American Crow (Photo: Dick Daniels/Creative Commons)

American Crow

An unrelieved glossy black from bill to toenail, crows are armed with a stout, strong bill that acts as a chisel, axe, shovel, or forceps, among other uses. Its distinctive wingbeats appear to row the bird through the sky.

Listen for

Crows are well known for their raucous caw. Evidence suggests that crows have different “words” for different situations (assembly, dispersal, mobbing); their language is complex, as is their social behavior. Few people are privileged to hear the crow’s song, given by both sexes, which is a long recitation of rattles, coos, growls, and imitations of sounds.

Find it

Though they are strongly associated with agricultural areas, crows find perfect conditions in cities and suburbs, where they raid pet dishes, bird feeders, and garbage cans. In the northern part of their range, crows are migratory, but all spend the winter within the continental United States. Throughout their range, crows use communal roosts when not breeding, and these can swell to massive proportions by late winter.

Feed it

There’s almost nothing edible an American crow will not eat. At roadkills, landfills, and compost piles, crows will load their distensible throat with food and fly heavily off, often caching it under leaves or sod for later enjoyment.

Crows forage by walking slowly on the ground—hunting invertebrates and vertebrates alike—and are constantly scanning roadsides and fields as they fly, descending to investigate anything that might be edible.

Nesting Behavior

Few people know that crows may breed cooperatively in groups of up to a dozen birds, helping tend the dominant pair’s nest. Crows stay in family units composed of a pair and their young from the previous year. These yearlings may help build the nest, incubate, or feed the incubating female or her young.

Four or five eggs are laid in the bulky twig nest, which is usually hidden high in a pine. The female incubates for around 17 days, and young fledge at around 36 days of age. Their strangled, nasal calls sometimes betray the nest location.

WOW!

American Crows have calls to assemble and disperse the flock, to signal that a predator has been sighted, and to indicate distress, such as when a crow is being attacked by a predator.

Hear it:

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