friendship, or social affiliation. Each family of crows that she has studied has its own vocabulary of sounds, some of which—long and short caws and various rattles—they share with other groups, but many of which are idiosyncratic. One family of four American crows, for example, produced a “kek” caw and a high rattle that none of the other crows in the neighborhood used. At least some of their distinctive syllables were learned. In particular, a fledgling known as P acquired two distinctive caws—translated into English as “ark” and “wok”—by imitating the fish crows that often flew overhead (this was in Maryland.) Several months later, P’s sister RU began to use the call in her song as well, further harmonizing the family chorus.
QUOTH the CORVID
A French fish peddler is ambushed by a noisy mob of crows, 1899.
GREEK PHILOSOPHER THEOPHRASTUS, CA. 371-286 BC
I t is a sign of rain if the raven, who is accustomed to make many different sounds, repeats one of these twice quickly and makes a whirring sound and shakes his wings. So too if, during a rainy season, he utters many different sounds, or if he searches for lice perched on an olive-tree. And if, whether in fair or wet weather, he imitates, as it were, with his voice, falling drops, it is a sign of rain.
H. DOUGLAS-HOME, BIRDMAN, 1977
R ooks were always said to be ominous birds. In the last century there was a rookery near the castle at Douglas, and when my great-grandfather was fairly young he got irritated by their cawing and ordered the keepers to get rid of them, about three hundred nests. An old crone bawled him out for banishing the rooks.“You wait, they’ll be back the day you die!” The time came when he was slipping away and suddenly, to his horror, all the rooks came cawing into the trees around Douglas Castle.“God Rooks!” he exclaimed and subsided into his pillows. “That means I’m going to die today.” And he did.
In this illustration from The Lilac Fairy Book, 1919, the youngest of three sisters agrees to marry a sweet-talking hooded crow.
Singing has a calming effect on crow interactions, Brown notes. When two family members come into conflict, one of them often begins to sing, instantaneously putting an end to the hostilities. The more song elements any given pair has in common, the more companionable the birds tend to be and the more time they spend socializing and preening one another’s plumage. And the reverse also holds true: The fewer shared sounds, the weaker the social link. For instance, when a lovey-dovey pair of sisters was placed in an aviary with an unrelated crow that had a different song, the established two-some completely ignored the stranger. But as soon as the outsider learned to replicate the sisters’ distinctive coo calls, they acknowledged her as one of the group and accepted her as a preening partner. To paraphrase the old saying, it seems that crows of a song join the same throng.
THE CULTURE OF RAVENS
Given what we know about crows, it is not surprising to learn that their vocal behavior is intensely social. But what if someone were to tell you about a species in which social partners not only learn calls from one another but also somehow agree on how to use those calls meaningfully? This is the picture that has been emerging over the last twenty-odd years from a study of common ravens conducted by zoologists Peter Enggist and Ueli Pfister, in an area just south of Bern, Switzerland. The research protocol is simple. A cage containing two captive ravens is placed inside the territory of a wild, free-living pair, and the sounds the birds make during the encounter are recorded. Back in the lab, the biologists analyze the recording, tally the number of “call types” used by each bird—a wonderful variety of gurgling, chortling, trilling, knocking, barking, “quorking,” and bell-like peals—and then compare the repertoire of these new subjects with the sounds that are
QUOTH the CORVID
A French fish peddler is ambushed by a noisy mob of crows, 1899.
GREEK PHILOSOPHER THEOPHRASTUS, CA. 371-286 BC
I t is a sign of rain if the raven, who is accustomed to make many different sounds, repeats one of these twice quickly and makes a whirring sound and shakes his wings. So too if, during a rainy season, he utters many different sounds, or if he searches for lice perched on an olive-tree. And if, whether in fair or wet weather, he imitates, as it were, with his voice, falling drops, it is a sign of rain.
H. DOUGLAS-HOME, BIRDMAN, 1977
R ooks were always said to be ominous birds. In the last century there was a rookery near the castle at Douglas, and when my great-grandfather was fairly young he got irritated by their cawing and ordered the keepers to get rid of them, about three hundred nests. An old crone bawled him out for banishing the rooks.“You wait, they’ll be back the day you die!” The time came when he was slipping away and suddenly, to his horror, all the rooks came cawing into the trees around Douglas Castle.“God Rooks!” he exclaimed and subsided into his pillows. “That means I’m going to die today.” And he did.
In this illustration from The Lilac Fairy Book, 1919, the youngest of three sisters agrees to marry a sweet-talking hooded crow.
Singing has a calming effect on crow interactions, Brown notes. When two family members come into conflict, one of them often begins to sing, instantaneously putting an end to the hostilities. The more song elements any given pair has in common, the more companionable the birds tend to be and the more time they spend socializing and preening one another’s plumage. And the reverse also holds true: The fewer shared sounds, the weaker the social link. For instance, when a lovey-dovey pair of sisters was placed in an aviary with an unrelated crow that had a different song, the established two-some completely ignored the stranger. But as soon as the outsider learned to replicate the sisters’ distinctive coo calls, they acknowledged her as one of the group and accepted her as a preening partner. To paraphrase the old saying, it seems that crows of a song join the same throng.
THE CULTURE OF RAVENS
Given what we know about crows, it is not surprising to learn that their vocal behavior is intensely social. But what if someone were to tell you about a species in which social partners not only learn calls from one another but also somehow agree on how to use those calls meaningfully? This is the picture that has been emerging over the last twenty-odd years from a study of common ravens conducted by zoologists Peter Enggist and Ueli Pfister, in an area just south of Bern, Switzerland. The research protocol is simple. A cage containing two captive ravens is placed inside the territory of a wild, free-living pair, and the sounds the birds make during the encounter are recorded. Back in the lab, the biologists analyze the recording, tally the number of “call types” used by each bird—a wonderful variety of gurgling, chortling, trilling, knocking, barking, “quorking,” and bell-like peals—and then compare the repertoire of these new subjects with the sounds that are
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