Bird Of The Week: The Crow
Kai Goldstein | March 4, 2025
American Crow || (Corvus brachyrhynchos)
Hopefully, you’ve never been hungry enough to have to resort to eating garbage. The same thing cannot be said for the American Crow, one of the least picky birds I’ve met. They’ll eat just about anything under the sun, including young turtles, decaying roadkill, trash from dumpsters, and even other bird chicks and eggs. Anything with a few nutrients to spare is likely to end up in the gullet of any American Crow lucky enough to find it. These birds are renowned for their classic “caw caw” sound and their striking intelligence. They have been observed all over their range devising creative plans as a social group to ensure each other’s survival, including distracting other animals to steal their food. They’re also relatively long-lived, reaching about 8 years old on average, but the oldest American Crow ever recorded was a captive who lived to be 59 years old! These fellows hang around all year in our region, and I find them quite often perching throughout the oak trees on campus. Caw caw!
