Corvids. Today we are going to talk about Corvids. Corvids is a group of birds that is often misunderstood, underappreciated, and here I say controversial. And. Well, these days almost everything that is related to nature seems to be controversial. And this is why we're going to talk about, because this is Conservation and Science podcast where we take a deep dive into topics of ecology, conservation and human wildlife interactions. And I'm Tommy Sarafinski and I always strive to bring you diverse perspectives on the topics that we cover. And that means that sometimes you might hear voices that you might not agree with. And that's okay because we need more dialogue and understanding and less division and fighting. And in other words, I want you to listen to people you might have not listened to otherwise. And the reason why we talk about corvids today is that we have. I have a book for you. Well, not literally I have a book for you. It's a book recommendation, the titled Encounters with Corvids. And our guest today is the author, Dr. Fionn Ó Marcaigh. Fionn, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much for the welcome, Tommy, and for recommending the book like that. I'm glad to be here talking about.

It with you, of course, of course. And I just need to give a shout out to Aga Grandovic, great friend of the podcast, who made the illustrations, beautiful illustrations in the book. And the book is available from Natural World Publishing. The link is in the description of the show, as always, naturalworldpublishing, ie, and go in there and buy the book. And this time I want you to buy the book directly from the publisher because I don't want you to feed the beast of Amazon anymore. So go into thenaturalworldpublishing, ie, link in the description, buy the book, and that way you will support publisher, you will support Fionn, you will support Aga, and that is what matters. Fionn, tell me, or tell us actually, why Corvids? Why book about corvids? And I hope that this will give you also the. A little bit of the room to introduce yourself as well, who you are and what you do.

Thanks, Tommy. Well, it's an interesting question because in a way it's almost a bit of an accident, the book being about corvids. I'm a zoologist, I suppose, by background and an ornithologist. I've done decent bit of research on birds in different capacities, working in different places. None of it really focused specifically on corvids. It's not that I set out to study them or research them specifically, but just as you do that kind of work, especially here in Ireland, but in other places as well, they're a group that you encounter very often. So I suppose that's partly why the book is called Encounters with Corvids. They're a group of birds that you come across in different places. And every time you do come across them, it does feel like you're. You're kind of meeting with, you know, an animal in a particular way that you don't always with. With other kinds of wild animals that you meet. So. And thank you for mentioning Aga and her part of the book. The illustrations, they are such a huge part of why I think it's an enjoyable read, because they really show the character of these ultimate species and the different encounters you have with them. So it was kind of through talking with her and this idea of wanting to do a book that was for adults kind of about a particular group of birds was her. Was her thinking. So Natural World Publishing had mostly worked with children's nature books and natural history books before, and so doing one for adults is going to be a new departure for them. And he was keen to do it about a particular group. And, you know, as the ornithologists involved and everything, she was giving me a fair bit of flexibility about where to go with that kind of grief. So I thought about other kinds of groups that could make for an interesting book as well. You know, particularly groups where, you know, they have a bit of character to them. You know, I was thinking of maybe waders or seabirds. These are all kinds of birds that have very interesting stories that would be interesting to write about. But we kind of settled on corvids because there is a lot of material there. They're very interesting. We have a lot of them in Ireland. So that makes an interesting kind of narrative to tie the book around. And each of the species that we have is very different from each other. So each one kind of. It's like each species is its own character merely, you know, in each little story. So the book takes the form of short pieces that are. Each is about a different species that occurs in Ireland.

You know, like, I appreciate the format a little bit, like a field notes almost, which was interesting. And, yeah, there is a chapter dedicated to each species of corvids. Like I said in the introduction, I think that a lot of time corvids are well underappreciated and are maybe misunderstood, which is sort of like a theme going through the Book. Corvids are often referred to as overabundant generalist predators. I'm curious, what is your feeling? What do you feel when you hear corvids being referred to as overabundant? Because obviously we are in a biodiversity crisis. Nature is declining, whatever you look at. And here we talk about wildlife and the constant of wildlife. The word overabundant might be indicator of some issues, either environmental or here I say social. So just curious, you know, as a person who's obviously very positively biased towards corvids, what are your feelings when you hear them being referred to as overabundant?

