27 April: Crows

Today is National Crow and Raven Day. I covered Ravens already so here are 10 things you might not know about crows.

1. Crows are part of the Corvidae family, which includes ravens, rooks, jays and magpies. How are they different from ravens and rooks? Ravens are larger and rooks are smaller.
2. There are about 40 different species of crow.
3. A group of crows is called a murder. They hold funerals. Kind of. When one of the murder dies the other members of the group gather around the dead bird. Part of the reason is to work out what killed it. If it was killed by a predator the others will band together to chase the perpetrator away. This is called mobbing. They don't touch the dead crow, so they're not there to eat it. They've often been found to be hesitant to re-visit a place where a crow has died.
4. Not all species of crow band together as murders. Some are solitary. In some species the young and non-mated adults live together in what is called a roosting community.
5. They are much maligned for damaging crops, but recent studies have found they may actually be doing good by eating crop damaging insects.
6. They will, in fact, eat almost anything – small animals, eggs, insects, seeds, nuts, fruit, worms and carrion. They've even been observed eating garbage. They sometimes store food in short term caches in trees or on the ground.
7. When it comes to making baby crows, the mating pair (who mate for life) build a nest which will be 15-60 feet/4.6-16 metres above the ground. A brood will be 4-5 eggs which take 18 days to hatch. The parents feed then until they are 60 days old. Juvenile birds, the older siblings of the brood, will often help by defending the nest while the parents are out foraging, or bringing some food along themselves.
8. They're highly intelligent and have bigger brains than we do in proportion to their size. A crow's brain is 2.7% of their body weight while a human Brain only accounts for 1.9%. They are sometimes said to be smarter than most undergraduates – so definitely smarter than most people who voted for Brexit. Crows have regional dialects in the sounds they make, and if they find themselves in a new social group it will imitate that group's “accent” in order to fit in.
9. Scientists have taught crows to interpret Traffic Lights and use them to their advantage. They've learned that they can crack Walnuts by taking them to a junction with traffic lights and placing the nut on the road when the light is Red. When the light turns Green they fly away and watch as the wheels of passing vehicles smash the nut open for them. They will wait until the light turns red again before flying down to eat the nut.
10. The crow's nest on a ship gets its name from the practice of Viking sailors who used to carry crows or ravens in a cage attached to the top of the mast. When visibility was poor, they'd release one of the birds because they would head towards the nearest land, and the ship would follow the bird. That's one theory, anyway. Some naval historians have argued that no traces of a birdcage have been found on any Viking ships and so the name merely derives from the fact that crows build high nests.

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