Those Crazy Corvids

by Marge Hermans and Bob Armstrong

Ravens, crows, Steller’s jays, and magpies. You can hardly get through a day in Southeast without encountering at least one of these feathered hooligans. All corvids, or members of the family Corvidae, are generally gregarious, aggressive, and very vocal. They adapt well to the presence of humans and may also be among the most intelligent of animals. Take ravens, for example.
Ravens in Southeast Alaska have gotten national attention for some of their antics. Award-winning Vermont naturalist Bernd Heinrich has studied ravens for seventeen years. In his latest book Mind of the Raven he describes a flamboyant raven escapade in Juneau. Sherry Simpson described it, too, in the April 1, 1991, Juneau Empire. She reported:

Dozens of ravens hit the jackpot Saturday morning at the annual Easter egg hunt sponsored by Zach Gordon Youth Center. Of almost 1,200 hard-boiled eggs distributed throughout Adair-Kennedy Memorial Park, the ravens made off with at least half, organizers estimate.

…About 600 hard-boiled eggs and a few plastic eggs were hidden in one large field, [said youth center manager Kim Kiefer.] But when volunteers made a sweep through the area just before the hunt, they found just a single plastic egg.

“They came screaming back to me, ‘There’re no eggs! There’re no eggs!’” Kiefer said.
“By that time just about everybody had seen a raven fly over with a pink or a blue or a green egg in its mouth.”

The ravens also were spotted popping open plastic eggs that contained candy or tickets for prizes. Remnants of eaten eggs littered the grounds.

Kiefer said the moral of the story is: “Don’t count your eggs before the ravens come in.”
There are even raven hoodlums at Muskeg Meadows golf course in Wrangell. As Mary Lou Gerbi wrote in the May 2001 issue of the Alaskan Southeaster:

And then there are the flying hazards—ravens—that make golfers cry “fowl.” “Nevermore” may be what Edgar Allan Poe thought he heard, but here these big black birds of yore croak “Never fore.” The flying bandits swoop down, scoop up golf balls, peck them into mangled messes, then drop them around town or bury them in the rough.

…Instead of clubbing the critters, Wrangell golfers instituted Rule Number Eight, the Raven’s Rule: “A ball stolen by a raven may be replaced, with no penalty, provided there is a witness.” Ravens don’t count as witnesses.

Over the years, Bob Armstrong has had a number of unusual experiences with ravens and other corvids. Here are some of his more memorable stories—tales that we feel easily earn these birds the nickname “Crazy Corvids.”

Common Raven

One of my funniest experiences with ravens was when I saw about seven to nine ravens standing around in a circle at Brotherhood Park in Juneau. One at a time, each of the ravens picked up an object—a piece of Styrofoam, a hunk of wadded up paper—and walked into the center of the circle. It stopped for a minute as if it was showing what it had to all the rest of the birds in the circle. Then it went back to its spot, and another bird would walk into the middle of the circle with an object.

One raven had a paper cup, a pretty large one, like you would get for a large Coke or soft drink. Finally it picked up the cup and walked into the middle of the circle—and that ended the game. I don’t know whether that bird had the “best object” or the “top prize,” or what, but after that all the birds flew away. I thought the whole thing was pretty comical.

Northwestern Crow

For a while a number of crows came often to the deck of my house in Juneau. About six of them became quite tame and would sit along the railing and watch me when I was sitting out on the deck. I started giving them peanuts and got the idea of playing the shell game with them. So I got three paper cups and every so often I would put a peanut under one cup and then shuffle the cups around to see if the crows could figure out which one had the peanut under it. They could.
They would stand on the railing and watch me—They’d watch what cup I put the peanut under—and as I shuffled the cups to different spots, they always seemed to know where the peanut was. Most of them would come over, pick up the cup, set it down, then grab the peanut and fly off with it.

But one of them seemed a little unsure of itself. It knew where the peanut was but didn’t seem to know quite what to do. Finally, it came over and picked up the cup, but as it did, another crow edged over, grabbed the peanut, and flew off with the prize. So the timid crow flew off, too—carrying the cup. It was as if the first crow knew he’d lost out and was trying to save face by pretending he knew what he was doing.

I had another odd experience with crows a number of years ago. I was sitting in a blind I’d set up to photograph bald eagles, and there were a number of crows foraging along the beach nearby. Suddenly, the crows started bringing small rocks and piling them in front of the blind. Just one crow at a time would grab a rock off the beach, then walk up and set it very gently in this pile. Pretty soon there was a mound of rocks sitting in front of me about four inches high. Then the crows just left. That was it.

I never did figure out what was going on. I could see no connection between the crows’ behavior and anything I had done. All I could think of was that maybe they were “marking” me, the way hikers use cairns to mark a trail.

Steller’s Jay

In two different locations, at a fisheries research station where I worked on Admiralty Island and at home here in Juneau, I’ve had Steller’s jays that peer in the window at me and knock on the glass with their beaks to be fed. Here at home, if I don’t respond right away, and maybe move to another place in the house, the jay will follow me to the closest window, perch on the windowsill, and look in. This bird is very persistent. It doesn’t give up until I open the door and throw it a couple of peanuts.

Jays seem to be especially good at mimicking sounds made by other animals. I’ve seen them swoop into a bird feeder imitating the call of a red-tailed hawk so convincingly that all the other birds will scatter. I’ve also heard them perfectly imitate bald eagle calls and even the whistle of a marmot.

When you hear jays making a lot of noise in the woods, it’s always fun to see what they’re up to. Sometimes there will be an owl around. Jays are usually among the first animals to discover bird predators in the forest, and they do a lot of talking to the predators, squawking and making a big hullabaloo. I don’t think jays are as much into dive-bombing predators as crows are.

Black-Billed Magpie

Black-billed magpies, which we see in Southeast mostly in the winter, are as bold as the vivid black and white of their plumage. They usually travel in groups like young hoods, and they’re often less cautious than ravens about coming directly to food associated with humans. If you put out table scraps, magpies swoop down and stuff their beaks with as much as they can carry, then fly off. This sometimes works to the benefit of ravens that wait safely in nearby trees, then chase the magpies till they drop the scraps which the ravens, of course, quickly retrieve.

Magpies are pretty good pirates, too. Last winter when I was out walking Nola, our lanky black dog, she came across a piece of salmon skin near a spawning stream. She picked it up and started running really fast through the forest. And right on her tail was a magpie, keeping up with her all the way. It made quite a scene—a thin, lanky black dog running along with a long-tailed white-and-black bird chasing her. I don’t know whether the magpie was after the fish skin or just enjoying the thrill of the race, but the dog and magpie tore off through the woods together, and I’m sure they gave each other a run for their money.