Hoodie…by Brad Marks

Greetings folks! Linda and I are currently on the road and pointed westward. Unfortunately, some bad luck right out of the gate. Our travel planner (read Linda) planned this trip with dog show bookends. Ruger was supposed to run in a FastCat event (100 yd doggie dash) two days in. Just before departing, we find out they canceled that due to forecasted rain – too late for us to get our campground fees back. On the return leg, the boys had 5 days of shows at Purina Farms in Gray Summit, MO. Well, that place was hammered by a tornado a week before we left taking out most of their auxiliary buildings. So far Purina has just canceled the first 2 days of FastCat, but the Poodle Specialty is still on for the last 3 days (so far). Let’s hope the middle of this trip makes up for all the setbacks. Side note, per my previous comments on Las Cruces, NM, they just had a huge shootout there where 18 people were shot (3 killed) at an unauthorized car show. Shocked I tell ya, shocked. While we fill the freed up days and rethink our planned stops, Brad is going to take the reins and bring you a new adventure across the pond.

Take it away Brad…

Jan and I were in the middle of the western European Wildlife Intrigued office staff reviews.  We decided to do a bit of digging.  Deep digging.  Below street level type of digging.

Modern day Rome is built on top of ancient Rome.  And Ancient Rome was built on top of Even Ancienter Rome.  Ad infinitum.  Did you notice that I snuck in some Latin?  Every time a business or building wants to expand, eventually digging has to start.  When digging happens, precious artifacts are unearthed.  Everything stops while the finds are identified, cataloged, valued, and carefully removed.  Then digging with a toothbrush begins and the cycle repeats until there are no more artifacts in the way, or the project stops because it ran out of money, or a bit of both (see the Rome Metro expansion project news).

A bit of backstory before we get to the photos.  Jan and I were in the final country of our six-country inspection tour.  Technically, four were full-sized countries and two were micro-states (both were life goal destinations).  Going through that many airports and passport checkpoints is not conducive to carrying a lot of expensive camera equipment.  We made the choice on this trip to only use our smart phones (iPhone 16 PRO and Samsung Galaxy S22).  I know, I know, there are limitations with using phones as cameras, mainly action and bird photography.  Landscapes and candid portraits turn out pretty well.  Bird photos or moving subjects . . . well, not quite as much.  Downloading hundreds, nay thousands, of photos from an iDevice to a Windows device later . . .  please don’t get me started.   C’est la vie.  É Cosi.  Such is life.  At least I didn’t have to adjust the timestamps on the photos from the phones.  Back to the story.

Hit the jump to learn more about this featured foreign feathered friend!

Jan and I were at the Roman Forum, an ongoing excavation of history, art and architecture.  Steps away from the Colosseum, and dozens of feet below the modern street level of Rome, our mouths were agape at the ancient wonders before us.  At one point I heard another tour guide say, in English surprisingly, that the Roman sculptors weren’t even as gifted as the Ancient Greeks.  Wow!  Now I can’t wait to see ancient Greece.  While we were wandering and looking, trying to take it all in and being typical tourists, a seagull swooped down and brazenly stole a tourist’s lunch (not from our group), breaking the revery.  Seeing how easy the theft was, the rest of the brave gull’s friends attacked the first tourist’s companion’s lunch.  Before we knew it, mayhem ensued.  Tourists everywhere were excitedly yelling and pointing at the gulls flying around with bits of porchetta sandwich.  Even the tourists who had been “robbed” were all a-twitter about the event, even though they had just lost their lunch, so to speak. 

All the while, this cunning spectator was keeping a very close eye on the crowd, never once getting its feathers ruffled.  In fact, it was probably quite used to people being around, over 4.5 million of them each year.

No, it wasn’t a pick-pocket, though I’m sure those were all over the place with the gull distractions.  (The gulls were probably trained and get a cut of whatever the pickpocket team can pilfer.)  It is a Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix), a +1 for Jan and I, and yet another Corvid family member (Carrion crow, Jackdaw, Raven, and Rook) we saw on this assignment.  Hooded crows used to be thought to be the same species as the Carrion Crow, but have since been separated.  Maybe it had something to do with their body color being completely different and that they live in different parts of Europe?  Just sayin’.  Thanks for that, meaning I can now count both of them on my life list.  And pad my annual evaluation at Intrigued by just a little bit.

Jan and I had clearly gotten its attention, maybe for our lack of reaction during the aforementioned mayhem.  Or, more likely, it was more interested in where the gulls were going with their ill-gotten booty and hoping for a scrap or three to become available.  Turns out it was one of the smallest gulls had made the initial grab and it was now struggling to keep ahead of its larger competitors so leftovers were highly likely.

The Hoodie watched the gulls the entire time we were there.  Corvids are some of the smartest bird species.  They possess an intelligence thought to rival chimpanzees.  Crows, in general, have been known to use tools, play games, mourn a loss, untie knots, identify human faces, and teach other crows.  Some scientists rank their intelligence and problem-solving ability with that of a seven-year-old human child.  Here’s a BBC Video showing an example of a Corvid’s cleverness and ability to reason.  Their cleverness helps them live up to 16 years in the wild.

Hooded crows can be found nearly everywhere in Europe, except mountainous or arid regions.  They tolerate humans very well, which is probably why we were able to get so close to today’s subject.  Hoodies will eat practically anything, in other words:  omnivorous.  Diets will vary based on available local delicacies:  frogs, insects, worms, grain or weed seeds, other bird eggs, porchetta sandwiches, and carrion, just to name a few. 

Hooded Crows form monogamous pairs, bonding and staying together most of the year.  Nests are primary built by the females with sticks and twigs supplied by the male.  The female will incubate 4-5 eggs for up to 20 days.  According to Cornell’s Birds of the World, nestlings are fed by the parents for 3-5 weeks, then are semi-dependent on the parents a further 2-3 weeks before being kicked out to join the flock and fend for themselves.  Hooded Crows are not globally threatened and have an abundant population in most European countries.

This Hooded Crow would probably soon have food of its own without expending near the energy the gulls were.

As we neared the end of our fascinating Roman Forum and Colosseum tour, our guide said there is a custom when touring the Roman Forum.  Julius Caesar was killed in the Roman Senate, on March 15, 44 B.C., a few blocks from where we were standing at the time.  Beware the Ides of March.  Some say that even his lifelong friend Brutus was in on it.  “Et tu, Brute?”  Little documentation is left on the topic, except for a play written by a man named Bill (William) in about 1600 AD in England.  Even then, the play was written a mere 1,644 years after the event happened leaving some room for interpretation.

OK, back to the story at hand.  Near the end of our tour, our guide (see below) handed us some wild flowers and said to follow her.  Apparently, after he died, Julius Caesar was cremated and his remains were buried where the Temple of the Divine Julius, or the Temple of Caesar stands now.  The tradition, at least according to our guide, is to throw flowers on the grave site and say, “Ciao Caesar.”

Thus ended our tour and our story.  Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Hooded Crow photos, please visit here.

Credits

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for about most of the photos in this article. 

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If you ever are in Rome and want to take a tour of the Colosseum and the nearby Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, please make sure your tour guide is Paula.