crow city | crow family | carrion & hooded crow | rook | jackdaw | magpie | jay | chough | raven
The crow family is thought to consist of the most highly evolved of birds, since they are remarkably adaptable to changes in their environment. It is no surprise, then, that this is a global family, with members as diverse as the shadowy folkloric raven, the artistic bower bird, and even the birds of paradise. It is likely that the crows originated in Asia, possibly evolving from a jay-like ancestor.
Britain is home to four genera of crow - namely Corvus, which includes the raven, the carrion and hooded crows, the rook and the jackdaw; Pyrrhocorax, our representative being the red-billed chough; Pica, the magpie; and Garrulus, the jay.
The earliest remains of crows found in Britain were in Norfolk and Suffolk, dating from the warm Cromerian interglacial period of 500,000-600,000 years ago, when they would have lived alongside mastodons, extinct kinds of horse, cave lions and forest rhinoceros. In the Middle to Upper Pleistocene, about 100,000 years ago, there is evidence that choughs lived in Devon and the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, and that magpies then lived in County Clare, later becoming extinct in Ireland and recolonizing much more recently. Remains of jays found in Yorkshire suggest that they were taken as food by Middle Stone Age hunters. Carrion crow remains have been discovered at the sites of the Glastonbury lake village of about 250 BC, although it is unclear whether their function there was as food, pet or oracle.
The carrion eating species of crow, particularly the raven, rook, the carrion crow, hooded crow and the magpie, developed in the Middle Ages a sinister reputation - if indeed they did not already have one - by feasting on the bodies left on the battleground, and for being no strangers to the fruits of the gallows.
The crow in its various forms had been an important character in myth and folklore during Celtic times. Morrigan, the triple goddess of War, Fate and Death, was possessed of the three aspects of Nemain (Frenzy), Badb Catha (Battle Raven) and Macha (Crow). As a shapeshifter she could turn at will into a raven, hooded or carrion crow. In this guise she would often watch over the battlefield, from which vantage point she might alter the course of the battle with her magic, encouraging warriors to warp into battle frenzy.
The Celts kept a number of crows as sacred birds, to whom they would present the impaled heads of slaughtered enemies to feed upon. Morrigan was a mediator between the land of the living and that of the dead. In order to complete the circle of life she held the secret of regenerative ecstasy, picking clean the bones of the dead in her crow form to prepare them for rebirth. This is perhaps why it is held that King Arthur became a raven (sometimes a chough) after his death, allowing him to remain neither dead nor alive, but with the ability to be either.
The great Norse god Odin was also associated with the raven; he had two of them, Hugin and Munin (Thought and Memory), who perched on his shoulders when they were not flying far and wide, gathering information for him.
The number of legends that involve the once white crow being turned black may well be symbolic of the suppression of paganism by civilising Christianity, the mother religions being superseded by those of the new father god. A Tyrolean legend has the child Jesus beside a stream where some ravens were bathing. They ignore him when he asks to be allowed to drink and continue with their splashing. "Ungrateful birds," says Jesus. "Proud you may be of your beauty, but your feathers now so snowy white shall become black and remain so until Judgement Day."
The birds certainly appear black to us, yet their vision is finer than ours and they see the ultra violet of the spectrum. To each other they shine and glisten in their generally blue, green and purple iridescent sheen.