It's an interesting question because from an ecological point of view, it is strictly true to say that they're overabundant in that there are more of them than there would be otherwise due to human effects on the landscape and on habitats. You know, we've essentially created habitats that suit these birds quite well. It's. And they suit them better than they would suit a lot of other birds and a lot of other species as well. Being generalist animals, being obviously very intelligent, very adaptable, they're very capable of living alongside us in urban landscapes, but also in sort of human altered rural landscapes, agricultural landscapes and so on. So it's true to say that they're overabundant in that we have created conditions that let them thrive more so than other species, and that leads to higher densities of these species, of these corvids, most of them, not all of them is worth bearing in mind. And you see that in research, there have been studies that have shown higher populations of birds, like magpies, for example, in Ireland than in most other European countries. But sometimes there's a sort of. Especially when people outside the ecological world maybe talk about this kind of thing, there could be a. Almost kind of a value judgment attached to that. And they sometimes talk about these kinds of species as if they're causes rather than effects of this kind of ecosystem outcome. You know, they're essentially birds that have evolved to be very adaptable, very intelligent. It's their evolutionary strategy that lets them deal with changing landscapes, changing habitats and so on, which have made them very well equipped for the kinds of changes we have. And that's something I have right about in the book. In, you know, in a country for corvids, there's something about the fact that you always encounter them in very familiar areas, you know, cities, farm landscapes and so on, that you can get attached to them that way. Even though, of course, it is true that There are more of them than there would be without human effects on the landscape. And there can be ecological consequences for that. You know, sometimes this isn't something I go into in the book, but, you know, some in particular local areas, they are average. They're a predatory group that does have to be managed sometimes for good outcomes for other species, you know, other kind of ground nesting birds and things like that. But it's not, it's not something for people to sort of judge them for as animals. You know, they're. They're doing what they've evolved to do and they do it very well.

Yeah, for sure. And. And look, I just want this to set the stage for, for people because I know that a lot of people coming from this angle, and we might come back to this later, but like I said, I don't want to labor that point. We had a separate episode about predator control. It was episode 150 with Professor Barry McMoun, which I'm sure you know, so people specifically interested in a predator control can listen to that episode or today. I just want to really more sort of tease out stuff about corvids that people might not know. You mentioned them being intelligent and there's a phrase somewhere in the beginning of the book that, you know, they almost study you as much as you study them. Can you tell us, you know, this encounter? Because I thought it was like very, you know, it was illustrating well, their intelligence and this thing that can make people connect with them on a different level.

Yeah, it's very true. It's something I find quite appealing about wild animals when they have that sort of, I don't know, sense of curiosity about them. You see it with certain other kinds of animals as well. You know, I love it when you're in a kind of a remote place on the coastline and there's like a gray seal and it's kind of looking at you and you're looking at it, and there's something about that, about a wild animal taking notice of you. And it's just found very appealing and interesting. But it's different with an animal like say a rock or a hooded crow or a raven especially, because there is just a sense of things going on behind their eyes, you know, as you're looking at them. I think that part in the book, like time comes in when I was talking about, you know, going out ringing, and this one encounter, it's a number of years ago now with, or we call it a rough. So this is, you know, under the BTO bird ringing scheme that's also licensed by National Parks Wildlife Service. It's these mist netting activities where birds are marked with metal rings. And then these days the main reason for this research is for demography. So it lets you find out, you know, how long birds live, where they go, what portion of them survive kind of each year, the mortality, things like that. In the past it was also very useful for studies of migration, where did the animals go. But. And that's still part of what comes out of the data. But also some of those questions have been answered. So the demography is kind of, sort of the future of that type of research. But that is quite a, quite a general hatching method. You know, these mist nets, these very fine nets that go up and the birds fly into them and very carefully under license and everything, extract them and measure them and take them out. It's often little when you're doing it in that non targeted kind of way is often a lot like pass around small pass arounds that you'd be getting, you know, talk about people who think of as their common garden birds. And they're very interesting to study up close like that as well. But there's something palpably different about when a bird like a rook shows up in the mist net because it's, it's regarding its situation in a totally different way. You know, you can see it looking around itself the whole time and whereas you know, something like a blue title or something doesn't really process the information in the same way you can tell the rock very much is. And it's looking at you as well in a way that's very interesting. And there have been studies using Corbins in other countries like in the, in the States. I think it was just the American crow they had there where they were able to show that the crows on a university campus did remember the people who handled them this way and would kind of react differently to them versus other people. So they proved that by wearing masks while they were handling them. So the crow would interpret this mask as being the person's face. And I think they had one of Abraham Lincoln and I forget who the other one was. But then the crows would react with more kind of tollshin when they saw someone wearing an Abraham Lincoln mask on the university campus because they knew that they're. That was someone who, you know, might try to try to catch them and study them and look at them like that. Well, that's not, you know, you, you wouldn't be expecting that level of cognition and memory from most kinds of past grants which of course, quarters are a past growing group, but they're. They're kind of as a family, quite unique.

