Crows, hawks, and little brown birds: living life and avoiding death in the bird community around our patio

Field notes on Collapse: August 19, 2025

We have a murder of crows living near us.

“Murder” is the name for a group of crows!

Why? PBS tells me that the term is

[M]ostly based on old folk tales and superstition.…[but that] many view the appearance of crows as an omen of death because ravens and crows are scavengers and are generally associated with dead bodies, battlefields, and cemeteries, and they’re thought to circle in large numbers above sites where animals or people are expected to soon die.

It’s hard to see what “our” crows are doing — there are certainly no battlefields around here, nor cemeteries, but PBS helpfully reminds me that the term “murder of crows”

mostly reflects a time when groupings of many animals had colorful and poetic names. Other fun examples of “group” names include: an ostentation of peacocks, a parliament of owls, a knot frogs, and a skulk of foxes.

The crows we see here may be related; I think they are. I also think some of them may live in a very tall, very old pine tree down the road which has lost a lot of limbs but still maintains a thick “crow’s nest” of branches near its top. There are other nearby conifers that might also be candidates for nests. And there are nests around, I know, because every spring there have been baby crows.

The ones who have visited here are of course no longer babies; technically I think they’re “fledglings.” They are learning stuff, and our patio seems to be the practice field for a particular skill.

For the last few years, our patio has turned into a kind of classroom in early summer, I guess around the time the young crows are ready to learn foraging for food.

I supply the patio daily with a ration of peanuts in the shell. I originally put them down for the squirrels, but I’ve since learned that the corvids will try to beat the squirrels to them. The blue jays are particularly alert to my putting down peanuts, and I’ll often see them sitting on lower branches of nearby shrubs, just waiting, and I’ve no sooner turned to go back into the house when one, then another, will swoop down for its peanut.

But I digress: this is about the crows.

A particularly large crow comes down with one or two youngsters — they’ve been waiting on lower branches of the maple till Master Crow gives the signal — then they land amidst the peanuts.

There’s evidently a corvid art to collecting peanuts, for the jays use the same method: Pick up a peanut. Feel its weight. Put it down; pick up a nearby one. Weigh it. Do this a number of times, then select the heaviest and fly off with it.

At least that’s what the jays do. But crows — with their bigger beaks — take it a step further. It seems the lesson is a class on “how to get the greatest number of peanuts aligned to fit in a beak for transport.” Watching Master Crow, they lodge one in their beak, then select another. They soon learn that unless the first peanut is stowed in a certain way, the second peanut won’t be secure. So: drop them all out; try again. Practice. Try again.

After a few days Master Crow seems to abandon them to learning on their own, now that they have the principles established. Morning after morning the youngsters practice; sometimes a single one, sometimes 2 or 3. Put the first peanut in, after selecting a few of the heaviest, tuck it in this way or that; try another; see how many you can get into the beak.

It’s not too long before they’re routinely flying off with 3 peanuts stowed in their big beak. One particulary adept fella sometimes manages four.

This murder seems also to have taken on the job of protecting the little brown birds that visit the patio; or else I’m simply projecting. I’m pretty sure crows don’t like hawks, and we have this year had a particularly persistent young red-shouldered hawk (or it might be a sharp-shinned one; I’m not that good at identifying). This one — I think it’s a female — has evidently reasoned that I am providing for them a banquet of small birds, there on the patio for the picking. She has been the most persistent hawk that’s visited in the 6 years we’ve lived here. When she’s not flaunting her presence on the back fence — which gives her a free swooping field onto the patio, and a meal — she’s up in the tall maple that abuts the patio. She’s not too stealthy; even I can spot her up there lurking about.

And one of the ways I know the hawk is abroad is by the crows’ raucous, cacophonous cawing that builds and builds, coming from the tall utility poles that line the road behind our fence. These crows have two regular lookouts; perched atop two poles that edge our back yard — one to the north one to the south. When the crows start up a disjointed chorus from their poles — they even sound angry and scolding — I am pretty sure the hawk is about. The little brown birds know it too. The patio becomes totally empty.

I suspect the little ones perceive the hawk without the help of the crows, but I’m pretty sure the crows’ loud calls add to the alarm. And I like to think the crows consider it a job, protecting the smaller animals.

I’ve also seen several crows “mobbing” a hawk flying above our property, and then I can really understand why they got the name “murder”.

Crows, a hawk, and the little brown birds are often joined now by the not-so-little mourning doves, the sheep of the bird world, as I’ve taken to calling them. They move about the patio much like sheep munching their way through a meadow. They seem to come in small groups, and having them among the little finches and sparrows really makes one realize how big doves are — and their bulk tells me why they’ve been prized for hunting. They’re good eatin’ if you go in for murdering wild creatures for a fun meal. [ASIDE: I do not judge previous eras of humans who pretty much had to eat anything they could find; but I see no reason for “sports hunting” other than juvenile cruelty. There: end of sermon.]

Thus goes bird life on our patio.

Just recently we turned the patio into a safer place, by taking all our lawn chairs — mismatched, ugly as they are — and arraying them helter-skelter on the concrete, forming a barrier to the hawk. Why I didn’t think of it sooner I’ll never know. But I’m glad I did it — we don’t have many human visitors so we don’t have to keep the area “nice for company” — and it’s really been an ideal solution.

I had evidence of that just a week ago. The little birds were wandering about under the chairs, feeding on seed I’d put down, when the little (but soon to be big) cowbird fledgling “froze” — pulled his wings and tail into his body to form a little inert lump; totally still. He was about 6 inches out from under the chair, and later I concluded that he’d felt he didn’t even have time to slip back under protection. A minute later, down swooped the hawk from the maple branches where she’d been hiding. I hadn’t seen her, but the cowbird sure had — or sensed her.

But our protective chair barrier worked! The hawk swooped, but recognizing she couldn’t get in between the chairs with her wingspan, she swerved away.

Quickly the cowbird scuttled back under the chair. Safe and alive!

I do feel sorry for the hawk. I know she needs to eat, too.

But I hope I’m sending her the message that maybe dining somewhere else would be less hassle.