Crows are a lot like us. Not only do they like to live in the same places we do but also they live as we do.
“There is probably no organism on Earth that has a more similar social system to modern, Western humans,” says Dr. Kevin J. McGowan, an ornithologist at Cornell University, who has been studying the social lives of crows since 1988.
Crows mate for life. A young crow couple may break up if their first nesting attempt is unsuccessful, but otherwise, it’s ’til death do they part.
Crow kids stick around the nest. In many bird species, the young fly off as soon as they are able, never to see their parents again. Young crows, however, stay with their parents for up to six years (of a 17 to 21 year lifespan). The youngsters help raise their brothers and sisters. They help build the nest, gather food for the nestlings, and defend the nest from predators. Young females sometimes try to incubate the eggs when mom is away but are chased off when one of the breeding adults catches them at it.
When crows go off to start their own families, they may not go far. Males tend to travel just a little over a half-mile before settling down. Females travel a bit farther. McGowan reports that two of the longest-lived crows in his study are brothers who don’t live far from each other. He’s also seen seven generations of one crow family nest in the same area.
Crows have another social quirk that McGowan is much too smart to compare to the behavior of humans. In crows, only the female sits on the nest. The male’s job is to bring home the bacon – or rather, the earthworms, grasshoppers, berries, or whatever else he can find, to the nesting female. Crows are omnivores, eating just about everything, including live-caught animals, fruit, grains, and carrion.
When mom is away, dad will guard the nest, occasionally going as far as standing among the eggs, but never settling down to incubate them.
Crows are nothing if not adaptable. That may be why they are found in woodlands, farmlands, the suburbs, and even big cities. How smart are crows? “Smarter than many undergraduates, but probably not as smart as ravens,” McGowan has written.
Crows started moving into big cities in the 1950s. (McGowan doesn’t consider any town or city in our area large enough to be considered truly urban. He has been faulted by other scientists for calling parts of Ithaca, New York, where he does his research, urban.) But far from moving to the city to be near sources of food, McGowan’s studies suggest that the food supply for urban crows is less dependable. He has found that urban crows raise smaller and few young than their rural cousins do.
So why live in cities at all? McGowan notes that city lights offer crows some protection from their biggest natural predator, the great horned owl. Since discharging firearms is usually prohibited in cities, it offers protection against human predators as well. He also notes that many of our biggest trees are now found in cities.
In the spring and summer, crows live in family groups, but come winter, they sleep in roosts in numbers totaling hundreds, thousands, or, in at least one instance (in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, in 1972), an estimated two million birds. In Ithaca, two-thirds of the winter crows are year-round residents. They will return to their territories for at least part of each day to search for food. The local population is supplemented with migrants from Canada.
Studies have shown that crows tend to migrate to warmer climates if the average January temperature of their nesting territory is zero degrees Fahrenheit. McGowan says that it is very possible that crows’ migration patterns are changing along with our climate.
What can these birds that are so similar to us teach us about our environment? McGowan has a hopeful take on the question. Crows have been hated by humans for a long time. For generations, we’ve shooed them away and shot them. Still, crows seem as abundant as ever.
“They are very adaptable and make the best of any situation,” says McGowan. “What they can show us is that they are survivors despite much persecution. There will always be birds out there no matter what we do. We can do things like cut down the forests and pave them, but we are not going to scare everything away.”
Of course, not all of nature is as resilient as the crow. The plants and animals that survive and thrive in our presence tend to be both generalists and very adaptable. Just like us.