Gifts of the Crow: brain scan proof these birds are devious, silly and smart

Biologists use brain scans (and entertaining experiments and anecdotes) to show that crows, ravens and other corvids think like people.

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Samantha the Raven recovers, flies off from Marble Cemetery

An injured raven transported from WY to New York City unexpectedly recovered and left the Marble Cemetery. She spent a couple years healing from a broken wing among gothic graves.

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Birding Bob: The History of Ravens, Whales and Dolpins in NYC

Manhattan’s Samantha the Raven

Birding Bob (also known Dr. Robert DeCandido) is a biologist who leads popular and easy to understand tours in Central Park. He lets us publish his newsletter that goes out to his many fans.

With all the talk of Ravens possibly nesting in NYC (Queens), we went back into the historical record to see what we could find out about these corvids in NYC. In a dusty, yellowing journal we found a brief note published in the mid-19th century. It seems as though Ravens must have been occasional visitors to Brooklyn and Long Island back then – see below.

This week we add another bird walk to the mix: Tuesday mornings at 9am, meeting at the Boathouse (details below). Meanwhile, our NYC kestrel research is getting some attention – from outside of New York City!  And later this year, Deborah and I will have an article in a national publication about NYC Kestrels.You can find information (in 14 languages!) about NYC kestrels here.We have some very good news to report. Our colleague Chad Seewagen (soon to be PhD) had another scientific paper published on his research here in NYC on how migrant birds fare during stopover times in New York City Parks. The research was published in the prestigious Wilson Journal of Ornithology. Congratulations Chad – may you publish many more.

Another of our bird-walkers, Bill Benish, has created an on-line guide to the largest woodpeckers in the world – here’s the

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