City’s crows display their street cred

I’M just back from a short break in the Dutch town of Eindhoven.

It was a strictly urban affair as, apart from the commute to and from the airport, I didn’t stray outside the centre of this rather charming city. So wildlife experiences were not really on the menu, though I did have one interesting encounter.

I was sitting in a pavement cafe idly watching feral pigeons foraging for crumbs when they were joined by two black birds that at first I didn’t recognise. They were slightly larger than jackdaws and untidier. They also lacked the perky stance of a jackdaw. After a few moments I realised that they were immature carrion crows.

The carrion crow is common in England and on the continent but only turns up as an occasional vagrant in Ireland, usually near the south or east coast. In this country its place is taken by the hooded crow, more normally called a grey crow or, in the north, a ‘hoodie’.

When I was growing up the two birds were regarded as being geographical colour variants of the one species. But taxonomy evolves rapidly and you have to stay on your toes to keep up with it. In 2002 the ornithological powers decided that they were two distinct species and changed the scientific names accordingly. Grey crows are not popular birds. They will feed on the carcases of dead lambs and farmers jump to the conclusion that they actually killed the lamb. The shooting fraternity don’t like them because they will take the eggs and chicks of ducks and pheasants. In the early 1980s gun clubs mounted a crusade against them. 23,000 grey crows were shot in two years in Co Cork alone.

Despite this the species is still common and widespread in both rural and urban areas. The reason for their survival is probably connected to the fact that, in common with other members of the crow family, they are phenomenally intelligent.

If you visit the coast you may get the chance to observe this. Grey crows commonly take crabs, mussels and other hard-shelled food in their beaks, fly up to a carefully calculated height and drop them on a stone to smash them. They then pick the soft flesh from the smashed shell. Apparently Lammergeiers, a species of large vulture, do the same thing with tortoises in Greece, though I’ve never seen this.

An even more remarkable piece of lateral thinking has been observed among carrion crows in Japan. There are street trees with very hard-shelled nuts that the crows love. Even dropping the nuts on a hard surface from a height often fails to crack them. The crows wait until the traffic is heavy and drop them under the wheels of cars. To avoid getting run over when they pick up the kernels they wait at a pedestrian crossing until the light goes green.