Ep. 1357: Yellowstone's Crows of Winter

The Food Chain

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens

(Animal Nutrition and Environment)

Yellowstone Park in winter is a cruel place for the wildlife that can no longer endure its cold, snow and hunger. And yet what is cruel for some can be a blessing for the corvids of Yellowstone’s winter And so we ask:

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?

There was a stretch of years when wife Marlene and I would sneak off to Cooke City, Montana, for some cross country skiing. In winter, Cooke is a snowbound little town at the very end of the only open road through Yellowstone Park.

Though Cooke City is well known among snowmobilers for its access to the stunningly beautiful high country, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers are not of a kind. Our aim, as skiers, was Yellowstone’s Lamar River Valley, which is, thankfully, off limits to the noisy, smelly snowmobiles.

The Lamar Valley is the wintering grounds for many of Yellowstone’s animal populations. And our cross country skis allowed us to fly over the surface of snow packs the animals had to plow their way through. We were not the only ones flying about the Lamar with such abandon. So, too, were the corvids – Yellowstone’s black birds on white snow.

Yellowstone’s winter is a cruel time for the animals that can no longer survive the cold, snow and lack of food. But from what we saw, while flying over the snowpacked landscape, was that winter was treating crows and ravens with lots of opportunity to feast, and their feasting often sounded as raucous as an out-of-bounds wedding celebration.

From watching their feasting, and from watching them watch us as we flew across the landscape, we came to see corvids as being winners of Yellowstone’s season of losing. And we wondered:

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?