Lisenbee: The common crow is anything but common

Len Lisenbee

I remember many years ago reading a line penned by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher that went something like, "If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows."

I remembered a few of my own run-ins with these bandits as I read this line, and I realized that the good Reverend knew exactly what he was talking about. The common crow is truly a clever bird. Here is just one example.

Len Lisenbee

Some anglers were ice fishing on a lake in Sweden. They were using "tip-ups," which show a flag when a fish takes the bait. A crow, perched nearby, observed when a flag showed and an angler hauled in a fish. After a while, the anglers left the ice for a coffee break (see, they even have coffee breaks in other countries!)

Shortly after they left, a flag showed that a fish was on. The crow flew to the line, grabbed it with its beak, and walked backward, taking up the slack while holding onto the line.

But the line was a long one set in deep water. The crow stopped for a moment, as if trying to work out the problem. It then stepped on the line and carefully "tight-roped" back to the hole, using its weight to prevent the line from slipping back into the hole.

Again, it picked up the line in its beak and walked backward. After several repeats of returning to the hole, then walking backwards, out of the hole popped a fish. The crow ate most of the fish while carefully avoiding the hook. The anglers observed all this in utter amazement.

Too much tonic in the coffee, you might think. But not so. In fact, there are so many unbelievable but true stories about the crow that one might wonder which animal actually is the smartest.

Here are just a few of the things I have witnessed about these critters.

A few years ago, a mallard hen was nesting on the Canandaigua Country Club grounds. The hen had started incubating the eggs, but none had yet hatched. A crow discovered the hen and her nest and took up a careful surveillance from a short distance away. Obviously it was waiting for the mallard to leave so it could rob the nest.

In the late afternoon, the mallard did leave. When it was around 50 yards away, the crow swooped in, pecked into an egg, and carried it off before the mallard could get back.

But that's all the crow got. One of the local residents also observed this drama, and when the crow returned the next day, she scared it off in a most forceful manner.

On another occasion in the late 60's, I was hunting varmints in rural West Virginia. A flock of crows landed in the hay field that I was hunting. As usual, they left one look-out in a nearby tree to warn of approaching danger.

But that look-out didn't see me. After watching the flock for a while, I touched off a shot at one of its members. I missed, and the crows left in quite a hurry.

A farmer told me what happened next. He was watching from another nearby field, and he observed the entire flock attack the crow that he figured was the look-out. They quickly killed it, then flew out of sight and probably out of the county.

Also, in my still younger days, I had a wide assortment of wild animals that I kept for pets. It was perfectly legal then. One of these pets was a baby crow that had fallen from the nest. I retrieved it and raised it as my very own.

That was my first mistake.

Now, Bandit was a special bird, and he was aptly named. After he learned to fly, instinct took over and he quickly graduated from "Thieves College" — with honors, I suspect. At first, he would steal anything he could carry off. And these treasures were carefully hidden around the house.

But after a while, he gave up common thievery. He became specialized. He would only steal quarters and my father's watch. The quarters he garnished from wherever he found them. He would never take any other coins, only quarters.

The watch he would grab early in the morning before anyone, especially my father, was awake. You see, my father and Bandit didn't exactly get along.

But Dad got even one morning. (At least, I think he got even.) He tied a long rubber band around the watch and secured it to the bedside lamp. When Bandit made his move, my father was watching with one eye slightly open.

And when Bandit reached the elastic limits of that rubber band, the lamp slid off the table and onto a very hard floor, causing it to become an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle rather quickly.

Meanwhile, Bandit made good his escape, carrying the watch and the dangling rubber band with him. But he never again attempted to steal that watch.

Bandit was one smart bird all right. And we were still finding quarters hidden in the strangest places six years after he went to his final reward.

National Geographic once reported the antics of another of these black-feathered thieves. It seems that down in Charlottsville, Virginia, a certain crow took up following the local milkman along his route.

And when the milkman would leave a full bottle on the porch of a customer, this crow flew in, popped the (then) paper top off the bottle, and drank its fill. It would follow the milkman from home to home repeating this procedure until it was fully satisfied.

But is the common crow really smart? Well, scientists have documented no less than 25 different calls in the crow's vocabulary. Observers have watched crows use sticks as tools to pry insects from under the bark of trees.

Very few other members of the animal kingdom are known to use any form of tools.

They have been tested scientifically, and the results are often startling. Tests such as pecking certain colors or shapes to get treats often end with the crow quickly figuring out the system and ending up with all the goodies.

Their primary enemies are hawks and owls, and of course, man. But man, after many decades of trying to eradicate this critter, including such treatments as using explosives on crow roosts (one such explosion killed over 100,000 crows) and poisons, has thrown up his hands, and now gives the crow family complete protection under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and corresponding state laws.

The common crow is now a game bird. It has a proscribed hunting season in every state. And crows can be killed at anytime during the year if they are found to be depredating on agriculture interests.

Keeping a wild crow for a pet is also now against the law. This is a good policy, because making a pet of any wild critter usually results in tragedy for the pet.

The common crow is anything but common. It's smart, probably smarter in it's own right than most other creatures, possibly even including man.

And one crow definitely got the last laugh. Back in the 1940s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was called the Washington Biological Survey. Well, when birds were banded, that title was shortened to "Wash Biol Serve" on the smaller bands.

The Secretary of the Interior at that time received a letter from a Kansas farmer that stated in part, "Dear Sirs, Followed your instructions for cooking that came with the crow. It still tasted like h---.”

Len Lisenbee is the Daily Messenger’s Outdoor Columnist. Contact him at