I remember reading, I think it was in the. Mary Caldwell's book. The title was Big Tooth and Claw, I think. And where that was in. In fairness, it was about the. The captive raven. And it was a raven that was sort of like a train for acting in films and. But it was just the pets that. Who lives around the house of people. And for one scene in the film they had to, I don't remember exactly do something like give him something and then take it or something like that. And the bottom line is that that raven felt betrayed by. By them. By their. By their pe. By the people who were. Who kept them. And he took from their house. Again, I don't remember exactly, but I think it was either a necklace or a little ring, like some piece of jewelry. It took it and hide it somewhere. But not only that. He said that occasionally, every number of weeks, he would come with this in a beak and show him that I still have it and then fly away and hide it again.

That's fantastic. Yeah, that's great. I hadn't heard that story before.

Yeah, so. So it was, it was sort of speaks to their level of cognition and, and, and, and again, I think it was episode 101 when I was talking with. With Mary and about her book. We didn't spoke exactly about this thing but, but that story was in, in. In her book, you observed, you observed a lot of like behaviors like that as well during your. Your time.

Well, that's right. Yeah. They're, I suppose birds in general being quite visible animals. It's one of the things that's appealing about them both from a research point of view and just as, you know, as someone who enjoys nature and so on, you get to have. See their behaviors kind of lived out in the open in a way that you don't necessarily with other vertebrate groups. Certainly, you know, mammals and things. Yeah, it's interesting. I have. It's. You kind of always see them up to something, you know, and that's a. Have a good way of putting it. It always feels like they're kind of up to something. That story about hiding the objects is gas. Part of what leaps out at me is that you can sort of see that we obviously, as you say, this was a pet animal that had a different relationship with its human owner than a wild animal would. But you can see how that might develop from behaviors that raven would exhibit in the wild because they're they're quite the pet. Well, I think part of what they do is kind of hashing food and remembering it and coming back to it later on and that kind of thing. It also reminds me of something I had read in a paper before, and this was something I mentioned briefly in the book, and this kind of battery of cognition tests that were applied to the ravens. So these are, you know, kind of ethologists, kind of scientists of animal behavior, and they had developed this battery of tests originally for use of primates. That was supposed to, a bit like an IQ test or something, give you a sort of a measurable sort of index for how intelligent the animal was and encompassed different kinds of intelligence, you know, spatial intelligence, its awareness of other individuals, things like that. But. And they applied this to, you know, to the common raven and found that it did perform very well, even better than a lot of crime is on most of the tests. But interestingly, one where it didn't have a good outcome according to the, you know, the way the test would measure these things was about spatial intelligence and hiding things and, or watching an object being hidden and then being able to retrieve it. So the way the experimenters would do that was that they would let the animal witness them hiding a nice piece of food kind of a treat and then get them to look for it again and see what they find it. And the ravens didn't go and take the food again. But there's a very interesting little note in that paper saying that it's entirely possible that they knew exactly where it was and didn't want to go and retrieve it because they still knew that they were being watched. And so because they, in the wild would be hiding caches like this and keeping them from other ravens, they didn't want to give away the hiding place, you know, so the raven is possibly there thinking, well, I know it's over there, and sometime in the future I might go and retrieve that, but I'm not going to do it right now because they'll see me do it.

That's a fantastic story. And that's, that's where. That's one of those cases where the, the, the people who designed tests were actually almost like a, quote, dumber than the animals they're trying to test. And that animal is actually smarter and too smart for the test. Like literally.

Yeah, you have to account for the fact that it might be trying to smart you as well, you know.

