The Magic of Bird Brains

The sound is a warning to every other crow: Frédéric Jiguet, a tall ornithologist whose dark hair is graying around the ears, has shown up for work. As Jiguet walks to his office at the French National Museum of Natural History, which is on the garden's grounds, dozens of the black vandals take to the trees and rain abuse on him, as though he were a condemned man. "I think I'm the best friend of French crows," Jiguet told me. "But I am probably the man they hate most." Crows are famous for holding grudges.