When the crow caws three times©

 

 

Click HERE for what does the crow say

 

Conventional folklore has it that when a crow looks at you and caws three times, that someone close to you has died and that the crow has come to tell you the bad news.  There is a nesting pair of crows near my house, and if that was true, then I wouldn’t have any family left!  So, what does it mean when a crow caws three times?

 

Caw...Caw...Caw...

 

American crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos, are very smart, are occasional tool users¹, and have a complex social structure, with research showing that they use analogical reasoning and can recognize faces of individual humans.

 

So, do crows’ caws mean anything?  The short answer is yes, according to Douglas Wacker, a researcher at the University of Washington at Bothell, who noted that crows “wouldn’t take the time or spend the energy to make all of these vocalizations unless they serve some purpose”.²  Crows make caws, rattles, croaks, clicks, honks, coos, and other sounds, the thing is that crows vocal ranges and repertoire of calls are so complex, that no one knows really knows what they are saying.  While crows’ calls are subtle and varied, there are two main types of calls, contextual calls with the crow responding to something in its environment, and non-contextual, with calls that don’t seem to be triggered by an event happening in the crows’ environment.

 

In fact, according to Kevin McGowan, a Crow researcher of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, “Crows may be more complex communicators than other birds”.  In fact, according to McGowan, crow is more like Mandarin or Vietnamese, which are very complex tonal languages, where the same “word” can be used to mean different things, depending on the tone and how it’s used.³  So, a crow can use “caw” to mean different things, depending on the volume, the tone, and the number and the speed of the “caws”.

 

But what does it mean?

 

According to McGowan, “There’s a call they give that says, ‘heads up everybody, there’s a hawk’.  But they can also indicate ‘it’s getting closer, now we better hide’.   It’s the same word, but they speed up, ‘cawcawcaw’.  Finally, they change into a very different vocalization, which means ‘hide’.  He added, “There’s a lot in crow-speak that has to do with the timing of the notes, the space between them, and how quickly they are uttered”.  It would be like human-created music as language, where someone playing the same notes on a piano very softly (pianissimo), has a different meaning than someone playing the same the notes on the same piano very forcefully (fortissimo), the notes are the same, but the delivery and message are quite different.⁴

 

The most common crow calls are non-contextual companion or contact calls.  A companion call is an unhurried and relaxed series of one to ten “caws”, followed by a silence during which the crow is listening for a response.  This is followed by another burst of “caws” and more silence.  These calls don’t seem to be triggered by anything specific in the crows’ world.  It is just the crow’s way of saying “I am here, this is my territory, this pot is taken, the coast is clear, nothing exciting happening here, everything is fine here”!⁵ 

 

So, a “caw...caw...caw...” is just the crow’s way of saying hello.

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Notes

 

 

¹ “American crows that excel at tool use activate neural circuits distinct from less talented individuals”, by Pendergraft et. al.

 

² “Can Crows Talk? And If So, What Are They Saying?”, by A. Fonté,

 

³ “Crow communication is complicated”, by Joe Rankin,

 

⁴ Ibid.

 

⁵ “Can Crows Talk? And If So, What Are They Saying?”, by A. Fonté,

 

Sources

 

Fonté, A.; “Can Crows Talk? And If So, What Are They Saying?”, May 5, 2023, [© 2024 THE ARENA MEDIA BRANDS, LLC], https://pethelpful.com/birds/Can-Crows-Talk-And-If-So-What-Are-They-Saying#:~:text=The%20best%20explanation%20is%20that,four%20caws%2C%20repeated%20over%20time, accessed April 13, 2024

 

Pendergraft, LomaJohn T., Marzluff, John M., Shimizu, Toru, and Templeton, Christopher N.; “American crows that excel at tool use activate neural circuits distinct from less talented individuals”, October 3, 2023, [Nature Communications, (2023) 14:6539], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10589215/#:~:text=Individual%20variation%20in%20the%20ability,that%20favor%20adopting%20tool%20use, accessed April 13, 2024

 

Rankin, Joe; “Crow communication is complicated”, [©2024 www.burlingtonfreepress.com], https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/news/, accessed April 13, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “American crow, City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana”, April 11, 2018, Melissa McMasters, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_crow_(40896666114).jpg, accessed April 13, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada”, July 28, 2019, Ryan Hodnett, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_Crow_(Corvus_brachyrhynchos)_-_Kitchener,_Ontario_2019-07-28.jpg, accessed April 13, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “FIELD MARKS-black,iridescent plumage overall long,heavy,black bill brown eyes black legs and feet”, May 3, 2012, cuatrok77, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AMERICAN_CROW_(6997589886).jpg, accessed April 13, 2024