A collective noun is “a noun, as
herd, jury, or clergy, that appears singular in formal shape but denotes a
group of persons or objects.” Some
collective nouns are specific to certain animals, e.g. a “covey” of quails, or
a “pride” of lions”, or…
…a
“murder” of crows like the one that has been visiting our neighborhood for the
past couple of weeks. The first serious
bout of white winter precipitation recently settled into our area. And with the snow comes the birds.
All
year around we are hosts to a “host” of sparrows and a “charm” of finches – as
well as a “conclave” of cardinals.
(Okay, I made up that last one.) Increases in their numbers at our feeders are
normal during winter so the population growth of these little songbirds is not
necessarily noteworthy – but an influx of Genus Corvus, family Corvidae is an entirely different matter.
Groups
of crows travel under several aliases – a Horde, or a Parcel, or a Storytelling
– but a “Murder” always makes the headlines.
And when the act gets repeated day after day after day – serially as it
were – it is definitely time to stop the presses.
There
are between fifteen and twenty of the large glossy, black birds in the gang, and
they have appeared pretty much everyday somewhere within the square mile that
roughly defines our neck of the woods.
Many
of these sightings have been inside the boundaries of our property wherein they
partake of the culinary largesse of our various bird and squirrel feeders –
dispensers of sunflower seeds, thistle, or kernels of corn. As well as feasting on the naturally
abundant supply of acorns – some fallen in situ, others secreted by the quartet
of tree rodents that claim our oak trees as their home.
On
each visit they specialize in one of the three major feeding areas: kernels,
seeds, or nuts.
The
squirrels for whom the ears of corn on the rodent-sized Adirondack chair feeder
are intended, are not the tidiest of eaters leaving about one-third of what
they strip from the cob on the seat behind them and another third on the ground
below.
These
dwarfish gray gourmands eagerly wolf down any stray sunflower seeds left on the
snow. Yet they totally ignore the bright
yellow carbohydrate bits that they walk through several times a day on their
trips up and down the tree that is home to the feeding device.
Not
so with the crows who descend en masse in a satiny, ebony cloud onto the area
wherein the maize resides – including the green, metal feeder seat – and
rapidly decimate every golden nugget in sight.
Within minutes they rise up and fly away leaving naught but footprints
in the white powder to remind us of their visit.
On
days when the seeds are the target they storm that section of the yard like
feathered bit-actors attacking Tippi Hedren in the eponymous Hitchcock movie –
causing all of the lesser-sized avians that normally dine there to seek shelter
in some of the nearby leafless bushes.
The invaders then strut unimpaired across the territory onto which
(birds not being that much more efficient than squirrels) a large residue of
uneaten sunflower pips lay on top of and beneath the snow which is already trod
upon by smaller feet.
When
neither supply is available in sufficient volume, whatever that means, the
crows spread out over the remainder of our front yard randomly pecking away
until – in response to some unseen and unheard signal – they rise in unison and
fly away to the site of their next feeding frenzy.
Which
sometimes is one of the roads that abut our property upon which they repeat
much the same process on asphalt as they did on snow-covered grass. I have read that this pavement pecking may in
fact be a way to ingest tiny stones for future use as a digesting aid – “Because
birds do not chew, or masticate their food, they need grit in their crops [gullets] to
help them grind up food before it goes further in their digestive tract. This
grit can range in size from bits of sand and small pebbles in small birds to
pea and peanut sized stones in larger birds.”
(answers.yahoo.com)
They
also apparently like the taste of the salt that is left over from the various
anti-ice treatments that are applied to roads this time of the year. As well as an occasional piece of actual food
that has strayed onto the tarmac.
In
spite of their threatening and sometimes morbid appearance we welcome all
members of Corvus Corvidae to our homestead. As any mystery book reader knows – there is
nothing like a good murder to warm the coldest winter day.
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