Group of crows

Nature has many sights and sounds that often go unnoticed by our society today. This could be due to the technology that has inundated our daily lives like the computer I am now using. But, if you are able to tear yourself away from them you may get a chance to see some amazing things, like a 'murder of crows', or a 'river of birds'.

Crows have gotten a bad rap throughout history. Think about it. A group of them is called a "murder." To get some insight into crows and perhaps set the record straight, we talked to Kaeli Swift. She's a lecturer at the University of Washington and wrote her doctoral thesis on crow "funerals." In an earlier version of this episode, we used the word "spooky" to describe crows. Because that word has a history of being used as a racial slur, we chose to replace it with the words "scary" and…

Swarm.

THE WHOLE GANG

Crow love

Ballet of the crows. Photos by Amber Maitrejean

© http://www.pdpics.com/photo/3310-crow-meeting-group/ A Murder of Crows By Tom King The world is sick with critics, Like vampires sucking out the blood Of all who manage to get up off their bottoms, Pecking away at the things that we’ve loved into being – the crows descend. Critics are parasites, black birds descending, Feeding on the best that we have done; Art, music, words, movies, plays and books, Even upon the simplest, best-loved of our creations – the crows descend. Crows are thieves…

Crows mourn their dead to try and learn about potential dangers to their own lives, researchers have found. They found the birds can even remember an animal or person seen with a dead crow. The birds were also able to easily distinguish between...