Sir,
This refers to the article’Save the Vanishing Crows’ by Maneka Sanjay Gandhi (DE, Sep 22, 2019).The writer has beautifully explained the interesting behavioural patterns about the crows which are fast vanishing due to lack of food and other factors.The fact that the crows play the funniest games just like tug of war with sticks and hide and seek and and do other aerial manoeuvers and through snow at each other, is really interesting and mindblowing.The observations about the crows by some crow watchers are interesting as well.The crows and ravens are fun loving and play with leaves, boughs, balls of papers, rags and steal bags of chips from store, escape, open and eat like professionals are the facts unknown to many.
But the most interesting fact is that they mourn the death of their dead friend, identify the killer and mob the predator.Crows do have trust issues with human beings and adopt the behaviour in accordance with the trust they have on human beings and plan for their future, select a tool from unnecessary items to get at their food and hide food cleverly.Crows are really intelligent and can devise solutions to resolve problems.They drop nuts in traffic lights to crack them open and can recognise themselves in the mirror.Crows play an important role of scavenging and we must ensure that they live in large numbers to play their signfiicant role in the biosphere.They must be fed food and water regularly.While crows are generally associated with bad omen, damaging crops, stealing food,etc.Hindus consider crows as the link between the alive and the dead and when food is offered to the deceased person, it is offered through the crow.
They have been following the tradition of calling and feeding the crows when offering food to their ancestors since times immemorial.If the crow comes at the call, pecks at the food and flies right to left, it is assumed that our ancestors are happy with us and if it doesnot turn up, they think that our ancestors and deities are not happy with us.On the days of Shradhs, Hindus take food only after offering it to the crow. Perhaps our wise ancestors started this tradition as they were aware of their significant role in our life.Therefore efforts must be made to maintain their population.
Ashok Sharma,
Udhampur.
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