From Hunting to Amicable: Watching Crows

by

There may never be another corn crop, but the result is a pair of clever and reliable feathered friends in the backyard.

Growing up in Western North Carolina, I saw plenty of crows, but I didn’t give them much thought. They were just part of the rural landscape. Marrying a crow hunter, however, made me more aware of them. My husband, Steve, began hunting crows as a teenager, and after we married, he continued crow hunting in the cornfields along the Catawba River, carrying his Ithaca 12 gauge shotgun.

He’s told me he especially enjoyed hunting in fall because of the season’s colors and “when it was cool enough to wear a flannel shirt and a jacket and be comfortable.” I think being outdoors was what he most enjoyed about hunting.

I became better acquainted with crows when Steve and I started planting a garden each spring in our back pasture. A large part of our garden was a corn crop, which attracted crows. When our corn seeds had just started to sprout, we would hear the dreaded cawing.

“Crows!” we cried, rushing to the garden.

Steve had heard if you hang a dead crow in your garden, other crows would stay away, perceiving the area as unsafe. We tried this one year, and it helped deter crows from damaging our corn crop. Ordinarily, though, we made a scarecrow, dressing it in Steve’s old clothes, and placed it at the head of the corn patch. We also stretched strings with aluminum pans attached throughout the garden and hung wind chimes on poles at the end of rows. We mounted an owl decoy on a fence post as a sentinel. Despite these preventative efforts, we still found tender corn leaves plucked from the soil, the corn seeds nipped off. We knew crows had struck.

Obviously, a crow is a smart bird, not easily duped. Indeed, the crow has been hailed as the most intelligent bird in North America. Steve has always attested to a crow’s intelligence, explaining to me that crows have a unique language that features different calls with a varied number of caws. This language includes fight calls, when an owl or hawk is spotted near their nest; feeding calls, when food—an animal carcass or source of grain—is available; and distress calls, when an attack by a predator or a member of an opposing flock occurs. While telling me about these calls, Steve recounted an incident when he and a friend were crow hunting in a fresh-cut cornfield near Lake James.

“There was a flock of crows that flew over. We shot, and I killed one, but my friend hit one and winged it pretty bad. It spiraled down like a maple seed. It gave a distress call, and the other crows that had flown away when we began shooting turned and came back and started flying around the wounded crow. It was enlightening to me to see how protective crows were of each other.”

I believe this occurrence gave Steve a deeper respect for crows.

We no longer raise a garden. Today my connection with crows is amicable. At daybreak, they fly through the sky and perch in the treetops. Sometimes I hear their caw! caw! caw! before I see them. I stand at my kitchen window and watch them as they settle on the grassy knoll across the road from my house. Here they eat scraps I’ve thrown out—beans, cornbread muffins, oatmeal—my family’s leftovers from the evening before or from that morning’s breakfast.

My daughter Annie teases me about feeding the crows, calling me “The Crow Lady.”

I tell her, “They’re my crow friends,” and I find myself waiting for their arrival each day. But the crows are still wary of me. I’ve wanted to take pictures of them from my front porch, yet they’ve flown as soon as they saw the front door open.

And when I’ve attempted to take a picture from my kitchen window and accidentally tapped the glass with my camera lens, they scattered. I have managed to get a few distance shots with a zoom lens, but only because I was concealed inside the house. I hope someday the crows will trust me and not fly away when I come near them.

Despite Steve’s past as a licensed crow hunter, I can’t imagine him harming a feather on a crow’s head now. In fact, he encourages me to save scraps for the crows and enjoys watching them as much as I do.

I have named the crows who visit us. Two of them are Heckle and Jeckle, inspired by the cartoon magpies. Heckle is the largest of our crows, who arrives first and leaves last. He toddles up and down the road, as if he prefers walking to flying.

It’s been recorded that crows can live fairly long lives—both in the wild and in captivity—some for decades. They mate for life. Their ability to protect themselves and their fellows through keen senses and effective communication undoubtedly enhances their survival and longevity. According to Carolina Bird Club, the American crow is a common and abundant species in McDowell County, where I live, and its numbers are increasing in the mountain region. So I’m sure Heckle and Jeckle and other such crows will be around for a good while.

Realistically, in luring crows to our property, I may be creating problems for us if we decide to plant another corn crop. But I’ll worry about that later. In the meantime, I will enjoy watching crows gather in the morning to share my family’s food.

The story above first appeared in our July/August 2021 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!