I had just finished an early spring trail run. The walkway leading
back to the parking lot was warm from the sun, and so I took my time stretching
there. From all directions sounded the
happy racket of birdsong. I closed my
eyes, leaned out over my extended legs and listened. Eventually I picked out
the voices of two crows calling to each other. Sitting up and squinting in the
sun, I looked for them.
The two
crows were perched high in two towering linden trees about fifty yards apart. They called to each other in a distinctive pattern. The first
crow let out a single "caw" which the second crow answered with a
double caw. The exchange went on in this manner for a few minutes. Whenever Crow 2 delayed responding, Crow 1 would call repeatedly until Crow 2
answered. After a while Crow 1 began to
make a doubled caw that sounded almost like "papa" or
"uh-oh," which Crow 2 answered with a single caw, and an occasional
nasal honk.
Now many agree that crows have a language. The patterns of
their calls vary from region to region, which indicates that their
communication patterns are learned and not purely instinctual. That's not
surprising considering that young crows spend several years with their parents:
the longer this period of dependence lasts in any species, the more the young
are learning. And crows are well known
for their spectacularly adaptive intelligence. (See the links below for some
great examples.)
Less discussed are their strong social bonds; I've read of crows
having funerals for dead members of their rook, gathering at the spot where the
bird was killed, sitting in silence for a few minutes, then flying off.
So as a lazy breeze blew and I stretched my hamstrings, I
wondered... were these two birds mates? Or parent and child? It almost sounded
as if Crow 1 kept calling just to hear back from Crow 2. I'm no expert, but I
imagine that crow language isn't symbolic like ours. I didn't think they were talking
about anything. It seemed to me that they were just delighting in each others' -- and their own -- voices. It seemed to me that they simply enjoyed knowing they were there for
each other.
It made me think of all the ways we use language. In our
word-glutted world we can become so caught up in the symbolic aspects
of language that it's easy to lose sight of the fundamental relational
function. We gather and give information. We debate. We critique. We
expound. We judge and denounce. We
promote and advertise. We shock and
overpower, seduce, deflect, deny, acquiesce. So much of what we talk about is elsewhere.
So much of what is said is a struggle to
possess the past or define the future. So much of what we do with language is about manipulating desire and securing power, popularity or security.
I know we cannot -- and should not -- turn off the supernova of kaleidoscopic possibilities that symbolic language gives us. But there's something to be said for being able to speak more easily of the present in the present. In the moment there is always an opportunity to simply
connect. To be more fully here in heart, body and
mind. Imagine developing the use of language in that state. What comes to mind?
How might we speak to one another if we were better able to use this kind of
"present" tense?
CROW LINKS:
