimited, where I purchased the very fine bird feeder you see to the right.
When I got back to my office, I hung up the bird feeder, filled the cups with seed, and scattered some seed around on the ground and on the concrete bunker you see in the background, to "help the birds find the feeder," as the ladies at WBU told me.
When I came in Friday morning, all of the scattered seed was gone. I only noticed one little brown bird coming by to feed that morning, though. That is, until mid-afternoon, when I heard a thump and some squawking outside my window. I turned around to find a crow desperately trying to get its footing on top of the bird feeder, and not succeeding very well. It would fly over, stall onto the top of the feeder, struggle a bit, and fall off. Then it would do the same thing, and barely manage to get its footing; but when it leaned over the edge to get a bite of food, it would fall off.
About every sixth time, it managed to get some food. After about an hour of this, the crow clearly got tired and took off.
Monday morning (because crows take the weekend off) I noticed the same crow hanging out on the concrete bunker, looking for all the world like it was studying the feeder. And there it stayed, for several hours, until mid-afternoon when I heard another thump on my window. This time, though, it was the crow hanging on the edge of one of the plastic cups for all it was worth -- not a position crows are very good at holding -- and pecking at the food. It grabbed three or four almonds in its mouth, and flew away. After repeating that a couple of times, all of the almonds were gone, and it left for the afternoon.
I was delighted to see the crow learning -- bolstering my already high opinion of them -- but I wasn't prepared for what happened yesterday.
Yesterday morning I noticed the same crow again, hanging out on the bunker, studying the feeder again. Mid-morning, I came back to my office from a meeting and noticed the crow picking at a small pile of seed on the top of the bunker. "That's odd," I thought, "I wonder if someone came by and got some seed out for the crow?"
It turns out I was partially right. A few minutes later, I saw the crow hanging off of the feeder again. It grabbed a mouthful of seed, jumped back onto the bunker, spit the seed out, and proceeded to pick at the seed at its leisure.
Of course, I was delighted again, but I couldn't figure out why the crow was spitting the seeds out instead of just swallowing them. Eventually I got curious enough to actually watch the process in detail.
So why was the crow spitting the seeds out?
Because it doesn't like sunflower seeds.
It would spit the seeds out, eat all of the millet and other seeds, but leave the sunflower seeds -- which smaller birds would then swarm and eat, which is why I never saw little piles of sunflower seeds.
What will today bring? Perhaps a little stove to cook the millet into a mash?
Robert Jahrling, on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 at 8:54 AM:
Neat! We need pictures of this.
Apropos of this story, there seems to be a disproportionate number of dead squirrels along part of my route to work. It's not a heavily-used road. I was puzzled, until, for a few days running, I saw a pack of crows hunting squirrels. They were doing a hammer-and-anvil sort of attack, where one bird would swoop down at the squirrel and try to chase it towards another bird. They probably would have gotten it had I not come trundling along in my car.
David Adam Edelstein, on Thursday, July 1, 2004 at 3:11 PM:
Update: If you're coming to this story via Google, I've added some pictures.