Review
of Crow in Guardian (
Crow, by Boria Sax
(Reaktion, £12.95)
Clever
critters, crows.
They have been reported to slide down roofs on sleds made from bits of ice; to
drop stones into water to make the level rise so they can drink; and to make
tools out of twigs or leaves. In laboratory conditions crows even managed to
solve a puzzle that had stumped chimpanzees. Yet to
many people, there is something of the night about them. Sax's book roams
divertingly over the scientific and cultural history of the "corvid"
family, which includes the carrion crow, the raven, the rook and the jackdaw,
tracing ambivalent responses to the mischievous birds. (The crow was sacred to
the Greek sun god Apollo, and was used as a symbol of harmonious monogamy, but
it was also the scavenger that foretold doom and would eat your corpse without
blinking.) And I think we can agree that Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The
Raven" would be somewhat less effective if he had stuck with his original
bird concept, a parrot.