“Was that a gunshot?”
The sound was a cognitive dissonance in an otherwise typical Sunday morning. We were deep in our routine of caring for animals, family and home, a languid dance fueled by coffee and brunch, playing vinyl through the former and wrapped in the cozy cocoon of noise cancelling headphones and true crime while cleaning up after the latter. But that noise makes it through the thickest AirPod hush, the deepest sleep, the most entrenched complacency. It was followed by silence as we warily walked through wet grass, toward the fence line and the general direction of the blast. We live rurally and are used to the sound of target practice, but this was too close. There was a second shot, unmistakable this time, and breath hung suspended as we watched our neighbor walk through the field between our homes, swinging by the feet a large, and very dead, black bird, the wings open in cruxifixction. Our neighbor paused, locked eyes with us, and then with no other acknowledgement they walked through a gate into their backyard. Then the world exhaled around us with the explosive mobbing cries of corvids who know that one of their own is dead. A wake of crows.
Killing a songbird (without a permit) is against the law by the Migratory Bird Act of 1918. This understanding was in my back pocket, but my initial response was a mixture of concern and anger, not only fueled by previous conflicts with this neighbor, but also because I am especially fond of the small band of crows that live here year round. My chickens are reliant on them as an early alarm system against Red Tails. When the crows spot one, they always send one or two sentries to fly over our flock with warning calls, and our birds run for cover. Folks that have followed me on IG for years will remember Fluffy
a resident Crow
who graced our yard for two years and who eventually entrusted us to babysit their child (named Cheddar by a follower).
Fluffy disappeared one winter, and we’ve feared the worst. Since then we’ve had three solo crows who have hung around, but this year, two pairs have chosen our yard for the spring. I had been especially enjoying their courtship just the week prior, witnessing one bird make three descending knock noises (presumably done by females to attract a mate), who was then joined by a second, presumably a male. The newcomer fed the first, a gesture that says “When you are on the nest, I will care and provide for you”. These memories sang in my heart as I wondered Who had our neighbor just killed?
My concern made me brave and I texted the neighbor with a simple, Hi there, we heard gunshots. Did you folks just shoot a crow? Time slithered by without a response. And then my phone rang.
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge this neighbor and how much I appreciate that they took the time and consideration to call. I half expected a short text back, along the lines of My property, my right, none of your business. But instead, they engaged in relationship building through direct communication, which in my opinion is one of the thin threads that can keep our nation stitched together from further divisive unravelling. My desire for interrelatedness helped me to navigate the challenging conversation that followed.
It turned out that yes, they had just shot a crow. They let this statement linger without a follow up explanation. I replied with Isn’t that illegal under the Migratory Bird Act? What followed was an at times cordial and informative response, mixed in with unpleasant overbearance and condescension (I took the latter as penance for having overstepped my bounds in the unwritten rulebook of rural neighbor relations).
Actually, hunting crows is permitted from Dec.2 - April 3 in California, and also per Department of Fish and Game regulations, may be shot on one’s property if committing depredation. Oh wow, people hunt and eat crow? Yes. But not only that, apparently the crows have been nabbing quail that this neighbor is raising AND pestering their cats. So it was immediately clear - they were in their right… and also pissed off. But why shoot just the one? This is where the conversation veered into Game of Thrones territory and I froze with an utter lack of words.
Because, crows are really smart and if you hang up one of their dead brethren in a tree, they will take it as a warning and avoid your property.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
After I recovered from this time slip into medieval methodology, I thanked my neighbor and quickly got off the phone. I felt spun out with the familiar frustration and confusion I have experienced all my life as someone who experiences the more-than-human world as sentient, within a greater paradigm that does not. An opportunity for bridge building across this great divide is often not present during spur of the moment confrontations, and it is only long after that I think of what I might have said, if it comes at all. Usually what remains for me is grief.
Crows elicit strong responses in people, on a broad spectrum of love ‘em or hate ‘em. They are very social and boisterous beings, and especially during migration, may congregate in cacophonous hundreds . Historical records suggest that American Crows increased in response to European colonization of North America by spreading from east to west as the American frontier was opened and developed. Crows are considered to be human commensals, benefitting from human activity, such as clearing land for crops and fire suppression. Their population has also been on the rise in suburban and urban spaces since the 1980s, even while their population has declined by 45% in others, in part due to West Nile. This has spurred a multitude of approaches to deterring corvids, including a recommendation from the Humane Society to hang a FAKE crow (from halloween decor) in a tree. Sunnyvale, California, has become so overrun with crows that they tried a novel approach of hand held lasers to scare the crows away at night (spoiler alert: it didn’t work). “Urbanization reduces, converts, perforates and fragments native vegetation. But it also provides food, water and shelter for birds; surprisingly, in some cases suburban sprawl can actually increase biodiversity.” Source . All animals, including birds, need some combination of food, water, shelter, and habitat to survive. Modify one or more of these features, and birds will often move to an area that better suits their needs. - and the reverse is true - increase one or more of these things (like a food source, such as, oh, I don’t know, RAISING QUAIL IN AN OPEN PEN) and more birds will move in to take advantage of the resource.
