Crow Funerals
Imagine a black cloud overtaking the sky, the sound of wings beating becoming a rhythm, a wind, that drowns out most of the sound around you. Crows alighting on every tree, every telephone wire, sitting and cawing, the caws then becoming louder and louder and louder, until suddenly, silence. Not a single sound breaks through, as though someone has suddenly clapped hands over the ears of the world. That is the scene you might come across if a crow dies near your area. Crows, like Elephants and human beings, have been known both to mourn and to bury their dead. They hold massive “funerals”, as they’re called, that sometimes last upwards of an hour. Crows sitting in silence, a tentative, solemn energy entwined with the gathering, with the quiet. Suddenly, as quickly as they had descended, they depart. A few calls alight onto the air as the crows depart back to the sky, and then all is still once more. Ornithologists have been baffled for years at this behavior, but have come to conclude that it does, in fact, seem to be a funeral held in honor of the dead.
