A Murder of Crows

Elections just went by, Congress had just won by a good 262 seats and the Congress Working Committee (The CWC) had called for a meeting to discuss the formation of the Government. Meetings seems to be this one thing the world today cannot do without, it happen at various levels, amongst various people, for various reasons… so what is so amusing about meetings, well it does amuse you when it happens differently…

It was, 17th of May 2009, a quiet summer evening and I was sitting with my mom on the slightly-heated-red-painted-chairs made up of concreted in the May Day Park. We were discussing some earthly topics of that day when I saw this interesting crow show, all of a sudden a group of some 15 crows assembled at that place, they assembled making some violent cawing. They assembled as if they were in a formation of a circle (it was not a perfect circle though) but was good enough as to face each other in the formation, then for some time all the crows maintained silence together, and then just a few (say four of them) cawed for few seconds, and then again followed by a period of silence.

Then this group of crows just hoped a few paces in one direction and shifted the group to a new spot (say 2 feet from the old spot), at this new spot the group cawed together again but on a low base sound making a cawing sound in a different pitch. Then four of five crows from the formation took flight in an angle, made a small circle in air and all of them flew back to the congregation without stopping any where during the flight. One could call it a small flight, they made a small circular loop in the air.

Again, the group hopped together a few paces but now in a different direction, thus moving the group again to a couple of feet in a different direction, then they remained silent again, and after coming to the new formation they cawed together , like they were discussing together. Every time the flock moved, they moved together in the same direction and maintained this "silence period" after which they chose to caw. Either one crow started and then the group followed or all of them began at the same time like an unsynchronized chorus.


And then something most abrupt just happened. A good part of the group took off and perched upon the Neem tree above and cawed irregularly few times. The remaining took soon after in few seconds and sat on the wall opposite to the tree. And then these crows went their ways like they had nothing to do with each other, or may be they did have nothing to do with each other, But what was interesting to notice was that it was a controlled group behavior, like they were actually discussing something (the Crow Working Committee he he) with each other to reach to a decision. It was so beautiful to watch, it only seemed like that they were speaking a different language that I didn’t know of.

Study says that crows are apparently as clever as Great Apes. For more details check the link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1209_041209_crows_apes.html.

It is generally said crows meet at a point before they roost i.e. to sleep, the bird equivalent of hibernation. Literally: a meeting to fall asleep. Interesting thing eh! Isn’t bird watching a lot of fun?