On my walk this morning, I saw a crow. Nothing remarkable about that, I see crows
all the time, sometimes a dozen all at once.
But it reminded me of the fact that crows hold absolutely no interest
for bird watchers, who will go wild over an unremarkable finch or a confusing fall
warbler [that is what the bird books call them, and there are dozens of them, all virtually indistinguishable.] I observed the same disdain for blue jays when
I lived in Massachusetts [there don’t seem to be any blue jays down here in North
Carolina.]
Now crows and blue jays are impressively large birds, and blue jays, at
least, are strikingly colored. So why
the disdain? Familiarity, one might
think, but blue birds have lots of street cred among bird lovers, and at least
where I live, they are quite common visitors to our window bird feeders.
If you want to see a beautiful bird, take a look at this:
I took this picture on a safari in the Okavango Delta of
Botswana in 2014. It is a lilac breasted
roller, and at least in the Okavango they are quite common. By the way, Botswana safaris are extremely
expensive, even after you get to Botswana.
Susie and I could afford it because I was still making big bucks at
UMass and my textbook was selling. But
if you are affluent and old and have a bucket list, put a Botswana safari on
it. It is the only tourist attraction I
have ever experienced that exceeded the hype of the advertisements.
17 comments:
Coincidentally, yesterday afternoon I noted two impressively regal looking crows in the trees in our front yard. Like you, I thought it odd that they don't command more interest.
Robert Greene (or Henry Chettle or Thomas Nashe or both of the latter) dubbed an ambitious young William Shakespeare an "upstart crow," because Shakespeare was then a mere actor who deigned to write plays. Plainly, "upstart" was meant to be derogatory, but "crow"? OED, quoting Johnson, identifies the crow with the British carrion crow (Corvus corone) [unfortunately timely and poetic species name!], kin to a "gregarious" US species. As a verb, to crow is said to mean "Of persons: To utter a loud inarticulate sound of joy or exultation; said esp. of the joyful cry of an infant." Yes, probably also derogatory.
https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/greenes-groats-worth-witte-first-printed-allusion-shakespeare-playwright
Nice. I love it.
Love this post. I went through a birdwatching phase as a kid - not really a "phase," though, because I retained about half of what I learned (I've forgotten how to identify many birds by song), and I still find that birds are able to bring a smile to my face. Coolest sightings over the last few years include a rose-breasted grosbeak, Baltimore oriole, and (indeed) a bluebird.
Crows are surprisingly intelligent.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191211-crows-could-be-the-smartest-animal-other-than-primates
Now I want to revisit that one oddball Richard Rorty interview... He seems quite depressed otherwise, but it's heartwarming to see his reaction to the waxwings. (See about 15:40.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86K3VXKZSec
Further to lighten the mood in a dark time [funny... in an unleavened sort of way--- especially the gefilte fish suggestion]:
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-open-letter-to-dr-anthony-fauci-asking-for-passover-seder-advice
Readers should know that the very funny David Mitchell [English actor and Guardian columnist] has a very funny series called "Upstart Crow"... about WS.
Very much worth a look.
In the '80s there once was a small chain of bookstore cafes in California, Berkeley-based Upstart Crow. I lived in Southern California at the time, and I recall visiting one or two of them--Costa Mesa and San Diego, perhaps? The company went bankrupt in '87, but somehow one of the two San Diego stores has remained in operation to this day (unless, of course, it's temporarily closed).
Now I want to reread Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man in Deptford, which features Christopher Marlowe. I can't remember whether or not Shakespeare makes an appearance.
We have a recurrent family of blue jays in our yard here in Durham.
Not to be your editor or anything, but might I suggest changing the title of this blog post to something like "I speak of Corvids, Not COVID" ?
Australian lefty Rick Kuhn has pulled together several observations on Marxism and birds, an amusing way to pass a few moments of Covid time:
https://sa.org.au/marxism_page/marxbird/marxbird.htm
Nice, Anonymous. I wish I had thought of that. :)
Thomas Hobbes (who was about a generation younger than Shakespeare) was known as ”Crow” by his “schoolfellows” in Malmesbury, owing to his black hair, according to John Aubrey’s early biographical notes on Hobbes. –Fritz Poebel
Corvids rival the great apes in problem solving ability. At least one crow--a fleeting acquaintance--was almost certainly my intellectual equal. I once met a a group of wildlife illustrators at the American Museum of Natural History. They were nothing like the woke, moralizing comic book artists I happened to know at the time.
This is a change of subject, but over the years I've acquired a taste for medical newsletters. The affinity between medicine and literature has been observed for centuries. In any case, you might find this article on splitting ventilators interesting.
Yes to NN's comment about corvid intelligence.
Bernd Heinrich's book Mind of the Raven is an excellent read:
https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061136054/mind-of-the-raven/
Suddenly reminded of the title and opening track of Captain Beefheart's last album, Ice Cream for Crow. Don't ask me what it means.
I see crows everyday, and they're my favorite birds. The great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has a book of photographs called Trees & Crows. It shows crows as the most magnificent, the wisest and the loneliest of animals; for example: https://www.wikiart.org/en/abbas-kiarostami/trees-and-crows-2006
Speaking of crows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ARvxkBqAYg
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