Biologist Stalks Wary Prey With Cannons, Net : Bird Lady of the Basin

Carolee Caffrey, a biology student at UCLA, has not forgotten the response she got from city officials when she asked permission to study crows on the Balboa Golf Course for her doctoral dissertation.

“They said, ‘kill as many as you want,’ ” she recalled. “Everyone here views them as nasty pests that have nothing to offer.”

The birds, whose pesky habits inspired farmers to invent the “scarecrow,” may not have many fans. But Caffrey, 30, is fascinated by the gregarious black birds, as documented by her car’s license plate: CROWBIZ.

The city’s Parks and Recreation Department let her turn the golf course in the Sepulveda Basin into a research laboratory two years ago. Biologists say her research at the Encino golf course since then represents a rarity in the field of ornithology.

Few scientists have ever studied crows. The reason is not apathy but the birds’ uncanny ability to outsmart people who want to capture and tag them.

But Caffrey, using trapping methods that seem to be borrowed from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus, has had great success in capturing the birds. With the aid of a clown disguise, an Australian-style crow catcher and nets launched by cannons, she’s been able to tag dozens of birds.

Then she studies their breeding habits.

What she is doing, said Thomas Howell, past president of the nation’s largest ornithology association and a retired UCLA zoology professor, is “something that hasn’t been accomplished before with crows in this country.”

Howell and others believe Caffrey’s crows are the only ones in the United States--and possibly the world--that are banded.

The research is tedious. Nearly every day, Caffrey drives her Toyota slowly around the golf course’s utility road, stopping often to grab her binoculars and clipboard. She observes from her car because park workers fear she might get smacked by a golf ball.

Caffrey is able to stretch her legs when she scatters unshelled peanuts and hard-boiled eggs off the fairways as bait. Her car is filled with Bag o’ Nuts peanuts, and she can cite the going price for her goodies at various grocery stores.

Caffrey spends up to 60 hours a week on the golf course watching about 100 crows in 30 “families.” She’s found that many of the birds she tagged have remained at the course as long as she has.

No end is in sight for the doctoral student from Venice. Caffrey figures she needs to spend two more years on the links to gather enough data to write a dissertation on crows’ breeding methods.

After that, she expects to spend at least three more years on post-doctoral work while teaching part time at UCLA. Her husband is a free-lance director of television commercials.

Why bother with crows? Caffrey gives skeptics a stock reply.

“They are familiar to everyone, yet we know little about them,” she said of the bird that can be found everywhere in the world except New Zealand, most Pacific islands, South America and the polar regions.

“The more we learn about their social system and behavior patterns, it gives a better understanding of the general evolutionary process,” said Caffrey, who received a small grant from the Audubon Society.

The birds’ intelligence and daytime habits also appeal to Caffrey. Previously, she studied lizards in South Carolina, altering her own sleeping habits to match the reptiles’ nocturnal ways.

Trapping the birds has been Caffrey’s biggest challenge, because the wary crows caught on to her intentions almost from the start.

When her car rolls onto the golf-course grounds, Caffrey said, the call goes out through the pines and eucalyptus trees: she’ s back. She sometimes catches the birds off guard, but only for a day or so when she uses a different car.

Only the baby birds are easy targets. She hires a professional tree climber to take the infants from their nests and then replace them after being marked. With nylon pins, she attaches bright-colored paper swatches to their wings. She marks them with initials of her relatives and friends.

When she first began trapping the crows, she used a Australian bird trap that looks like a large cage with a ladder on top. There is no way out for birds that drop inside to eat hard-boiled eggs.

Caffrey used a different method this week, attaching a 60-foot-square net to three biology-department cannons. Early one morning, she and five friends set the net on the ground and placed several pounds of peanuts in two piles nearby. Golfers on the fifth and seventh holes were warned.

Hidden from view, the biologists waited until 20 birds flew in. With a hand signal from Caffrey, the cannons were fired by a jolt from a car battery hidden behind the golf-course snack bar. The net flew over the birds, catching eight of them.

The dress code for the operation is not in any birding books. Caffrey wore a blue wig and Groucho Marx disguise. She didn’t want the crows to recognize her.

Early in her research, Caffrey trapped without a disguise. The birds angrily squawked at her for weeks afterward, she said. The older birds, she believes, still remember.

The birds were fooled by her new garb, Caffrey gleefully reported. The birds captured by the net had not been squawking at her, and two of them even approached her car begging for handouts.

“They don’t know it’s me! It’s great,” she said.

The golfers had a different reaction to the costume, said Tom Chant, course superintendent. “That freaks them out,” he said. “It’s startling at first to the golfers.”

The scientist in blue jeans is as much a fixture to golfers as the putting greens. They call her the “crow lady” and share bird anecdotes with her. When one golfer saw a crow eat a hotdog, he dutifully reported it to Caffrey. When she drives by in her silver Corolla, wise guys occasionally greet her with a “caw, caw.”

Caffrey’s most startling discovery is that some young adult crows assist their parents even after they would be expected to begin families of their own. The older children help parents build nests, feed babies and fend off predators.

She hopes to learn why the behavior occurs and whether it is an advantage.

Caffrey has learned much about how crows socialize and play. Some crows amuse themselves by dropping walnuts while flying and then diving to grab them before they hit the ground. Crows also lay on their backs and use their feet to play with sticks. The expression on a crow’s face can turn to ecstasy when its head feathers are preened by another crow.

The birds have not found utopia on the course, however. Last year, Caffrey noted that hawks or other predators raided nine of the 16 nests containing baby birds. Some of her tagged birds have disappeared. Caffrey has considered placing ads in newspapers asking people to call her if they see a tagged crow--dead or alive.

Robert Gibson, an assistant professor of biology at UCLA, compares Caffrey’s dedication to that of another biologist who studies vampire bats. To collect data, that researcher stands amid bat manure in a hollowed tree while the mouse-like flying mammals drip blood on him as they swoop overhead.

“I think it says a lot for Carolee that she’s managed to do a lot with crows,” he said.

Caffrey has developed another interest while on her crow watch--golf. Someday, she wants to take lessons.

“As you might imagine, I watch a lot of golf,” she said. “I even watch on TV.”