Crow Noises
I wanna bond with my local pair of crows (we’ve gotten to the point where they come within two arms’-lengths of me to eat the seeds I scatter, which I call progress), so here’s a list for my personal use (and yours if you’re interested) of common crow sounds. The first bit is taken from Brian Mertins’ free ebook, “What’s That Crow Saying?” The rest is cited throughout.
“Where are you?”
Sounds like this. A short series of somewhere between 1 and 9 loud “caw” sounds, all the same length and tone, followed by a listening silence (this pattern is often repeated multiple times).
Doesn’t really “mean” anything, but it’s a way for crow families to keep track of where each other are from a distance.
Indicates an overall sense of safety, no fear/imminent threat.
(This particular example has a crow going “caaw, caw caw” which intrigues me. Possibility: each crow, or at least each crow-family-member, has its own unique variation on this call so that other crows know who’s doing the calling?)
“Danger!”
Loud, continuous, chaotic cawing, very variable in sound; often many crows will get in on the alarm, so you’ll just hear a bunch of crows yelling constantly.
Depending on how immediate the danger is, the volume and frequency varies–the louder a crow’s yelling, the more immediate the danger.
This call can be kind of low-key (“hey don’t steal my food,” sounds like this), or it could be a literal call to action–“time to mob this owl” (sounds like this).
Evidence suggests that crows have different “words” for different kinds of danger, and further evidence indicates regional differences in the meaning and comprehension of calls.
I found this excerpt really really cool so here: Michael Westerfield writes in The Language of Crows, “American eastern crows that breed in Pennsylvania and winter in the southern states will respond to the distress call of the French jackdaw, a related bird not native to any portion of their range. Eastern crows that breed in Maine and apparently never mix with other crows, however, do not react to the jackdaw calls.“
As such, it’s likely that trying to learn “crow language” would be about as sensible as trying to learn “human language”–there isn’t one, unifying meaning to every vocalization, because different regional groups communicate differently. Sure, “crow language” is probably less complex than “human language,” but the principle remains the same: the patterns one social group uses to communicate are created, not instinctual, and as such will vary wildly between social groups.
It’s like this: humans trying to find a friend will call their name in a long, two-note cry. “Frieeeeeeend’s-naaaaaaaaame,” right? No matter the language or name, we tend to fall into the same pattern when we’re casually looking for them and there isn’t any pressing danger. On the other hand, when there is danger, whatever we’re yelling will be much louder, often higher-pitched, and repeated. Crows do that too.
We can recognize the patterns, but we don’t understand the words.
There are an immense variety of other sounds made by crows, including various churring, chirping, clicking, squeaking and rattling noises. We don’t know what most of them mean, because crow linguistics is a pretty niche field, I guess, so now I kind of want to get a PhD in it
Crows! Feel free to add on with your own socio/linguistic observations about crows or corvids in general!
