鈥淓VERYBODY has a crow story,鈥� writes with a mixture of delight and dismay. Her collection of gently provocative essays suggests that our familiarity with crows may be a harbinger. Crows thrive in the environmental dissonance that we create, adapting to our urban lifestyle: they may be the dark shape of our future.
This isn鈥檛 to say that Haupt dislikes crows. She admires the 鈥渟mart, endlessly wonderful, shining鈥� creatures. She finds them worth watching and studying in all their complexity. Yet she admits that she cannot quite love them.
It is this conflict that makes Crow Planet so interesting 鈥� and I say that as a dedicated member of the international crow fan club. I love to watch crows. They are so passionately, loudly engaged with the world, so fiercely protective of one another. My husband and I reminisce about the day an enraged crow chased a coyote down our street. The coyote had emerged from a nearby nature preserve and apparently come hunting too close to a crow鈥檚 nest. No one messes with crows.
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Haupt also appreciates the birds鈥� intensely social biology. She tells stories of crow 鈥渇unerals鈥�, when the normally raucous birds gather silently around the body of a dead family member. She emphasises their startling intelligence: crows can distinguish human faces, remembering those who seem dangerous. They use tools, such as sticks to poke at food.
They use us as well. A Japanese study of urban crows found that the birds dropped hard-shelled nuts in the road at traffic intersections for cars to roll over and crack. When the traffic was heavy, the crows waited for the walk signal before grabbing their snacks from the street. How can you not admire that?
The crow鈥檚 ability to adapt to man-made environments 鈥� in contrast to the struggles of more fragile species 鈥� has made it one of the planet鈥檚 most successful bird species. But this achievement is the source of Haupt鈥檚 ambivalence: it鈥檚 everyone鈥檚 loss, she reminds us, if we create an environment that accommodates only tough survivor species like the crow.
It鈥檚 an idea that propels me outside once I finish the book. Not a bird in sight. I stand in our sunny backyard until finally a cardinal appears. A sharp little breeze ruffles through the tree where it perches; its feathers blow in brilliant disarray. Truth be told, I don鈥檛 find cardinals as interesting as crows 鈥� but I was glad to see it.
Little, Brown and Company