Right. Oh, this is excellent. And, and yeah, I think we like anyone who, you know, I think have some level of Sensitivity to natural world and is observing can, can tell stories like that. I, you know, like I feel like we can now just go, go ahead and just tell stories about encounters with corvids here. I say like, you know, for the next hour, you know, I, I remember we were, we were having lunch on the petrol station. We were going somewhere with friends and we had. And immediately they were, they were rooks and I think jogdas and they were just around. It's like one is looking at you like what you're eating and then immediately a few, few more shows up and they're looking at this guy and it's like oh, it's like, like you said they are, they was up to something. So folks, just take away from this. Like when you, next time you encounter corvids, just pay attention. Just pay a little bit more attention. You might be surprised what you're, what you're going to see. Fionn, I want to switch gears a little bit because when we're talking about corvids people think about, you know, brooks, hooded crows, jackdaws, you know, maybe ravens. But corvis is much larger group of birds that is, you know, across the world. So can you just like very briefly give us view on it, you know, like what percentage of corvids are the ones that we, you know, know from you know, Ireland or maybe Europe and how that that group looks like and what are, you know, how, how these birds are behaving, you know, maybe in, you know, somewhere outside of Europe. Like you, I know you've been, you've been studying them in Madagascar I think. And so just, just want to just paint the picture that corvids are not only rooks and crows, there's like much, much wider group of animals.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean even in the sort of suite of species that we're used to in Europe, there's a couple of others in there as well. You know, even within Ireland we've also got the chuff and the jay to add to that list and they're much less familiar. The jay is reasonably widespread, but it's quite guy and elusive I suppose. Tends to live in forested landscapes. It's more of a specialist that way than something like a rock or a jackdaw. And the chuff is much more restricted in its distribution than those other species because again it has a more specific habitat requirements. So that's even just within Ireland. The corvids that people especially non specialists would instantly think of, they're not the entire picture, you know. Because it's quite a diverse family and then yeah, absolutely. Across the world there's, there are loads of them. They're a very successful group that way and particular species and taxa within that group are particularly widespread and successful within themselves. So you know, the common raven, the same one that we have here is found in a very wide distribution and in a real, a really wide array of habitats, you know, deserts and mountains and forests and so on. So it's been a very successful species. It's not one of the most cosmopolitan birds of that, of all the kind of bird class, but of the corvids it's the most widespread one. And then yeah, within say the genus Corvus which is your kind of, you know, obviously Corvus means crow. So that's kind of the sort of the defining genus of the family I suppose there is lots of species and they're all sort of along similar lines, you know. So you would encounter ones in say tropical countries and you would, you would know what you were looking at, you know. Yeah, I did a little bit of work in Madagascar at one point and for my PhD as well, I work in Indonesia and they, there are species within ion that packs on in both of those countries. So Madagascar has the pied crow, which is a widespread African crow species, kind of black and white, looks quite similar to a hooded crow really. And then Indonesia there's. Well, we knew it as the slender billed crow but I believe it's been split now into different allopatric species. So species on different, different islands and different parts of that great big archipelago. But again it's built along similar lines to the hooded crows and carrying crows that we'd be familiar with in Europe and similar ecology as well, you know, similar behavior, generalist, intelligent, all those kinds of things, adaptable. But they've been a very successful family, especially in places where humans have altered, which is, you know, most of the planet and then within the kind of the wider group, you know. So the family Corvidae has a wider taxon around it like Corvoidia or Corvoid Corvoidae or something. So sort of crow like and these other birds within that then you know, there are drongos and so on, which similarly are quite generalist, quite intelligent and so on. And yeah, no, they're fascinating as well. We used to come across them a lot in Indonesia. They would sui was where we were working and they would be in the trees making these mad noises. Of all the birds I've ever heard in the world, I think they were still the strangest sounding in terms of their vocalizations, you know, like. Like a malfunctioning Game Boy or something, you know, all these strange, scratchy, kind of beepy kind of sounds. Fascinating.

Oh, that's. That's really. That's really good. And listen, you mentioned chaff, and I. I want to. I want to talk a little bit about chaff because there's a few things that I learned from the book that I know that's endemic to Ireland. And it was introduced. No, I think it was Magpie who was introduced, but the choff was. It was very widespread across Ireland and now it's sort of like, was pushed to the coastlines almost exclusively. So I am curious to hear about CHOF because it's a Corvette. It has a chapter in your book, like any other corvid. But then the opinion of like, oh, they're doing great, they're overabundant, and so on and so forth doesn't work, doesn't check out in terms of chough. So could you tell us a little bit more about choughs and why they're different, at least in terms of how they can adapt and how they can deal with the human modified landscapes.

