Crow Story
December 14, 2018
It was early winter in Eastern Ontario, in a deep gravel pit just north of Seeley’s Bay. I had pulled in with my SUV and trailer to get a load of salted sand. The wind was howling from the south.
As I waited for the loader my attention drifted to a small gaggle of crows fooling around on the edge of a tall bank to the north of me. They were hopping off the edge, only to be blown upward and back by the wind bouncing off the vertical face of the pit.
One slightly smaller crow apparently grew tired of blowing away every time he* tried to soar, picked up an egg-sized piece of gravel in his right claw and hopped off the bank. He suddenly had stability against the wind. He tried again, with a slightly larger stone. He was able to hang motionless in the air. He tried swinging from side to side like a pendulum, and so on. At the time the loader arrived he was well on the way to flying an egg-shaped piece of granite through a loop in the powerful updraft above the wall.
*It is hard to determine gender with a crow, but I have observed a lot of adolescents at play over a 34-year teaching career. This bird was a male.
the Walnut Diary 
December 14, 2018 at 11:31 pm
I liked, really “liked”, your crow story. Don’t know why I would need to sign on to do so.
Yes, crows! Very smart! The parrot in the cage here is starting to be educated as to who should warm up to. Ps, I hate the thought of the bird being caged for a lifetime. If I had my way, and thought the bird could now survive in its natural habitat, that’s where he’d be. I write “he”, cause in 30 years, there have been no eggs.
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