Carrion Crow taking an Ant-Bath
Fri 2005-06-03 Yesterday I noticed a carrion crow (Corvus corone corone) behaving rather strangely on the lawn at the front of our flats. It was sitting down in the grass with its wings slightly extended sideways, as if it was sunning itself -- but the Sun was not shining. I though it rather strange, but I had other things to do, so I soon forgot about it.
Well, today, what I presume was the same bird was doing exactly the same thing but in a slightly different spot. Then a car slowly drove past and the crow stood up and ambled further away from the road, waiting until the car was gone before returning to precisely the same patch of grass to sit down again. Then it occurred to me that I had often seen ants in the grass down there, so I went downstairs to take a closer look. Sure enough there was a concentration of ants in precisely the place where the crow had been sitting. Presumably, the crow was using these ants to de-louse itself.
When I came back in, the crow went back to the same spot to resume its ant-bath.
Tristram Brelstaff
After observing the crow taking an ant-bath I started to think about
how such behaviour could have developed. How on earth did the
crow learn that sitting amongst ants was a good thing to do?
After all, sitting down in grass is not something that crows do very
often as part of their daily life, so they are not likely to have
stumbled across this behaviour by accident, and I would have thought
that their first reaction on seeing ants would be to eat them, not sit
on them.
Yesterday I realised that the obvious place that crows could sit
amongst ants would be in the crow's nest. Ants might seek out
birds nests as good sources of small parasitic insects and scraps of
food and maybe the birds have learnt the benefits of the ants'
presence, to the extent that when they see ants on the ground the idea
occurs to them that it would be good to sit down among them. If
this theory is correct then it would imply that ants must climb all the
way up to crows' nests which are normally located in the tops of tall
trees. Does any one know whether ants are commonly found in crows
nests?
Tristram Brelstaff
As I am typing this I can see a crow taking an 'ant bath' on the lawn
at the back of our flats. It has been there for the past 15
minutes at least.
Reader Comments (13)
What prompted me to look it up (and come across your post) was a Pied Currawong, a crow like native Australian bird, (http://birdsinbackyards.net/bird/25) doing this same thing. The bird lay prone on top of the garden mulch, wings spread, tail spread, for about 30 minutes (my Mother-in-law thought it was dead). After it had gone, I went down to investigate the area it was laying on and found virtually no ant activity in this area at all.
Was it warming itself? I doubt it. It's 30°c outside today and the bird's basically black. Was it drying off after a bath? Perhaps.
It remains a mystery to me.
Saw a crow crouched on the lawn just below our big back windows, where I keep binoculars handy to look at birds. Usually crows just stalk around the back yard looking for food. This one was crouched, with its wings spread out, like it was bathing (we see them taking water baths in the shallows of our pond occasionally), ruffling its feathers occasionally and grooming with its beak.
I was really curious because I'd never seen this behavior before. I looked at it through the binocs and was astonished to see that ants were crawling all over its body!!! I had no idea what was going on - that it was being attacked by fireants, that it was doing some strange thing to attract the ants so it could eat them - I had no idea. It stayed there for perhaps 3-4 minutes, then flew up to an overhanging branch and continued to groom itself. Obvious grooming this time.
So, Google here I come and found this site. Hope this info isn't too late to add to the mystery!
Cheers.
I searched for "crows ants" and found this site! Wow!
Thanks everyone.
Maybe this would be a good way to de-louse humans? (only half serious here)
There were 2 adults, and a juvenile acting strangely, rolling around as if
they were bathing. They seemed to take turns, and appeared to be
enjoying themselves. When I later went to see what the big deal was,
all I saw was lot of ants. The insects were quite small, with black heads,
and abdomens, but a red thorax. We have in B.C., many different ant species,
and I just wonder if they all service crows in this manner, or just one certain
ant clan does this "job" ?
There were 2 adults, and a juvenile acting strangely, rolling around as if
they were bathing. They seemed to take turns, and appeared to be
enjoying themselves. When I later went to see what the big deal was,
all I saw was lot of ants. The insects were quite small, with black heads,
and abdomens, but a red thorax. We have in B.C., many different ant species,
and I just wonder if they all service crows in this manner, or just one certain
ant clan does this "job" ?