At the book launch, we had a launch event in the. In the Gutter bookshop in Dublin city center, and Niall Hatch was very kindly doing a Q and A as part of that and everything, discussing for business and discussing the book and everything. And he asked if I had a favorite of these speakeasies. And, you know, I think sometimes when people are. Are writing about a group like that, you know, maybe they'd give an answer of, oh, you know, I couldn't choose. I love them all. But I. I did say I think the chuff is my favorite. And I would say it again. They are. They're just lovely. They're so cool to watch and they're so beautiful. And, yeah, as you say, quite different from the other Corvettes. So again, they're, you know, well, they're in a different genesis. They're a bit different from those cordless ones, but they're sort of intelligent and the rest of it. But at the end of the day, they do have more specific habitat requirements, and that's kind of where it's gone against them in Ireland. So they used to be quite widespread. So sort of like, yeah, these were endemic, and there wouldn't have been sort of endemic in that Axon itself was unique to Ireland, sort of not kind of taxonomically endemic that way. But they did. They were widespread, found in every country at one point and found in every county, including. Including Dublin, which is a price. So you wouldn't expect to find them now. They require sort of a particular kind of particular type of grassland, I suppose, which is now mostly found around the coasts. They can get into difficulty if there's either too much grass or rather too long of a sward, you know, so they're an example of a species that if all the grazing animals were to disappear, an animal that would suffer because when they swore and the length of the grass is too long, they can't forage as effectively. But they also suffer badly if there's overgrazing and if there's, you know, overly intensively managed grasslands and so on. So that's where they started to pine in Ireland was where was when agriculture started to intensify and we started to have shorter swords of grass and, you know, just not. Not as much for them to be finding in amongst the grass. You know, They're. They'd be eating invertebrates and things like that, maybe foraging. Foraging in the grass. But they're still. They're still to be seen kind of up and down the west coast, kind of, you know, and last time I saw them, only kind of a few weeks ago. But, yeah, every time they're a bird that kind of shots stop feeling your tracks. They're kind of that type of species, you know, just the way they fly. They're incredibly acrobatic. They'll be flying up and down for the fun of it all, it looks like, and just, yeah, really lovely with these bright red bills and feet. They. They have a faint tropical kind of look to them compared to, you know, the hooded crow or the raven, which are great birds as well, but they're not colorful. Whereas the chuff has that pop of color with the bright red. That's very appealing.

And I just want to give a shout out to my buddy Filim, who is making a nesting boxes for chuffs. So, yeah, I'm with you here. Like, chops are special among corvids. Maybe not as colorful as jay, because that one is really. But corvid, like, you can positively identify it's a corvid, but. Whoa, it's a. It has a red bill or beak. Is it bill or a beak? Like, I never know.

Like, it's one of those funny ones. I feel like birders tend to prefer the word bill, but I don't think there's really, you know, it just appears an English dictionary. I don't think there's really a difference yeah, yeah.

I'm asking as a foreign national. So it's always like, well, which one I should use? And there's always a relief like. Yeah, it's not really.

It's one of those things. One of those things, yeah. Yeah.

Fionn, tell me in your book included a lot of folklore and mythology related to Corvids without maybe setting any. Anything to not bias you or anything that. Just tell me, tell us why. Why you decided to include aspects of folk or mythology while writing about Corvus. Why did you feel it's. It's important?

I suppose they're one of those groups where that sort of crops up a lot when you're reading up on them or just thinking about them. Because they're conspicuous and they live alongside people and because their behavior is just so interesting and kind of noticeable, I suppose they've drawn the attention of people from all over the world and throughout history. So you see.

Yeah.

Myths and legends and folklore kind of attaching to the core of. It's sort of in every human culture, really. I think in Ireland, certainly other parts of Europe, the Americas, lots of places. So it's something that's interesting about them and interesting to consider when you're. When I set out to write the book, I did want to sort of combine different things that way, so sort of not to have it be a purely academic kind of natural history work, but to be an interesting read that even people who would know some aspects of this stuff would still encounter something new and something out of it. And so some of the writers who would write about nature, who I would respect a lot and would really enjoy their writing, would be people like, you know, Michael Viney, who used to do the column in the Irish Times, and Tim Robinson, who had a series of books about Connemara and about the Aran Islands where he lived. And that was something I sort of took from both of them, is that they would, you know, start with a particular. Particular organism in a particular place that they've seen or encountered in some way, and then sort of walked from there through the place itself and things around us and the history and the culture and the rest of it. And they were very, very good at that as. As writers. And it's something I find interesting about natural history is it can kind of lead you to other things, and sometimes you pops up again even when you're not looking for it. So, for example, when I was reading studies about ravens that I think it was that same study that had the cognitive test battery where, you know, they did the spatial awareness kind of tests. They. They gave all the ravens names and then if they would stop cooperating with the tests, they would be put back into the aviary and, you know, let us go back to what they were doing before. But, you know, they had. They had ravens that were named after, say, Hugin and Nunen, I think you call it, the two that Odin had in the Norse mythology that were supposed to go out into the world and tell him what was going on in the world because he only had one eye, so he had two ravens so that he would have a better awareness of doings. And. But it was funny because. And their table of results, they only presented results for one of those. I forget whether it was Hugin or Munin, which I suppose suggests that the other one at some point stopped cooperating and didn't want to do the tests anymore. Which again, just goes to show how when you're working with animals like that, you have to factor in that they have their own agenda and they won't always go along with what you want. But, yeah, it's just something I found quite interesting about nature because when you're kind of going back through time to trace how ecosystems and habitats have changed and how the assemblage of wild plants and animals has changed, you're encountering these kind of cultural ideas as well, you know. So in a country like Ireland, you have quite a long sort of written literature and you can be seeing, say, references to species that aren't there anymore, or there's other species that have appeared in the time since, like. Yeah, you mentioned the magpie. There was something I didn't know until relatively recently in my life as well. I didn't know that magpies weren't always in Ireland, that they. It's thought that they introduced themselves effectively, that they landed in the southeast and spread across the country, I think around the 18th century. But that idea of the biota changing over time and new species appearing or another one's being lost is quite interesting to me. And one place where you see that reflected is through that kind of cultural, historical kind of approach, where you're looking at folklore and you're looking at references we made, species in history and things like that.

