Today during my walk a crow started talking. Here is a recording of his voice. I love the small funny noise at the end of the recording.
My father once told me a story about ice fisherman in Minnesota. They’d sit in their shacks, staying warm after drilling holes in the ice. They’d have several lines going at once, each with a red flag on levers. When the flag went down, the fish was hooked. A few crows in the trees would also wait until the flags went down, then they’d fly over, grab the lines with their beaks and walk on them, pulling with their beaks and standing on the line, step after step, to draw up the fish.
In the Celtic legends, ravens bring prophecies.
For some Native Americans, crows guide souls on their last journeys.
I used to work at a school for Native Americans. There were always several crows circling the area. I’d get out of my car and four or five of them would be circling the sky above me. Sentinels, watching, I often imagined they knew things. They knew who we all were.
As it so happens, crows have a great memory and facial recognition. They can remember a person’s face for many years. The experiments scientists do usually requires stealing the young from their nests, which bothers me. But several scientists have used experiments to prove that crows and ravens can count, solve complex problems, and think analogically. (Correspondences! They could be surreal poets!) Their problem solving techniques are as sophisticated as a seven year old child.
Here are just two links about crows: