Bird games

Yesterday while I was sitting in the little park behind school after work, relaxing for a bit before cycling home, I watched a crow for a while. I was watching it because there was a small black cat that sits behind some bushes in the park, and whenever a pigeon got near it looked very, very alert. It didn't do anything, but it got that look that said it might, if it felt like it.

The crow was wandering around the water feature, and I wondered if the cat would feel like attacking a bird as big as itself. But when the crow got a bit too close the cat pretended it had sudden urgent business elsewhere, and slunk off.

I continued watching the crow, which then started to do something rather odd. It found a rock. The rock was quite large - about as big as an ordinary hen's egg, only square, and, well, rock-like.

At first I thought the crow perhaps mistook the rock for a bit of bread that had become dry and hard, because it picked up the rock and threw it, quite purposefully, into the water. Then it picked it out of the water and threw it on the ground. And then it picked it up again and flew up, dropping it. It landed, picked it up again, and threw it back into the water.

This odd behaviour continued for about ten minutes. After a while I decided the crow knew it was a rock and not bread, and came to the conclusion that it was playing. I have never seen a bird play before, but I couldn't imagine what else it was doing. It certainly wasn't achieving anything except a lovely CLUNK every time it threw or dropped the rock. It would cock its head and appear to be listening to this sound. When the rock landed in the water, it would splash. The crow seemed to enjoy that, too, judging by the number of times it threw the rock into the water. It usually picked it up in its beak, but now and again it picked it up with its feet, too, and moved it around a little.

I only took one picture. I forgot I had the camera with me until just before the crow flew off somewhere else with the rock. And I missed the rock. Just as I took the picture the crow threw the rock into the water, and it landed out of the frame. But if I see anything like that again I will try to get better pictures. It was STRANGE.