Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
If you should happen to be among the growing number of people who communicate with others by texting, then you recognize the helpfulness of the jargon used by that fraternity. Among those abbreviations are ASAP, FYI, ILY, and HBD. Texters are not the only ones who employ such a practice. Within the community of birders, FOY (first of year) is used to designate the first time a bird has been seen that year, so beginning early January 1 many report FOY which, of course, would include the first bird seen that year. For many in my neighborhood it would be the American Crow for there is a large rookery on the UW Bothell campus and many of those leaving in the morning fly right over our place.
Crows in general are smart birds. Henry Ward Beecher, the 19th century American preacher, once remarked that if people wore feathers and wings, very few of them would be clever enough to be crows. For example, they hunt mollusks at low tide and smash them by carrying them aloft and dropping them on rocks below. They fly high enough to break the shell, but not so high as to waste energy. Experiments have shown the most economical height to accomplish this is around 16 feet, which just happens to be the same height the crows employ.
As we begin a new year, we, once again, have the FOY opportunity to make wise decisions. May our choices, both the first and those that follow, give evidence that we are among the few that are astute enough to be wiser than crows.