Eight-year-old Gaby Mann’s most prized possession is a gift box. In it are shiny pieces of brown glass, a small silver ball, a black button, a blue paper clip, a yellow bead, a faded piece of foam, among many others. Her favourite item is a small pearl coloured heart. For Gaby, these gifts are priceless as she received them from her unusual friends – the neighbourhood crows.
She built a friendship and a rapport with crows (a practice which started as an accident) over a period of four years by feeding them. In return, they bought back many gifts for her – even her mother’s lost camera lens cap.
Gaby wasn’t the only person to befriend a crow. Lijana Holmes at the University of Washington fed a crow a regular meal of eggs and meat and got a symbolic ‘gift’ in return. The gift could be anything – a piece of glass, a trinket, nuts, and bolts – but it’s what authors John Marzluff and Tony Angell call the “ephemeral and profound connection to nature that many people crave”.
For ages, people claimed to have formed personal relationships with crows; bonding with them over a shared sense of intelligence and gratitude. What is it that draws people to crows (and often against them), that makes them so reciprocal to kindness?
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