Canyon Crows

The bright sunny canyon is like a concert hall for the black hooded warriors circling about. They call out, expressing their command over the sky, keeping all the critters cautious. Furry little friends scurry along and scan they sky to make sure that there is no nest of crows spying on them, ready to pounce and plunder their tiny earthen home. The fossil record of crows is rather dense in Europe, but the relationships among most prehistoric species are not clear. The latest evidence[8] appears to point towards an Australasian origin for the early family (Corvidae) though the branch that would produce the modern groups such as jays, magpies and large predominantly black Corvus, Crows had left Australasia and were now developing in Asia. Corvus has since re-entered Australia (relatively recently) and produced five species with one recognized sub-species. A surprisingly high number of species have become extinct after human colonization, especially of island groups such as New Zealand, Hawaii and Greenland. As a group, crows show remarkable examples of intelligence, and Aesop's fable of The Crow and the Pitcher shows that humans have long viewed the crow as an intelligent bird. Crows and ravens often score very highly on intelligence tests. Certain species top the avian IQ scale. Wild hooded crows in Israel have learned to use bread crumbs for bait-fishing.