Crow is the Smartest Bird on Earth

Stop that thief lest it eats my blue tits!

Seeing this magnificent-looking creature so close, a recurring thought flashed through my mind for the nth time.

Did God purposely create birds to thrill the senses of Homo sapiens?

For that was exactly what I felt, a throbbing thrill, an exploding excitement of the senses, as I beheld this beautiful bird.

Sleep was still in my eyes that morning. But as I opened the blinds in the kitchen window and caught sight of this creature, I was instantly awake. I gawked and gaped. In pure astonishment.

Only three meters separated me from this bird. It was prancing, sideways, on the raised-up lawn. I could see its perfect profile. Its entire body was of the deepest ebony I’ve ever seen, its feathers smooth and sparkling like a black diamond against the clear morning.

I thought for a nanosecond that I was watching it on an ultra-HD television screen. Its stunning beauty was digitally, crisply clear.

And then I suddenly realized what was happening.

This carrion was the crow that has been stealing the fat balls, food of our resident blue tits in the back garden!

Before I could make up my mind whether to get my mobile phone to take a picture of this thief or shoo it away, the crow spread its wings, lifted itself by a few inches. Then, it rattled and growled at a magpie — I overlooked the magpie until then — that attempted to peck at the fat ball.

Feathers shaking in pure fear, the poor magpie beat a hasty retreat.

There is no bully like a big bully crow that could and would also eat a magpie, and all because the latter wanted a few pecks off the loot.

The thieving crow then flew away, the fat ball firmly between its black beak.

It wasn’t the theft of the bird food that was my primary concern.

We — my husband and I — provide bird food for our garden visitors throughout the year. Two types, fat balls and birdseed mixtures, hang in separate containers in the fence.

The usual garden birds — tits, blackbirds, magpies, sparrows, the occasional finches and robins, and the ever-present pigeons — feed on those at any time, any season they visit.

But the birds mentioned above are not birds of prey.

Crows or corvids, however, are not predators. According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, they eat insects, worms, seeds, fruit, eggs, scraps, and carrion.

Carrion crows are known to eat roadkill and their own.

Crows are also notorious for stealing — and eating! — the young of smaller birds, even their eggs. They steal the eggs of the baby birds from the nest.

And this was my foremost fear, that the crow that I lavishly admired might have eaten the resident blue tits in our garden. A couple of blue tits just had a few babies in the bird boxes provided for them.

TWO years ago, I witnessed a sparrowhawk attacking a bird. It was a chilly end-of-winter morning. I rushed outside, feet bare, not minding the icy wall onto which I slammed my silk-dressing-gowned body.

I would have wanted to save the little bird.

Too late, though.

The sparrowhawk quickly took flight as soon as I stepped out the kitchen door. The poor blackbird was clutched tightly by the sparrowhawk on its beak. Wisps of bird feathers from the prey dropped and floated as the sparrowhawk flew away.

I felt a frosty kind of cold nipping my heart.

My failure to save the blackbird gutted me.

It could be the blackbird that has been bathing in the birdbath at least twice a week. Oh, how that blackbird gave me a real show on how it bathed itself! It energetically flapped its wings, sloshing on the water and then drinking the bathwater afterward.

And now, another bird, purported to be a thief, but now I’ve proven it so, posed a possible danger to the family of blue tits in the garden.

Along with ravens, crows are the smartest birds on earth.

The day after that close encounter with the thieving carrion crow, a news feature was published in the newspaper about a pickpocket crow.

See? Crows are thieving creatures.

After picking the author's pocket, it partially ate the £20 note it nicked from the author’s wallet.

As I do not believe in coincidences, I took it to indicate that I should write about crows — the thieving kind — and so here you are reading about it.

If you have bird feeders and bird nests, or bird boxes in your garden, check the suggestions below.

How to discourage crows from stealing, er, visiting gardens where there are resident small birds

Having made sure that the pair of blue tits and their babies were safe in their bird boxes, I felt relieved. I then searched for what steps I could take to keep crows away from our garden for the safety of the resident blue tits and the other small birds that feed on the feeders.

The following suggestions from Bird Proofing Guide stood out:

(1) Hang shiny things in the garden

Crows dislike shiny things; hang a string of CDs or a mirror to keep crows from visiting. (Husband will have a fit. Are the mirrors — many mirrors — in the house not enough for you? Mirror in the garden, bah!)

(2) Play certain sounds that crow hate

Clashing and crashing sounds or sounds made by predators would drive the crows away. (It would also drive the neighbors mad!)

(3) Scare the crow

Put up a scarecrow in the garden. Drape it with loose tatty shirts that would flip and flap with the wind and frighten the thieving crows. (And scare the grandchildren when they visit; or be the focus of mockery by the adults during barbecue gathering.)

One problem I see in scaring the crows with a scarecrow is that if crows (and ravens) are the smartest birds on earth, would they not realize that the scarecrow was a human ploy to scare them?

NOTES: No way will I actively dislike birds of any size. The opposite is true.

Eons ago, when I felt down and needed some lifting up, and no one was around: I thought of the birds. How they fly and live without any care, how they thrill our senses with their songs, with their beauty, with their total innocence.

They are God’s creatures, as all of us on Earth.

And if God takes care of the birds, providing them with everything they need, what more of us, humans, whom He created in His image?

I understand that crows, including carrion crows, just do what they are supposed to do to survive. But I would still protect the little ones in my garden.

And by the way, that bird feasted on by that sparrowhawk? It wasn’t, I now believe, the blackbird that regularly bathed in our garden birdbath.

A blackbird is again giving me a show — flapping its wings, sloshing in the birdbath, then shaking off the water before drinking it.

I really think God purposely created birds to make our days bright, cheery and flushed with optimism.

Thank you for reading.