Not a "Murder" of Crows

There is a small flock of crows that live in my neighborhood. I will not say it is a murder of crows. That is archaic terminology from the time when my European ancestors, my tribe, began to actively war against one another and against the earth. The term originates from the time of our true fall from grace, when we entered willfully into the human endeavor of subjugating one another through war and enslavement - when we lost our reverence for the earth and began destroying the living planet that gave rise to us as a species, our own mother.

As a tribe we have learned a few things in recent decades. We recognize that crows have a highly complex family and social structure, that they are keenly intelligent and share important information with their familial group. We might have rediscovered this about crows but it has done nothing to stop the persecution of them. Luckily, they are smarter than we are and continue to survive.

When I first noticed the crows in my valley there were only a few of them. Now their flock seems to fluctuate between eight to ten. I think they live here permanently but I am not certain whether I see the same group. They make life much more difficult for the red tail hawks. Sometimes the crows come winging past, cawing and making a loud racket. If I wait, a red tail will soon appear coming from the same direction as the crows. I think that not only are the crows warning that a hawk is on its way but they are indicating his location by the direction of their flight. Maybe the crows are warning any other crows that might be in the vicinity but it could be that any potential hawk prey understands their warning - if the prey species is smart enough, that is.

I have never seen the crows in my yard. They keep to the trees along the creek between themselves and my buildings. I think they hunt in a very large area because I do not see them every day and even less this year, probably because the pasture was scalped last fall. I had no idea that the guy was going to cut everything in the pasture down to the ground. I had to start feeding the horses their winter hay two months early and ran out before spring. It also meant that no wildlife had any cover whatsoever. Someone driving by shot a coyote and left it to rot in my pasture.

I was born and raised in Kansas, born to farmers and ranchers. I was raised to despise coyotes, to think it was acceptable to kill any and all wildlife that stole crops or carried disease or were simply a nuisance. That meant kill everything. Even if you did not have chickens, hawks were shot on sight because they stole chickens. The government paid a $2 bounty for every pair of coyote ears a man turned in. In the winter the hunters, including my own father, hung the coyote carcasses on the hedge fence posts along the roads. They were hung upside down and left to rot. Scores and scores of them. The bison, eagle, elk, deer, antelope, cougar, wolves, turkeys and bears had already been long persecuted to extinction from Kansas by then but no one seemed to get the message.

Since my childhood, there have been so many other species that have fallen to our particularly deadly human concoction of arrogance and ignorance. Jack rabbits were once more plentiful than cotton tails. I have not seen a jack rabbit since I left home. I have not seen a scissor tail fly catcher for decades. They were plentiful when I was a child. I loved seeing them start up from the fences when we drove past, their long elegant tail feathers scissoring as they climbed up and away from the noise and danger we presented. Meadow larks once inhabited the roadsides everywhere, their melodic song would seemingly travel in the air with us as our car blasted past at highway speed. Spraying and mowing has decimated them and I have not seen nor heard a meadowlark in ten years or more.

When I was young there was a bird that lived along the river but I never knew what it was called and I never saw it. Its calling, the singular cry of a solitary bird, meant it was summer. It meant I was at my grandmother's house and that I was probably riding the horses, or fishing, or swimming in the river. No one ever paid attention to that bird except me. I have never again, in my whole life, heard that calling, ever. I do not even know who to ask now what that bird may have been but what does it matter? It is gone.

We have ignorantly cut the ties and destroyed species after species. We have allowed the sophisticated marketing of giant corporations lull us into believing their product is necessary and safe despite ALL evidence to the contrary. Yes, clinical trials might "prove" something as acceptably safe in the laboratory, but once it is put into practice and everything dies it means it is not safe and we should stop. Immediately. I woke up this morning with a sense of despair and loss, the notes of a meadow lark's song fading from a forgotten dream. If I only knew what I could do to change things... anything.

"If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows." - Henry Ward Beecher