Crows

I’ve come to love the call of Carrion Crows. Even though they rarely visit the garden, I hear them every day, often from inside the comfort of our cottage. Maybe their wild sounds remind me of bitterly cold winter days in North American woods, where the evocative call of crows seems to define the space and is usually the only sound, but perhaps it’s something more basic. My childhood was spent on remote northern hill; I can’t honestly say I remember crows, but they must have been imprinted deep into my mind.

I live surrounded by them; Jackdaws, Magpies, Rooks and Carrion Crows are part of my everyday life and a Jay often pops into the garden. I usually hear the odd Raven overhead each day and I need only go down to the cliffs to find Choughs. But crows are at their best on winter evenings, when great noisy flocks of Rooks and Jackdaws gather over our village in pre-roosting gatherings to perform spectacular aerial displays. They eventually drift away in the same general direction just as it gets dark. I don’t know exactly where they finally roost, they may end up together, but I’ve always assumed that the Rooks go one way and the Jackdaws another.