...This is a high-stakes time for all the birds. The crows, like everyone else, have invested heavily in the contents of their nest.

They burned countless hours and calories collecting sticks and mud and grape-vine bark. Pa Crow led the family force to keep the territory free of invaders. Ma Crow channeled calories and nutrients into her eggs. Pa and the kids fed her as she sat for nearly three weeks, converting worms, roadkill squirrel, and pizza-crusts into heat, which passed through the skin of her featherless brood-patch and warmed the eggs. If the nest tumbles in a high wind, or if a raccoon or squirrel gets the eggs, all that effort is wasted. But turn-about is fair play, I suppose. Crows themselves are famous home-wreckers. In addition to eating other birds' eggs, they'll kill adult birds. They'll even take on larger mammals. Lawrence Kilham, author of The American Crow and the Common Raven, reports watching crows hammer on a sickly wild pig, and jabbing a newborn fawn. (The fawn was fine, but my admiration for crows felt the blow.)
One day at the end of May I follow a worm-bearing crow to the nest, and, Ah-hah! Two expensive little heads protrude above the nest rim. An adult is gliding in to feed them. Her feet barely touch the nest. The heads rise as she approaches. Soundlessly, she tucks food into the open mouths. Then she's away from the tree, and the heads withdraw into the nest.
All the adult crows, both the parents and the elder siblings, bring food to the kids. It's unusual behavior, this sibling helpfulness. And apparently it's not all that helpful. Researchers have set up studies where they monitor some breeding couples who have helpers, and some with no helpers. There's no glaring difference in nesting success. Unassisted parents lose no more eggs or babies to predators, so the helpers aren't keeping the nest safer. Nor do they lose more babies to starvation, so the food that helpers bring isn't crucial. The best guess is that the helpers are helping themselves: When they eventually have children, they'll be seasoned parents.
Then again, perhaps after these young helpers get well acquainted with their baby brother, they'll decide against reproducing. I name Yawp in early June, shortly after waking to a symphony of braying crows. I peek outside. The four adults are stationed around a neighbor's house, perched in trees and power lines. They're flinging gusts of complaint toward the neighbor's porch roof. On that roof is a crow, picking bits of gravel off the shingles, and toying with maple twirlies. From time to time, this crow looks around, opens his wide beak and says, "Yawp." There's a hint of complaint in that expression. In tone, it's akin to a kazoo. When an adult flies overhead, the youngster flutters and gapes. "Yawwwwwwwwp!" The adults rain another storm of cawing upon him. Yawp picks up a maple seed and drops it. He has tried flying. He didn't care for it.
When I study up on this stage of crow life, I find that youngsters leave the nest a bit prematurely. They typically spend a few days on the ground or in low trees, figuring out the flying business. The parents feed them, and worry loudly as the kids fumble around the neighborhood, dodging cats, dogs, cars, and crow-haters. I go out to check on Yawp an hour after his debut, and find him settled into the porch-roof gutter. The adults sulk nearby. Later, a neighbor tells me Yawp did finally make a move. He plopped down to the lawn, giving his family fits.
In the afternoon when I don't see him around, I walk to the nest. Both kids are back in it, but just barely. They're hopping from one side of the nest to the other, swapping places. Teetering on the edge, they lift their wings and flap. One crow flap-hops out onto a limb, and nibbles an overhead stick. They're busy, busy, busy.
The next day the other kid, the quiet kid, gets her flying lesson. The four adults fly through the neighborhood in a clump. Tagging behind, veering all over the skyway, is a fifth crow. When the grown-ups reach their territorial boundary, they turn left, but their protege does not. They race back and herd her to a tall tree with slim, vertical branches. The young crow flaps and grips a branch. The branch bends to a right angle. She flaps to stay upright. But the branch can't support her. She flaps free and tries another. Over and over. Even when she finds a sturdy branch, the tossing wind keeps her off balance.
It's baby season all over. In Neighbor Hugh's yard, English sparrow babies are fluttering and begging loudly in the grass. In my yard, they're investigating the litter under the lilac hedge, testing everything in their beaks. Petals are rejected. Twigs are rejected. Leaves are rejected. I don't know what they accept, but they're exploring at full tilt. On my walkway a youngster I can't identify has discovered an endless source of little protein packets: He waits beside an anthill. The crow kids are fully mobile within a few days, and they, too, work the yard. Well, the quiet one does. She has a droopy wing, perhaps from crash-landing in a tree. Like her elders, she walks quietly through the grass, hunting worms. Droopy, I call her. Droopy is a diligent crow.
Yawp, though, is a nightmare crow. I can hear him from one end of the neighborhood to the other: "Yawp! Yawwwwp!" He starts at dawn, and he goes until dusk. Today he rushes each family member in turn as they pull up worms. "Yawwwwwwwwwp!" He assails his first victim, but that bird turns away and swallows fast. Yawp runs toward his sister when she scores, but she shreds and eats her worm alone. Then a third crow flies into the yard, and when the squawling brat approaches, this crow opens wide. Yawp dives into the black throat to gulp a meal. There follows a gorgeous minute of quiet as he swallows. Then he resumes kazooing. He's a bottomless pit, and he has no intention of filling himself. One insight afforded by Yawp's ever-gaping maw is that young crows have pink mouth linings, in contrast to their parents' black ones.
Baby birds can be difficult to distinguish from adults. Some wear a duller suit of feathers than