To say that crows cause problems - whether it is the nuisance of noise, pestering our house cats, eating crow snacks (like quail or at a feeder) or on the rare occasion, eating other baby songbirds (although it is a myth that crows have a negative impact on songbirds. They ARE songbirds) - points the finger in a reductive, singular and incorrect direction. Crows proliferate and thrive as a direct consequence of anthropocentric activities - urbanization, an increase in food sources they are able to scavenge from our own waste, the decline in natural predators such as hawks, owls and eagles due to agricultural land management practices, environmental degradation, climate change etc. We outsource the blame, and we will eventually win the argument - at the expense of everything else, including ourselves.
Thom Van Dooren, in his book The Wake of Crows; Living and Dying in Shared Worlds, looks at the human relationship with crows through the lens of the folly of human exceptionalism and the appropriative assumption that the world is, first and foremost, for ‘us’ … We don’t get to have the world precisely as we want it, satisfying all our needs and requiring others to bear all the costs…If the world is not first and foremost “for us” then we are required to think more expansively about the nature of ‘problems’. This confrontative and edgy approach flies in the face of current ideas of what we get to do with “our” property, our livelihoods, “our” world. When we act as host, we are put in the role of gatekeeper - who do we welcome, and who do we exclude, in our garden? Trying on this perspective ushers in a tsunami of what-about-ism. What about supplying the human population with food? What about my landscape desires? What about my fear of bacteria? What about mosquitos? What about our reliance on fossil fuel transportation? What about those fucking crows that are eating my quail that I neglected to put in a predator proof enclosure? (I’m not bitter, don’t worry).
It’s way outside the scope of this essay, and my scope as a California Naturalist and Ecopsychologist, to have all the answers for the fractal shattering a change in perspective like this creates. On an individual level, we can begin with what arises for us when we consider others. All others - microbes, insects, birds, animals, ecosystems, our neighbors, people of a different race than us, people of a different religion, of a different sexual orientation, of a different gender expression, of a different nation. There you go, there’s your lifetime of work (you’re welcome). In terms of the larger nesting systems that we are all complicit and embedded in, I turn to science and experts, those wonderful weirdos who walk around with a sound boom while wearing freaky masks to record crow language and the neurodivergent geniuses who dedicate their lives to crow research in order to educate the broader public and create foundations which governmental institutions can stand upon to inform policy. Like the intricate complexity of an ecosystem, our approach to this rapidly changing world will be best served if we can take our rightful place…and let others have theirs. From the book Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt - Here are the real questions that will determine our species viability. We live alongside wild life. We choose whether our children will enjoy such privilege. Coexistence will sometimes involve a vague uneasiness. Can we come to live comfortably in this slight discomfort? Can we rejoice instead?
The morning after the shooting, the crows were conspicuously absent from their usual morning waiting posts. One called from a tree far above me as I laid out their peanut breakfast, and I looked up, presented the bag to them and offered some words of encouragement. One, then two and three arrived, but number four was nowhere to be seen. I moved through the morning with a clenched stomach and then a movement out the window caught my eye…number four, sauntering down the fence. So they are well…for now.
Two days after the shooting, the crows were still mobbing our neighbor’s house. As for me, I may or may not be found along the property line, muttering curses under my breath
May you never know a day without a crow.
May your children grow up to advocate for gun control.
May your hearts be broken open to the benefit of all, including yourselves.
I went down a rabbit hole on this one, and wasn’t able to include all the tasty crow snacks that I found. Here they are, if you’d like to tuck in:
Crows really do hold funerals.
My neighbor tried to convince me that crows would give my chickens H5N1. That’s only true in very rare circumstances.
The meaning of most crow vocalizations is still unknown. Loma Pendergraft is just as curious as you are.
Both crows and ravens can mimic human speech
(For all things awesome ornithology, follow @pythonpaige on instagram)
Some of my favorite crows live in Disneyland
Can we get corvids to clean up our garbage for us? A very mixed answer
💔
May all of your curses take root! ✨✨✨
Downtown Portland has an incredible crow population. I wish people would calm the eff down and let the crows be, but I do think the CROW PATROL safety vests are pretty epic.
https://m.facebook.com/katunews/videos/crow-patrol/10154289297981448/