Do you think like a lot of species of corvis, they have sort of like a bad reputation in the folklore of the myth. They're kind of like associated with death and other things. And how do you feel like, what portion of the negative attitude towards those birds comes from the actual problems that we have they're causing because of the huge densities and conflict with farming and so on. And what portion of that comes from like literally mythology?

It's a very interesting question because I think with some animals, a portion of people's idea of them that comes from mythology or from something that's ultimately not literally true was very high. So I would think of that in relation to snakes, for example. You know, if you mention snakes to someone who isn't particularly nature minded or ecologically minded, they often have a very negative impression of an animal like a snake, which I think comes mostly from, I don't know, cartoons or from, you know. Yeah, sort of maybe some religious associations, lots of things like that, as opposed to the actual organism that, you know, that exists in the physical world. With corvids, I think there's a bit more of a blend because maybe they're. They're a bit less alien than some of those other animals that have sort of negative reputations. As you say, they're familiar in that they're around us a lot. They're. I make the point a few places in the book that they're really quite like us in a lot of ways. And maybe that's something that can be off putting as well. But it has its own appeal, I suppose as well. It can be positive or negative. That kind of association, the negative view of them in sort of, in mythology and folklore and things like that is I think quite common but not universal. So. And it's nuanced as well. And so in the Irish mythology, the obvious thing that jumps out is the association with kind of on Moriogen or the Morrigan. In English, it was the battle goddess. So it's quite a literal association. You can see how that came about. You know, know that these hooded crows and things would be. Would be on the battlefields of these people in the Iron Age or whoever had. There'd be a lot of bodies on the field and these crows would plum bear. So they became associated with the battle. And then, you know, in the Christian tradition there's. I mentioned this in the book briefly, but the. I was gassed. It was a raven, wasn't that was released from Noah's Ark, supposedly in that story and didn't come back. And you know, because of that had this reputation as a, as a, you know, a really wicked bird, you know, because it didn't, didn't come back to the ark to get shut back in its. In its coupe by Noah. Like, I mean, pretty sensible. You know, you would say, you know, if I was a raven and I got released from this boat and I found like a nice place to live. I wouldn't be going back to the boat to get out. So. But yeah, that produced negative perceptions of. Of corvids in sort of European countries. I think for a very long time.

That was the whole purpose that, that, that it didn't release so that it didn't come back.

Yeah, well, it's supposed to meant that they didn't know what direction it. It would have come from. So I think against the time he released the dove, and the dove came back with a. A sprig of greenery or whatever. So they knew that's where they wanted to ago. Whereas the corvid. The corvid just, you know, fecked off and then they were like, yeah, well, he's found something. But where? I don't know. But then, yeah, you see, you see quite a different image of them saying sort of the North American kind of indigenous tradition. I think it's. Especially in the Northwest, in northwest of Night, what's now the United States, around the Pacific coast, there are sort of raven deities who are sort of creator gods, but also trickster gods, it's called. Very interesting dichotomy there. So that they're. They're creative and they're clever, but also they're. They're tricksy, you know, and I think that captures the animal quite well. So it's, it's nuanced. The culture associations are more complicated than with some other kinds of animals.

