Issue #0

Crows, jays, ravens and their relatives

Plot

Bold, noisy, aggressive and inquisitive, through the ages the Corvidae have claimed man’s attention and captured his imagination. From the gleaming black crows and ravens to the black and white magpies and brilliantly colored jays, these birds have earned a prominent place in legend and folklore. But amid the spate of modern bird books, they have been oddly neglected. Choughs, nutcrackers, and treepies have been largely ignored, and rooks and jackdaws treated almost as evil, thieving vermin. But all the members of the crow family are amongst the most intelligent of birds; research teams have concluded that they are in fact quicker to learn than the "higher mammals" such as cats, dogs and monkeys. Their gift for mimicry, play, and what can be seen as a sense of humor are features of their lives, and those that become tame develop endearing personalities. The author gives us a fascinating account of the family Corvidae throughout the world, their appearance and structure, feeding, courtship, mating and breeding habits, their distribution and habitats, migration, behavior patterns and individual ways. Well illustrated with excellent photographs and line drawings throughout, with sixteen pages in full color, this book is an interesting and highly informative introduction to a group of birds familiar to us all but surprisingly little investigated.