Carrion Crow – Sharp Beaks, Sharp Minds

Happy spooky season! We’ve come back around to the time of year where shadows seem to loom a little larger and the chills running down your spine may not be caused by the cold weather. If you cast your mind back to last year, you may recall that I promised we would go in search of a particular corvid to write about for Halloween this year. Well, we did manage to find them, but not in the place we expected. Seems fitting for a renowned bird of omen to show up unplanned like that. This month’s bird is the carrion crow (Corvus corone), known in Irish as Caróg Dhubh.

Here they finally are, the bird that nearly all our corvids get mistaken for: the carrion crow. These little harbingers are firmly intertwined with folktales throughout history, and for good reason. The knowing gleam in their eyes that hints at their intelligent nature, coupled with their mischievous personalities, makes these birds eternally iconic.

Carrion crows are one of the smartest birds on the planet, with a brain-to-body ratio comparable to great apes. These birds also exhibit play behaviour – a sign that an animal is highly intelligent, since if you’ve got any spare brainpower and time to spend on fun, you’re doing a pretty damn good job. We saw this for ourselves on two separate occasions: the first was when we found a carrion crow clinging to the mossy walls of a stone monument. There were a number of young gulls milling around in the park we were in, and the crow would hop down from their perch time and time again to tease them. Not swooping them or trying to chase them off, just kind of taunting them before skipping away. The poor gulls never saw them coming, and so were left baffled every time they got a little peck.

The second time was much cuter. We were in a different park and heard some rustling coming from a hill nearby. When we went to investigate, we found a crow laid down on the grass with a bit of litter, a paper bag or something, that they were rolling around in. They would pick it up, place it in the right position, then lay down and roll around on it. It was such an interesting sight, and we weren’t the only ones charmed into stopping to watch. Other people were pointing and laughing at this little bird entertaining themselves with a simple piece of litter. If only we could all be so easily regaled.

It was wonderful getting to see this bird up close in real life. Referring to their feathers as just “black” is a wild understatement. When the light hits them just right they can shimmer with a green-indigo sheen that can rival an oil spill in summer. They’re quite different to our regular rooks and hooded crows, whose feathers have a warmer undertone. The closest comparison I can draw is the bright blue-black gloss of a magpie’s wings, though I think the carrion crow’s plumage is a touch more subtle. Perfect for perching ominously on top of lampposts and only being seen when the flash of a car’s headlights illuminate your slick feathers.

Carrion crows do actually spend a lot of time perching on lampposts, usually over busy roads, such as motorways. They’re clever, opportunistic feeders who will wait for some unfortunate animal to be run over by a car and then swoop in to pick at the remains of the corpse. They’ve also been known to take the eggs of game birds (like pheasants and grouse that are bred specifically for hunting), leading to them getting targeted by gamekeepers. Historically, sheep farmers in the UK have also waged war against them, because of the age old misconception that carrion crows will swoop off with baby lambs. If you’ve seen the size of these birds, you’d know they can’t do that, but it’s very on-brand for them to be linked to yet another legend that involves murder and death. What else do you expect from a bird whose name contains a word for decaying flesh?

So I mentioned earlier that we found these birds in an unexpected place. We had planned to go searching for them in Co. Down, but on a recent trip to Scotland we happened to glance up while walking through a park and there they were!

I initially assumed they were rare in the UK as well, and that we had managed to strike gold, but we did some digging and learned that they’re actually quite common in Britain and throughout western Europe. Interestingly enough, hooded crows are quite rare there, only being found in the northenmost reaches of Scotland, while being easily found across the entirety of our own island. If you look at maps for these birds’ ranges, they look like near-perfect inverses of each other! The reason for this is quite interesting; during the last Ice Age the European crow population was split across the islands and developed into the carrion and hooded crows respectively. It seems these populations haven’t had enough time to breed with each other, or perhaps they are just attracted most to the birds that look like themselves.

Carrion crows aren’t tracked by BirdWatch Ireland via BoCCI (Birds of Conservation Concern in Ireland), as although there is a recorded breeding colony up North, they’re considered visitors rather than fully native residents. I assume they’re doing fine, since clever opportunistic feeders tend to be able to adapt quicker to changes than most other birds. Even though we didn’t get pictures of them on Irish soil, I’m glad we did manage to find them in time to write about them for October. Who knows what corvid we’ll bring you next year? Best keep an eye on those lampposts, maybe the dark shape perched on top will be the star of next year’s Halloween bird blog…