Artwork for Julian and Benjamin
Julian, do you remember when we were talking, and you saw a crow flying past your window? You asked Nonna to tell you about crows. So, let’s look at crows. You’ll see that they work together and form their own crow neighborhoods.
Crows take care of one another. When crows are hurt, their friends come to the rescue. Crows group together to scare away bigger birds who threaten them. When crows grow up and have their own baby crows, they visit their papas and mamas so that they can see their grandkid-crows! It’s true, just like you and Mama and Papa visit Oma and Opa and like when Nonna and Nonno visit your country, you come to see Nonna and Nonno at their apartment. Crows feel the same ties to their families.
Crows say, “Caw”, but not every caw means the same thing. You can hear caw patterns. One pattern is caw-caw-caw/quiet listening/caw-caw-caw/quiet listening. That’s probably a way to say hello to one another. If you hear many crows cawing all at once without stopping, they are alarmed about danger. Crows also make clicking and rattling sounds. Those sounds are sometimes for expressing gentle feelings.
Crows can think ahead and make plans. Scientists have observed crows figuring out how to do things that take many steps to get done, like when you and Opa are making pizza. It takes a lot of steps to do that. Crows don’t make pizza (That would be too silly!), but they do follow many steps to get their food sometimes. Scientists set up problems for the crows to figure out. They watch as a crow will trip a lever (a lever is a bar or handle that balances like the see-saw at the playground. The crow steps on one end of the lever and trips it). Scientists see how, in this way, the crow will grab a short stick to get a long stick, and then use the long stick to pull out a piece of meat that the crow couldn’t reach with just its beak. That's good thinking!
Crows eat the same kinds of food that we do. Sometimes their ways of getting food are different, though. They distract ducks and otters and then grab the fish that they caught! They eat grains and berries that grow wild, like we sometimes do, but they also dig up our vegetable gardens to eat our food too!
People have been looking at crows and telling crow stories for a long, long time because crows are so interesting. We know stories about crows that a storyteller named Aesop told. Aesop lived about 2,600 years ago in a country called Greece. 2,600 years ago is so long ago that no one had invented the alphabet yet! It was that long ago that Aesop noticed a crow using a science fact to solve a problem! He told the story of a thirsty crow who found water at the bottom of a pitcher. The crow could not reach the water with its beak, but the crow remembered how rocks make water splash and the crow started dropping rocks into the pitcher. The rocks made the water rise to the top, and then the crow could slurp it up. (The crow used the science of water displacement. Mama can show you how to use it, too.)
So, you see how interesting crows are. Crows are smart and clever, and there is a lot more that you can learn about them. Nonna made a painting for you of an American Crow; they are black all over. The crows around you are called the Hooded Crows. They have gray on their backs and tummies; it looks like they’re wearing gray hoodies!
Now you can go crow watching! See if you can make a crow painting too!
We love you!