The much unloved, many talented, quick-witted bird that inspired the Cold-War poetry of Poet Laureate Ted Hughes
In the first of our new series on ‘unloved birds’, we take a beady-eyed look at the charred black carrion crow, the clever corvid with the coarse voice.
If we had to pick a mascot for the Unloved Birds’ Club, we might look no further than this magnificently maligned creature, the carrion crow (Corvus corone). As if designed to evoke negative responses, they are black in plumage, coarse of voice and distasteful in name. Worse still, they’re thriving as never before. They need no human affection to achieve a significant population increase.
In the 1970s, there were an estimated one million pairs in Britain, but that was when hooded crows in northern Scotland and Ireland were deemed a race of their English counterparts. Hoodies may be a more attractive two-tone version of their cousin, with an almost pinkish caste to the grey underparts and back, but they occupy a near-identical ecological niche. Now, carrion and hooded crows are considered separate species; however, if we recombine their totals, they add up to 2,770,000 birds. Given those harsh, gravelly calls, we find it hard to appreciate that this 18in, 20oz creature is classified with songbirds. Many prefer to think of it as a kind of raptor, with reason — crows predate species as big as pigeons. They can snatch starlings or blue tits in mid-air.
Carrion crows are major nest predators and are killed or trapped in the interests of gamebirds.
In summer, they visit our gardens to pick off the wide-eyed young of blackbirds and thrushes, fresh from the nest. All this is central to their reputation, but the depth of opposition to crows could be summarised with a single observation made by the great naturalist David Bannerman. He described once finding a dump of about 200 egg shells, all sourced and devoured by crows, all originally taken from grouse nests and all on moors guarded by gamekeepers.
Carrion crows are major nest predators and are killed or trapped in the interests of gamebirds, although keepers freely acknowledge that the aim is to eliminate the crows’ depredations only during the breeding season. Managers of nature reserves tell a parallel story, particularly where they want to protect ground-nesting lapwings and curlews. I recall vividly a warden explaining how he used Larsen traps to catch crows on an East Anglian reserve and, sometimes, newly arrived birds filled the vacated breeding territory within hours of the capture of its previous holder. Given the number of hands raised against the beast, you might wonder if there’s anything to say in favour of carrion crows.
Actually, we could begin with that name. We might project upon the bird’s macabre associations with old flesh, but its real ecology is far more modest, even helpful, to us. Carrion crows are essentially dependent upon grassland invertebrates and, nine times out of 10, you see them doing what they love most: foraging in pasture for subsoil organisms, many of which are harmful for farmers. Carrion crows do take small songbirds and eggs. We respond with visceral horror when a crow eats our baby blackbirds, but those emotions don’t take account of the whole picture.
Is the carrion crow's gift for adaptation that inspired Ted Hughes's poetry collection, 'Crow'.
For a breeding thrush or blue tit to sustain its overall population, it needs to raise only one offspring to breed successfully like itself. Yet it may hatch dozens of chicks in its lifetime. Their breeding ecology has an inbuilt redundancy. Thrushes and tits are also predators, albeit bathed in admiration. Who of us cares passionately about worms taken by thrushes or the moth caterpillars devoured by blue tits? We make partial judgments to crows’ detriment.
One reason some dislike corvids is that they show a understanding of our antagonism. A crow’s ability to tell if a person is carrying a walking stick or a gun is proverbial. Britain’s great scholar of avian intelligence, Prof Nicola Clayton, has proved corvids possess intelligence comparable to that of primates. It is the bird’s supreme gift for adaptation that inspired Poet Laureate Ted Hughes to his most brilliant poetry collection. Crow was published in 1970, at the height of the Cold War, partly as the poet’s hope-filled response to the possibilities of nuclear holocaust. Hughes could have found no deeper, richer, more potent symbol for the idea of life’s imperishable genius than his central poetic motif — the much unloved, many talented, quick-witted crow.
This feature first appeared in the May 6, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
