Collect In The Company Of Crows And Ravens Prepared By Paul Ehrlich Shown As Softcover

is inability to take the mischief out of the trickster that will keep corvids wild into the future, "

"Corvids living among us are the best of nature's ambassadors as the web of our ancestral connections to nature becomes increasingly frayed, Their complex and mysterious voices, insightful problemsolving behaviors, and curious prominence

provide an intriguing and convenient means to link urban people with wild nature, " p

"Perhaps the gods gave us crows to provoke and remind us how foolish it is to assume an allknowing human ascendancy over nature, " pThis is a fascinating study of crows, ravens, and other corvids, and the way that they and humans have coevolved, The authors make strong arguments for the ability of crows in particular to learn socially and even use tools, There's also a lot of fascinating stuff about the ways that humans have changed our environment in such a way that encourages crow population explosions, often at the expense of other wildlife.
The book is liberally illustrated with beautiful pen and ink drawings, although Ehrlich is much better at drawing birds than he is at drawing human figures and backgrounds.
It's a great book, and if you've read and enjoyed Bernd Heinrich's studies of ravens, I highly recommend this one, BookReading Challenge A social, cultural, and natural history of corvidae: crows, jays, and ravens, The thesis of this magnificently pen and ink illustrated volume is crows and ravens benefit people and we benefit them, In other words we have always had a close relationship with crows, and they are keyed into us in ways that other wilds animals are not, The authors argue crows have shaped the way people live, and we have shaped how crows lived, These terrifically smart birds have become experts at exploiting resources from us, Also, crows share "similar traits and social strategies" with humans, Crows, ravens, and jays use tools they figure out how to get what they need, They are very social and can actually be devious! Hence the raven's name the trickster in folk tale, A wonderful book for the general reader who is interested in North America's smartest birds, You will see crows in a new way guaranteed, Lots of research and examples of work with crows cited, Entertaining and thought provoking. Marzluff and Angell give a very thorough treatment to the scientific and literary aspects of crows and ravens, For me, though, the scientific was a little more than I needed, and I found the writing to be a bit scattershot, For instance, each chapter didn't seem to have an organic tie to the one before or after it, And the literary aspects were either given brief touches in the chapter devoted to them, or intermingled into the scientific discussion, I felt the book could have been more focused and shortened without detracting from the overall effect, DNF, or to be honest, barely started, I just couldnt get into this book I read an entire Harry Potter book while trying to get through the introduction so I skipped over to the corvid language section and found that slightly more readable but not enough to go back and tackle the rest.
It was a lot of speculation, rather vague and disjointed, and not very engaging,

The kindle version also has a narrow serif font, that I couldnt improve, that added to the difficulty in my reading, The illustrations were lovely but the captions seemed to be the same things Id just read restated in almost the same detail as the book text, Maybe I should just page through to the pictures and read the captions and call the book done!

I did learn one fun fact, that crows dont sing to find their mates but seem to engage in quiet courtships over long periods of time.
Theyre noisy about everything else and Id love to know what theyre saying but this book isnt where Im going to find my answers, In my current, more hardcore obsession with crows and ravens, this book hit the spot, Marzluff is one of THE scientists that can write with accuracy and experience about corvids, and as this book was published in, is a few years before his experiments that demonstrated facial recognition capability in American Crows this concept is alluded to so I got geekily excited with knowing the "spoiler".
It's heavily noted and referenced, and the book itself is quite aesthetically pleasing the black and white pen/ink drawings against the white of the pages was beautiful, and I also approve of the font choice.


The illustrations are excellent, Good information but not written all that well, Somewhere in here, there was an excellent book in need of a ghostwriter, Unfortunately, this book was written by scientists, and reads like it was written by scientists, There were some interesting parts, but it was pretty unfocused, long on speculation, and light on data, There are so many better, newer books out there, including sitelinkGifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans by the same author, that this early look at coevolution can be skipped.
Still, it's fairly wellwritten, and there are more tidbits of interest than I can sample for you here, so if you're trying to read everything in the field, go for it.


"How did crows and ravens come to recognize fluorescent orange cheese puffs as food rather than bits of plastic" Probably the same way they learned that a McDonald's bag, rather than a brown paper bag of similar size and shape and with identical contents of fries, is the target to attempt first when both are set out conveniently.
A few learned from trialanderror, and culture taught others, Crows have culture.

Earlier peoples probably mostly ignored crows, Earlier farmers harassed and hunted them, Now people seldom hunt them, and those in suburbs and towns often even feed them, "The more unpredictable people are, the smarter crows must become, " Crows are adaptable.

"Psychologist Nicholas Thompson of Clark University recorded caws from wild crows, then remixed and replayed them to crows, Depending on how he arranged a sequence of cawingas a structured versus an unstructured compositionThompson could attract or repel crows with the same caws, . Obviously, syntax, not just the symbol, makes a difference to the meaning, " By any but the most determinedly homocentric definition of language, crows have language,

The book concludes with advice to those who want to serve science, and the birds, and has both a bibliography and a reading list for children.
And an index and lots of great illustrations, I was attracted to Tony Angell's illustrations, I also thought the chapter on myth and art would be interesting, and it was, But I actually ended up reading the entire book,

The authors emphasize the complex interactions and influences that crows and humans have had on each other throughout recorded history, and place them in the broader context of our connection to the ecology of the planet.
Preaching to the converted, in my case, but their presentation is both clear and engaging, And crows prove to be quite entertaining as well, This is a fantastic book and is highly recommended, I am currently feeding a pair of ravens from my rural back garden in West Wales and it is a fabulous opportunity to study them up close and personal.
They are collecting food for their young and have learned that I am a very soft touch when it comes to Corvus corax!

In the Company of Crows and Ravens benefits from Tony Angell's wonderful artwork and deals with both the natural history, behaviour, and folklore associated with corvids, stretching back thousands of years.
I particularly like the way the authors deal with the less common species, such as conservation strategies for the endangered Hawaiian crow,

In summary, the book is an impressive work of scholarship based on personal observation by both the authors and the artist they should be congratulated, .