About Crows

The crows in their gatherings have been especially numerous and remarkable this year. I decided to check out why and this is what I found out.
Crows congregate in winter mainly to roost and the size of the congregation can be as small as a hundred or tens of thousands. An hour or two before dark, they congregate in a staging area where they call, chase, and fight. About dark they move to the night roost. There may be safety in numbers or there may be other reasons for these normally solitary birds to roost together. One involves conveying information. For instance,if a crow has had limited success foraging that day, it may want to watch which direction the best fed and crows are heading in come morning.
The crows usually stop congregating to roost in March and this is when breeding season starts. It takes about 4 months to select a mate, build a nest and raise the chicks to independence. This generally means that only one brood will be raised in a season. The unmated juveniles frequently help their parents with caring for the eggs and young.
Crows generally mate for life. The exception seems to be if the crows are mating for the first time and the nesting fails.Successful nests occur about 50% of the time and in rural areas, crows usually can fledge 4 out of 5 eggs originally laid. Juveniles do not breed in their first year; in fact females may be 4 to 6 years old and males 5 to 6 years before they form a pair bond. Crows live a long time- the oldest one known lived 29 1/2 years. In the wild they probably live 17-21 years.
When we were children my brother got a young crow somehow. He was always off in the woods if he was not doing chores. My uncle told him if he split the crows tongue it could talk. He did it and the crow died, maybe because it could not eat.
This is one of my favorite poems and it just happens to be about crows.


Crows


Crows startle the clouds
with grievances never resolved
and warnings blurted into thin air.
Once in a while, the cries of all those who tried to survive
pour from the funnels of their throats.
No wonder we never really listen.
Like most animals, crows tell the truth:
working hard to penetrate our tiny tubular ears,
they cackle on telephone lines while we watch TV.
Once I did listen to a crow, but even when I had heard
his whole story, there was nothing I could do.
Next, I thought, I'd have to listen to squirrels and coyotes.
I like to think I deal with my share of rotten truths
but I couldn't bear to kneel down in damp grass
and listen to the hedgehog or the mole.
Judith Barrington