Do you know what, you know, what you said about the, you know, like indigenous culture and these deities? What struck me is that another animal that is misunderstood and persecuted, which is wolf and also coyote. Exactly the same thing that in our sort of like a Western mythology, they have nothing but negative connotations in mythology and so on. But in the indigenous people, they're again, like, they're deities. They're tricksters, like a coyote. So it's a lot of similarities I see here, like where the animals are placed in mythology and folklore and then what is our perception of them? It's fascinating conversation and observation. With that, with that regards, Fionn, tell me. Corvids are protected in a wildlife act in Ireland, but then there are also exemptions for, you know, farming interests to take care of. Farming interests. Could you lay it out to us how that situation look like? So are they protected? Are they not protected? What's the story?

Yeah, it's a bit of a blurry area, I suppose, to some extent in that all birds are protected by default. That's how the Wildlife act lays out. And there are certain exemptions in certain cases for animals that could be causing issues in agriculture and other kind of economic activities. And then there are also restrictions. So farmers and other people to whom, say, the hooded pro population is causing issues are able to control that population, but there are also restrictions within the act on how they can set about that, and there are kind of animal welfare grants for that as well, you know, So I think the Wildlife act says things like you can, you can use a crow to catch other crows as a kind of a decoy, you know, in a, in a. One of these crow traps, you know, but you can't blind or maim the crow first. So this, you know, this legislation comes through the 1970s, and I suppose that probably says something about practices that might have existed before Ben, the fact that that needed to be written into the Act. I find that quite interesting to think because, you know, it's, it's quite a long time later now. And of course, there have been additions and amendments to the act as well. We can see that the world that existed then, before this, before this was written. And yeah, I suppose it does reflect they have a high population density here. Birds like magpies and like hooded crows. And sometimes that does mean that they have to be managed for people sometimes. But it also means that they're, they are native species and they're part of our ecological landscape themselves. So sometimes when people, you know, talk about these things, if they're only pests or as if they're only vermin, that's obviously not, not the whole story.

Yeah. And, and it's, you know, you, you, you hear those, those things about they're, they're pecking eyes from lambs and, and, and stuff like that, which I'm sure it is, it is happening. But, but there's also, I think your, your cited a paper that the, the research found that most of those lambs were dead already before the cr. Right. So it's not like I'm not trying to paint the picture that they're just like, oh, lovely birds and they wouldn't harm anyone because obviously they are predators and they're out there. Like I said, they're always up to something. Just reminded myself that the plural for Krause is a murder of Krause.

That's right, yeah. Yeah. And you also hear the phrase a conspiracy of ravens lets you as well. So.

Yeah, the conspiracy of ravens.

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Something about them. Yeah. So that, that particular study was in Scotland I think up in the highlands there, and it was in the 1970s. So again, that was perception that was very much there among hill firers and everything that the, the hooded. Well, yeah, that the crows were a particularly damaging predator of their flots and. But this study did show that a lot of the lambs that they were eating had died already, especially of starvation. So these were very marginal lands that were being grazed at the time it's. You had the 1970s. But you can also see how, you know, if you haven't observed the carcass and the wild birds showing up on it and everything, if you just come along and you find a dead animal and another animal eating it, it's not a totally unreasonable assumption that it would have killed it. So it does go show how careful study of ecosystems and of nature is very important because sometimes what you find can be a bit counterintuitive. Sometimes it's not what you immediately think when you first see a situation.

What in your opinion is the solution to this situation? On one hand we have these and you know, like corvids are one. Just one of an example. But as a scientist and biologists and zoologists, I'm curious of your view in general. Same probably goes for foxes. We have those overabundant. Again, I'm using this phrase generalists, which are causing problems for waders. You mentioned waders that are fascinating groups of animals. And through making this podcast and talking with different people, I see, I see like two groups. One group is like, you know, in quotes, shoot the bastards, right? But obviously we go like, yeah, because, you know, the environment is out of balance and this and that, that we need to control them to ensure survival of this, which is largely true. And then there's another group who's like, yeah, but you know, they're native species. That's us who caused it through modifying landscape. That's not their fault. That's actually we did it. So you know what is. And that's a question that I pose to one of people who I know who is great conservationist, but he does a lot of predator control. And in my question, like, what's the exit strategy? Because okay, we know that the issue is caused by agricultural practices, currents, the human modified landscapes. These animals happen to thrive in those conditions, but changing. So I think it's accepted that, okay, immediate action through predator control is required because that's literally what's going to happen next year and next year, in the next five years when it comes, for example, to curlew. So we don't have time to some bigger change. But then that bigger change seems to be so big that it will take decades. And currently it's going in a different direction altogether. And I find it's very difficult to get people to what is the actual, what is the exit strategy? Because we cannot keep shooting stuff and the other stuff on the other side making, you know, them being even more successful. Curious of your views on these difficult situations. Where are we, in your view, short term, medium term, long term?

