"The Pied Crow (Corvus albus) is the most widely distributed corvid on the African continent. The author's previous entries on the species across this volume and the preceding one read, collectively: 'common crow, present, no further observation required.' He is revising this position. The pied crow recognises individual human faces, remembers them across years, and communicates this information to other members of its local population through calls and behavioural cues. It uses bread as bait to fish. It weaves cigarette butts into its nest for the nicotine, which repels parasites — a deliberate application of chemistry. It plays, across species, for no reward. The author notes that while he has been conducting field observations on Africa, Africa's most intelligent common bird has been conducting field observations on him. He finds the duration of this arrangement, on reflection, significant."
The pencil case had been on the camp table since the first morning.
It was not a valuable item — a leather roll containing a spare pencil, a small folding rule, a fragment of India rubber, and the piece of green wax the Colonel used to waterproof his notebook's spine in the rain. He had not used it in three days. He noted its absence at breakfast on the fourth morning and looked at the camp table and then at the ground beneath the camp table and then, following an instinct he could not have explained, at the fever tree.
The crow was on the third branch from the left with the pencil case.
It was a pied crow — black body, white breast, the white neck patch catching the morning light — and it was examining the pencil case with the concentrated attention of something that has acquired an interesting object and is now conducting a systematic assessment of its properties. It turned it in its bill. It set it on the branch and walked around it. It picked it up again.
It looked at the Colonel.
The Colonel looked at the crow.
"Common crow," he had written, on multiple occasions in two volumes. "Present. No further observation required."
He got up and walked to the fever tree.
It took eleven minutes to retrieve the pencil case.
The crow did not flee. It moved — methodically, branch by branch, maintaining a consistent distance above the Colonel's reach while remaining on the tree — and watched from each new position with an attention that the Colonel, who was now writing with some irritation, described as "forensic." When he finally reached the pencil case, which had been deposited in a fork of the upper branches, the crow made a sound.
The Colonel descended.
He wrote: "Vocalisation on retrieval of item: one sharp call. Possible significance: unclear. The crow was not laughing. The Colonel notes that he cannot be entirely certain of this."
He looked at the crow, which had returned to the third branch from the left and was watching him write.
He had the feeling, which he did not write down immediately, that the crow had been watching him write on previous mornings as well.
The research took the remainder of the day.
He had the relevant papers in the second kit bag — correspondence from a colleague at the ornithology department, forwarded eight months ago, discussing corvid cognition in general terms. He read it now with specific application to the bird on the fever tree.