Metamorphosism » corvid

The human impersonator

mig — Wed, 29 May 2019 13:53:12 +0000

A woman *roughly* my age was walking a little dog.
Is that your crow? She asked.
Technically, it’s a jackdaw, I said.
(I didn’t really say that.)
No, what I said was, Actually, I don’t know who belongs to whom. Why do you ask?
Because it looks like you’re taking him for a walk.
The *jackdaw* had been following me for about a block.
On foot. The other crows do more swooping and flying. The jackdaws walk more, it seems. This one walks most of all.
A couple days later, he caught up with me again, a few blocks away.
I gave him a peanut, he followed me.
He had a comical waddling gait.
He stuck out his chest/belly and sort of waddled from side to side.
I tried to take his picture, but as soon as I held up my phone he turned his back.
I had to bribe him with another peanut, then he let me take a profile shot.
I sent my wife the picture and she said, Is he impersonating you?
I, what, huh?
Are you impersonating me, bird? I asked.
The way I see it, there are three possibilities:

That’s just the way jackdaws walk.
He thought he’d get more peanuts if he acted more like a human, and that’s the way humans look to him.
He really was taking the piss.

The first rule of peanut club

mig — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 14:04:38 +0000

A man is walking to the store on his lunch break. Because he has run out of peanuts, he takes the only street where the crows don’t know him yet.
Two crows (one hooded, one regular) land in the grass next to the street and watch him expectantly.
Man: Fuck.
Man: This was my secret street, dudes.
Man: You guys are like a block away from your territory. Were you watching from your tree or something?
Man: I’m really sorry, but I’m all out of peanuts today.
Hooded crow: The first rule of Peanut Club is, always have peanuts.

So I bought a bag of peanuts, still in the shell, because that gives the crows something to do, cracking the nuts.
But they were nowhere to be found when I got back.
So I filled my pockets today on my lunch break and walked down their street and they showed up.
I tossed a peanut to the hooded crow, which is about 40% larger than the black crow, at least in this case, and it caught it before it hit the ground.
“Hey, nice catch,” I said.
They got a couple more nuts each, then a different, larger, black crow got a few.
Sometimes I give them more than they can hold at once to see how they solve that. They can hold 2 easy, sometimes 3 with a little time spent arranging the peanuts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one hold 4 at once.
The first two crows opened and ate their nuts on the spot. The larger crow, who might be new to this, carried his peanuts to some scaffolding around a house across the street and ate them there.

Lunchtime asteism

mig — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 14:54:33 +0000

Man: Why do you call me Mr. Peanuts?
Corvid: If we called you Mr. Peanut we’d be exposing ourselves to civil litigation over trademark violation.
Man: Why not Mr. Sandwich? You eat more of my sandwiches.
Corvid: Peanuts are better for caching, they don’t get soggy. And you can carry three at a time in your beak.
Corvid: At least three. You can carry three easily, more than that, it might lack grace.
Man: I’ve been meaning to ask you, why do you sometimes cache vittles beneath the tires of parked automobiles? Don’t you mind your food getting squished?
Corvid: Ehn, we haven’t figured cars out 100% yet.
Corvid: They make great toilets, though. That much we know.