Well, they're quite thorny questions in a way. And it's a question of scale and a question of timelines and so on. I think those predator control measures are often necessary on a kind of a local scale particularly. So we're talking, you know, you mentioned waders and ground nesting waders in particular. You're talking about very vulnerable nesting sites that they have. But it won't, I suppose, a lot of conservation measures. The end, the goal you have at the end is to make them no longer necessary. So a lot of very direct handling of wild organisms and ecosystems. You're hoping in the future that they will be robust enough to not need such a direct intervention. And predator control would be a very clear example of that, that it's a very direct intervention in the ecosystem. So, I mean, look, I couldn't exactly map out exactly the series of steps, but it would have to be a question of getting populations healthy enough through providing decent enough habitat for them that you don't have to be intervening in the lives of individual organisms to such an extent. Whether that's shooting predators, taking individuals into the capability for head starting, which is, you know, very useful strategy in the, in the kind of short term, but you're hoping to get them to a point where you won't have to do that, but they'll be that they have the habitat, that they have what they need. And that's. Yeah. What exactly the, the map looks like to get there. I wouldn't exactly say definitively, but in a broad sense that would be the, that would be the goal.

And look, I didn't meant to put you on the spot because I know good and well that it's, the situation is like there's no, no good solution. On one hand, like you said, predator control is required to get some chicks next year. But on the other hand, like how, you know, how you want to keep doing this and that's even without discussing the animal welfare aspect of it, that it's, you know, it's just on one hand we're producing mass producing those intelligent animals and on the other hand, we just like shooting them. It just doesn't make any sense. And yeah, that's a difficult one, the Syntheon. Overall, for people listening to this podcast, reading your book, what is the one message, like, main message you would like them to take away about Corvids?

I think I would like people to take away that they're more like us than we might think or that we might like to think. That makes them very interesting to look at and to study in a scientific way or just in a more casual observational kind of way way. And I know people listening to this podcast will of course already be interested in the, in the outdoors and in nature and incarceration. But if birds aren't your forte, maybe if you're listening to this or you know, if you're talking to someone who wouldn't be as nature minded, it's a good thing to get across it. It's always worth paying attention to these things, you know, to observe them quite closely. It's always very ruining rewarding and it's. You mentioned it being a bit like a bit like a field notebook. That was a sort of a format I was kind of trying to mimic a little bit. So I think everyone out there, whether you're already a bit of a naturalist or not, can benefit from looking closely at the, at the animals that are around them and kind of taking in what's interesting about them, what's special about them. And you know, Corbins are close to has quite a good place to start because they're abundant, because they live alongside us and because they're very interesting and beautiful and all the rest of it in their own right as well.

Yeah, I was going to say that is so interesting, folks, once again, encounters with corvids, naturalworldpublishing, ie, go in there, buy the book or better still, buy five of them. You'll get a 20% discount when you take five of them and send four of them to people who you think might need them to read this book about Corvus. It's a fascinating book, Fionn. Before we wrap this up, what's next for you? Are you thinking about writing next book or is it like one? And for now you're going to be going back to your scientific work or is it something brewing up?

Oh yeah, there's definitely more scientific work to be focused on in the short term, but at some point in the future I might kind of take up the pen for a different type of writing as well. It's, it's very different. Type of writing, and I enjoy that about it, that it's, you know, in the evening, if you've spent your work day dealing with data and with kind of hard science, it's quite nice to sit down and think about and, well, you know, what do I feel about. About nature and all the rest, you know, what's a more emotional style of writing? A different part of your brain. So, yeah, yeah. Something I would be interested in giving more of you. It's very good of you to have the copy of the book. I have it, obviously, as well, but it's not quite in arm's reach to pick up and show us the camera. So thank you for showing people what the COVID looks like.

No, no, obviously, obviously. And it's going to be in the hero image on the podcast. And again, folks, it's a full package. It's beautifully put together and beautiful illustrations, great writing and a lot of information. Useful information with references on the back so they're not too intrusive, which is always great. Fionn, thank you so much. Really appreciate you.

Thanks very much, Tommy.