Customer Reviews

Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you, like me, love the image of Crows as "swaggering black-clad wise guys", then this book is for you!

Candace Savage's book is not an acedemic tome, or a scientific study..it's a wonderful, witty, captivating exploration into these amazing birds.

The many beautiful illustrations, including several by Arthur Rackham, as well as Pacific Northwest Indian designs, are a treasure in themselves, and her inclusion of myths and legends of this fabled bird make this book an incredible treat. I laughed and cackled all the way through it!

Candace Savage writes about crows the way I think about them; with a great appreciation for their astonishing intelligence, an insight into their dark depths, and their wry humor (yes, they're that smart.) She also gathered together a visual feast spanning centuries and cultures that showcase human's fascination and sense of kinship with crows. She's got the best of the corvid researchers thoughts in here, but most enjoyable of all is her own writing and obvious love for this darkly gleaming tribe that continues to thrive right along side us.

I highly recommend this work, and Ms. Savage should be very proud of what she accomplished with it.

I love this book. It is beautifully done. When I ordered it, I was looking for a book with an overview of the intelligence of Crows and that is exactly what I got...along with beautiful pictures and interesting folk tales about corvids. This book is a good stepping off point for people who have a casual interest and would like to get started learning about crows. There is a very good listing of books in the back of this book for further reading about these magnificant birds.

As an avid reader of nature and nonhunting outdoor books, I was severely disappointed with this book. I had previously read Ms Savage's book "Prairie, A Natural History" and was looking for the same scientific and somewhat scholarly approach. "Crows" was a very cursory. The author did not delve into any specific area such as intelligence, life cycle etc. She only touched on others research. There was no original information. She gave more attention to myths, fables and old artworks.

Although there are quite a few miles between Saskatoon and New York, it seems clear to me that many of Candace Savage's Wise Guys and ours must be relatives! They've worked out a real-estate-sharing arrangement with cardinals, blue jays, and many smaller birds (plus squirrels, etc.) -- all in and around a huge oak tree in our back yard. If they're not out and around, I know it's not going to be such a good day.

Ms. Savage covers crow-family relationships and behavior as well as their interactions with urban or rural human surroundings. Her illustrations are many and as varied and wonderful as their subjects - current and historic, geographically and culturally significant. She has an excellent additional reference list and a good index.

I am an avid Birder and have a large library of bird and Natural History books. Over the years I have see many books on birds that are just a bunch of fluff gathered together by an editor and/or publisher. At a cursury glance,this might appear to be such a book. However;If you are familiar with the author;you'll know that she has authored several excellent books about birds.

This book is a first class look at Crows.It covers history,legend,personal experiences,behaviour and more importantly many intersting things that are recently being learned by some of the best scientists and researchers around today. They have learned things that just might convince you that crows are much more intelligent than they have ever been credited for. Well,not everyone. It is a pretty well known fact to anyone who has spent time in the country;that crows are exceptionally wary. Just try to get anywhere near them carrying a rifle;even if well concealed.You haven't got a hope!

Whether a very knowledgeable birder or one who just enjoys watching crows around where they live;you will be amased at what is in this book.

As a long time Birder,I must admit,I haven't spent much attention on crows.We see them everywhere;and well,they're just there!

After reading this book I am going to pay much more attenion to them;and I highly recommend it.

I am reminded of those famous words of that great Baseball Player,Yogi Berra;

"You can see a lot by watching!"

On top of being an excellent book because of its subject matter;it has excellent construction,high quality paper,top of the line color rendition and printing.It also comes with excellent references and notes.How can you go wrong with such a fine book? You just can't!

"Crows" is a short collection of unorganized and disorganized anecdotes. There is little text on each page, and the book is short. Brief stories from myth and legend are interspersed with the text as two page inserts that irritatingly look like the rest of the text. Whenever these myths and legends are inserted, the reader is confused when the previous pages' text don't just continue on the next page.

Crows are great, kindred spirits that have gotten an undeserved bad rap. This book, while entertaining, is mostly fluff and little substance. It is just the merest taste of the intelligence and personality of these birds. For learning about crows, ravens, and ourselves at a deeper level I recommend "Mind of the Raven" by Bernd Heinrich, "Bird Brains" by Candace Savage (same author), and "Caw of the Wild" by Barb Kirpluk (what a name for a bird enthusiast!).

Candace Savage is a Canadian writer, nature-lover and (wait for it) crow-lover. She has written two books about crows and related birds, "Bird Brains" and "Crows". I gave "Bird Brains" four stars, and recommend it, especially to the general reader. Unfortunately, "Crows" is a much worse book: fewer pictures, confusing lay-out, and less interesting text. Or, to be more precise, the text is interesting, but Savage jumps from subject to subject in such a manner, that the book becomes quite pointless.

It feels as if "Crows" is a ragtag collection of leftovers from "Bird Brains". Whatever didn't make it into that book, has been used here instead, regardless of context or logic. "Crows" contain short Native legends about ravens, a section on crows and ravens as tool-users, something about ravens tricking other ravens, and a weird story about a scientist who was persecuted by all crows in his home state! There is also some information about crow family life, including crow altruism. Yet, when I finished the book, I still didn't feel any more clever than at the beginning...

If you only want to buy one of Clarence Savage's crow books, buy the other one, "Bird Brains". If you absolutely want to buy both (rich kid, huh?), read "Bird Brains" first and take this one with a slight grain of salt.

Crows are toolmakers, tool users, and have complex family lives as well as their own language. Sounds too human to believe? Then you have to read up on them in CROWS: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE WISE GUYS. CROWS celebrates crow abilities, surveying their behavior, natural history, and more. Observations by scientists around the world are based on more than a decade of research and blend stories about crows with scientific observation to make for a most digestible, intriguing survey.

I love crows. Yeah, I know. Crows are a hard sell to many people. But I'm fascinated by their intelligence, their creativity, and that look of presence when their eyes meet yours. So I was eager to read this book.

It surprised me when it arrived: it's a thin volume, only 113 pages including the index, but unusually weighty because it's lavishly illustrated (every other page) on high-quality, heavy paper and beautifully put together. It takes great advantage of the space between the covers, cramming in so much information that the weightiness of the book seemed as much from the information as the heavy paper. Using it, I was able to verify that, yes, that exceptionally large dominant crow that hangs around my house is indeed a crow and not a raven; and I was able to pick out the adolescent packs and understand their behavior better. Also what some of those screaming matches were about.

Ms. Savage covers the various mythologies concerning crows, the latest scientific research, as well as keen observations of crow behavior throughout the ages. I guarantee you'll have a different appreciation of these wise guys once you've read this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.