Sitting on the front steps, enjoying the last evening of September, and suddenly in the elms in our front yard, lots of rustling and leaf noises, couples with “caw caw caw”.
A murder of crows was landing in the upper branches of the trees, then flew around a bit in the three trees, knocking down leaves and cawing, and then they all just left.
Because I live in a deep forest, I am often visited by ravens. (As you likely already know, all ravens are crows, though obviously not all crows are ravens.) When in a group, ravens are referred to as an unkindness.
The ravens only gather occasionally into an unkindness. They mostly seem to hang out as mated pairs. It’s impressive and slightly unnerving when they do.
When they gather, it seems to be for the purpose of passing judgment and imposing punishment (death) on a member of their group. People say this is folklore, but I have personally witnessed the behavior on two occasions. It’s very creepy, but I assume they have their reasons.
In any circumstance, they are fascinating to watch in groups, as solos or mated pairs. Such intelligent, spell-binding birds.
How cool the crows visited you in a murder! It doesn’t sound like they were drumming someone out of the flock, so we can only wonder what they caucused about.
only yellow leaves fell down, no murdered crow. Then a smaller group came by briefly 10 minutes later, but they’ve all gone now.
We should all write to Dick Wolf and see if he can use his Hollywood clout to get all episodes of Law & Order collectively called a CROW, then there would be a crow of murders.
::crickets::
It has been the case more often than not that when the ravens show up, they do the same thing as your crows did: Land in the trees, make a bunch of fuss, mess and racket and then leave again, no murdered bird left behind.
I always wonder what they are plotting discussing in these meetings.
I laughed, but I’ll only admit it here.
Not just ravens; rooks also do this. A gathering of rooks is called a “parliament,” because gathering for the “trial” of one of them is like Parliament passing judgment. Here’s what a wildlife expert has to say about this and other behaviours:
Interesting birds, all the corvidae.
They are!
My observations of them are incidental, but over all these years, I couldn’t help but to become engaged by them. They are quick learners and nice to humans who are nice to them. They don’t migrate the way most birds do, so I live with them all year long.
Their antics are fun to watch. Mostly.
Please don’t sully your reputation on my behalf, dear, that joke is the lamest of the lame.
The first house my wife and I rented, many years ago, had an in-ground pool. The landlord would reimburse us for the chemicals/accessories needed to maintain it. When it was time to shut it down for the season, they let us purchase a pool cover, which we spread over the water. A few days later, heavy rain hit and left a few inches of water on top of the pool cover. The next day, the murder descended. There must have been 50 to 75 crows on top of the pool cover, but they were not splashing around, oh, no, it looked like some kind of strange baptism ceremony going on. At, I would assume, some pre-arranged signal, they took off en masse, which was creepy as hell – off to murder someone else, perhaps?
You never know! You may have narrowly dodged an unspeakable fate!
My crew destroyed a brand new hot tub cover some years ago. I stupidly replaced the old one during their nesting period, and they could not leave that thing alone.
I was finally able to train them to stay away from that side of the property by placing scary helium balloons around the spa and leaving treats on the opposite side of the house. I haven’t seen one in the spa area now for a couple years.
Maybe they have a thing with chlorinated water?
Pretty sure that ship already sailed. 
Ah, attempted murder…
Don’t scare them or let your dog bark at them, they’ll kick you off the Crow’s tourist stops.
No Mo Crows.
Son-of-a-Wrek made big noise when crows got into the trash bags in his truck. If they see him they make cawing sounds and dive bomb him.
I had a dozen or more circling around my place a couple days ago. I wonder what was up with that? Got no more chickens and eggs to steal, and probably not many mice or ground squirrels, thanks to the dogs. I made a loud noise or two and they wandered off. It was weird, though.
A few years ago crows were nesting/sleeping in a large grove of trees near the local hospital about a mile away from us. Each evening, we would see thousands* of crows flying over heading for the hospital. This went on for about a year, then they apparently moved on.
In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman it is explained that the crows are
Listening to a story. If the murder dislikes it, they murder the storyteller.
I have twice watch Ravens caucusing and it did look like someone got drummed out of the flock because after much fussing and noise one Raven flew away. More discussion happened and then the other 40 or 50 flew off in different directions.
You have been Chosen.
You’ll be needing a big bag of birdseed, the fanciest hat you can afford, and a change of underpants. When it happens, you’ll know why.
For God’s sake, no feather in the hatband; it’s not the sign of respect you might think it is.
I’ve got one of these: Gato’s Hat
But the only thing they’ll get from me is Birdshot. And I only have the one pair of drawers.
Oh, that’s not nearly fancy enough. It’s going to need bells, tassels, and spangles at a bare minimum.
Failing that, it should be made of tortilla chips which you can break off and dip into the pool of queso stored in the crown.
