How to eat a snail, and more

Sometimes very ordinary things catch my attention. The crows in Brompton Cemetery are not rare or exotic, and since they are scavengers we often find them mildly distasteful. But watch closely. This one found a snail:

He placed it on the raised base of a stone cross:

and got to work:

He held it down with his claws:

and stuck one half of his bill inside to reach the meat:

Here’s a short video of his technique:

It’s not easy getting a snail out of its shell, which survived the crow’s onslaught intact but empty:

Meanwhile, another crow had stolen a chicken bone from some nearby KFC:

He picked fragments of meat off the outside, and stuck the tip of his upper bill inside to reach the marrow:

Another crow came close, so he carried it further off:

holding it down to foil any attempts at theft:

and eventually taking a flying leap with it in his bill, filmed in this short snippet.:

As you can see, a crow’s beak is a multi-purpose tool. Just for comparison, here is a bird with the shortest beak I know of, a Long-tailed Tit, Aegithalos caudatus, in Norfolk (UK) in March. The entire bird is less than 6″ long, and more than half of that is tail, so the beak is maybe 0.1″:

With that tiny beak it eats only minute insects. A snail’s shell would be impregnable.

So there is delight to be had in paying attention to the small humdrum creatures around us.