The crow is one of nature’s great survivors, and the bird’s growing population is testament to its ability to outsmart those who want to do it harm. They’re smart, crows, there’s no doubt about it. Corvid intelligence is equal to that of primates and I need no evidence of this fact when the crow I feed each day comes to call. She’s worked out what time I rise in the morning and when I’m likely to be sitting at my computer. If I try to ignore her she moves from vantage point to vantage point outside my study’s window to catch my eye, or call if I’m out of sight.
The English poet Ted Hughes, extolling the crow’s powers of survival, indicated they were foolproof, climate-proof, future-proof. Hughes produced a collection of poems inspired by crows in the 1970s and it might be time to once again re-establish our bonds with these beautiful, if controversial birds. They are a dark wonder.
When I talk of “crows”, I use the Tasmanian vernacular name for the forest raven, the only member of the crow and raven family found in the state. I named my visiting crow Gloria when she and her mate became a part of my life some years ago. I fed them each day on my balcony, engaged in one-way conversation with them, one-way because we couldn’t understand each other, but gestures by both crow and human spoke a thousand words.
I watched out for them daily, revelling in my connection with these wild creatures, although I could never call it friendship because friendship is a mutual thing and I was unsentimental enough to know that their idea of “friendship” was the cheese or the fat trimmed from bacon I fed them.
The male of the pair vanished one day without obvious cause and like his female, I was bereft, feeling a sense of loss. Corvids bond for life
The fact she was the female of the pair I deduced by her slightly smaller size and I now identify Gloria from other crows by a grey mark she has on her wing which shows up in flight.
What is it about crows, these totems of death in modern culture that fascinate us so? They hold the attention of even their enemies, especially so in Tasmania where they are not protected by law. Is it their intelligence, and the mystery of the corvid mind? Perhaps it is their antics, their curiosity that beguiles us. We see humankind in them, as though they are spirits both good and evil reborn, an ancient view going back to the birth of our own species.
Gloria is creature of infinite beauty, with white eye and a midnight-blue sheen to her feathers when seen in the early-morning sun. And I’m happy to say as spring takes hold she has found herself a mate.