Carrion crow

Voice

A hard, grating kraaa kraaa kraaa, usually in series of three or four with even gaps, often delivered with a deep bow of the whole front of the body. Also a hollow klok-klok between mates, a short rattling alarm and, in spring, a soft and surprisingly varied muttering near the nest tree. Heard all year, loudest during territorial disputes in March and April.

Identification

A heavy, compact crow of 44–51 cm, wholly black with a green-blue gloss that shows only in full light. The bill is stout and slightly curved, with an obviously feathered base: the nasal bristles run well out along the upper mandible. The eye is dark, the crown flat in profile and without a peak. In flight note the steady, shallow wingbeats, the nearly straight trailing edge of the wing and the short, square-cut tail. Juveniles are duller, washed brownish, with a blue-grey eye that darkens through the first autumn.

Confusion species

Rook is slimmer, with a more pointed, straighter bill and, in adults, a bare greyish-white face; it looks long-legged, with a peaked rear crown and baggy thigh feathering. Beware: young Rooks have no bare face yet and remain the real pitfall well into their first winter — then go by the pointed bill, the steeper forehead and the company the bird keeps. Jackdaw is far smaller, with a grey nape and a pale grey eye. Raven is much bigger, with a wedge-shaped tail and a deep cronk. In eastern and south-eastern Europe this species is replaced by Hooded Crow; hybrids showing grey patches occur in the narrow contact zone.

Habitat

Almost any open or half-open country with trees: arable land, pasture, hedge banks, river floodplains, dunes, landfills, motorway verges, city parks and housing estates. Nests singly in a bulky stick basket high in a tree or pylon, always well spaced from the next pair. Feeds on anything: worms, insects, eggs and nestlings, carrion, nuts, grain and human refuse.

Range and movements

Breeds across western and central Europe, from Ireland and Scotland to the Alps and northern Italy. In the Netherlands very common all year, from the Wadden Sea to city centres. In Spain it is confined to the north: the Cantabrian coast, Galicia, the Pyrenees and the northern Meseta, and it is all but absent from Andalusia and the Mediterranean coast. Eastwards the range grades into that of the Hooded Crow across a narrow hybrid belt.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

In March find a breeding pair in a row of poplars along a dyke and watch how the bird drops its head and chest deeply as it calls. To see the corvids side by side, visit a freshly ploughed field in winter with a mixed flock: Jackdaws walk small and briskly among the Rooks, while Carrion Crows usually stand apart in twos.

Conservation status

Not threatened, and stable to increasing across most of Europe, helped by its move into towns and villages. In the Netherlands and Flanders it is an ordinary breeding bird, though still shot under wildlife management schemes. Local swings track that management and the supply of carrion and waste.