Stone the Flamin' Crows

Trip 18: Ravensthorpe to Perth

Purpose: Targeted flora and fauna survey

Total Distance Traveled: 447 km

Distance Traveled Year to Date: 61, 623 km

They play cute and they are cute IMO

I knew before I had even typed in those ten words: what is the most intelligent bird in the world? Many would say the Kea, but I disagree. Keas may be intelligent, but any animal that spends its days ripping the rubber and plastic off parked cars for no apparent reason is not intelligent; it is ridiculous. 

It is the Australian Raven that gets my vote. This bird has swagger; a matter of factness that shouts “I just don’t give a toss”. And that call, made famous by Graham Kennedy in March 1975 that got him fired from the ABC: “Faaaaaaaaaaa########k”. I love this animal despite the grief it has caused me over the years during biological surveys. 

It does not take long for a murder (yes – a murder [I told you they were cool, didn’t I]) of crows to discover that the traps we lay are full of bait and how they resolve to extricate and eat it is as annoying as it is intriguing. 

In the first instance they simply roll the traps along the ground picking up the bait as it drops out of the gaps between the plates. But when they get frustrated they get more creative and discover that, by pulling the corner pins, the traps fall open and a smorgasbord of bait is revealed. During these surveys we can set one or two hundred traps that are baited every day. Quickly, a murder of crows turns into a massacre, our job turns into a nightmare, and our trap success plummets as our traps are rendered useless five minutes after they are set. 

You can see the pin on the top left corner

When they pull the pins they typically cast them aside and, in thick scrub, they can be nearly impossible to find. A lost pin means a trap that cannot be repaired and therefore cannot be rebaited. I think the crows down Ravensthorpe way figured this out pretty quickly and one bird in particular resolved to do something a little more considered. 

Walking along the trap line one morning I came across a trap that had had the two top pins missing. The sides were folded back on themselves and the trap was standing proud, up off the ground like it was on legs (the sides). Here is the weirdest part: One of the pins was laying neatly across the trap as if placed there to ensure the trap could be quickly repaired and re-baited. 

I know it sounds like I am drawing a long bow but if you think about it there is simply no other explanation. The trap had to be manipulated to be in the position it was and a bird could only do this with its beak; the pin had to have been positioned by the bird after the trap found its final resting place. I would not have believed either, had I not seen it myself.