Experts weigh in on the basic principles featured in the game’s universe.

Cassini fits four Saturnian satellites in one frame.

The day starts with chatting about the Black Death over bagels, then detours to garbage piles and ends with a goofy interview moment —one of the best days I’ve spent in a long time. Some of what happened during this visit with crow researchers in Ithaca, N.Y., went into the story “When birds go to town.” Just a single sentence, though, deals with one of the most entertaining aspects of a day with Team Crow. The three researchers I meet — Anne Clark and Jenn Campbell-Smith, both of Binghamton University and Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology — not only know crows, but...