Re: Dinosaur Nest 'Trashing'

["Ray Stanford" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

Hi Ken,

    Thanks for your discussion on trashing of nests.  From my perspective,
your comments always seem insightful.

    But, first, when I talked about survival value of nest trashing, I was
thinking along this line:

    It was getting pretty late in that nesting season.  If the nest gets
trashed by the crow, maybe the bird(s) who built that nest will decide not
to build a nest again that season and, hence, potentially, there might be a
little less competition for food, because the nest was that of a robin
(Turdus migratorius), which being a large thrush, probably shares some
dietary preferences with crows.

    I think that makes some survival sense.  The nest was in a fairly low
bush (in our yard), located at human eye level, so I doubt the Crow was
concerned with nesting territory, as all the crow nests I see around here
are high up in much bigger trees.

    On the other hand, you might be right about a brain-toxified crow,
because that very year I found (I my yard, evidently dropped by a very
doped-up person who had been hired to do some yard work for us) a tiny
zip-lock type packet containing a residue of a whitish powder, which the
police told me was cocaine.  Furthermore, we live in the Maryland/D.C. area,
where you sometimes get the feeling that at least every tenth driver may be
sailing high on dope, and left-over dope packets are occassional finds. One
larger plastic pouch I found out in the street beyond our intersection must
have been a sad loss for one of the plodding, stoned-out teenagers who drift
aimlessely past our house, because as the police confirmed, it contained
high-grade marijuana.  So, Ken, in short: because crows seem to check almost
anything they see lying around for food potential, it is quite conceivable
that a crow was behaving in an abnormal way due to drug consumption.

    Even if so,  I still wonder what in a crow's constitution would cause
'stoned' behavior to take that particular form, and whether it may have
given evidence of something in the genetic make-up for survival behavior.

    This brings to mind the many times I have seen birds drunken on
fermented berries, staggering across streets and sidewalks.  That, of
course, is not survival behavior, but the opposite, because I saw several
drunken birds get run over by cars.


    One wonders whether, at least by the Late Cretaceous, fermentable
berries had developed that might result in, e.g., a stoned Stygimoloch.
)   -- BBC or Disney, are you listening? :-)

    Ray Stanford