As the crow flies

A summer spent with Rae.

The raucous commute of rooks, crows and jackdaws to the woods behind our house each night is one of the best and most beautiful things about living here. From all directions they come, leaving the fields at dusk, to roost together. The sky fills with them, vocalising loudly as they circle, finally dropping down into the safety, and perhaps warmth, that numbers bring.

I collect their feathers; I’ve been known to collect their bones (which I return to the woods); my tarot and oracle decks of choice are MJ Cullinane’s Crow series, and for Christmas ‘23 one of my requested gifts was a “realistic” plush crow. His name is Caswell and I love him.  

Then this summer, I found myself with a real one.  A young, wild carrion crow called Rae. 

It wasn’t me who rescued and named her - that considerable credit goes to my neighbour and her girlfriend. They found her fallen from a nest and tried to put her somewhere safe in the hope that her parents would continue to care for her. They didn’t. A rainstorm hit. Story has it that my neighbour turned up home, in the rain, at her living room window, holding baby Rae, and announced to her bewildered parents, “We have a crow now.” They did an amazing job of keeping her alive and also as free as possible. That’s a whole story on its own but not mine to tell. Suffice to say, they could not have raised her better. 

As she grew old enough to hop/flutter across the hedge, on days when her primary carers were out at work or just away, Rae discovered that she also had us and we had food. Lots of food. For some weeks, I was feeding her (on top of her home meals) several times a day. 

You don’t argue with a hungry young crow. They will land on your shoulder and YELL in your ear, then make a strange “hissy” sound continuously, until you shut them up with mashed up peas, bits of chicken, or dry mealworms. We learned to exit our front door very slowly and cautiously while scanning the trees. Within seconds you’d be dive bombed by a flutter of black feathers and faced with this…

When Rae first visited, she was still finding her footing—quite literally. It wasn’t long before she started spending most of her day here. I became her fly-thru provider, and then she got comfortable.

While she was more than capable of being loud and demanding - and often was - she also had a sweeter, gentler side. One morning, having fed her as much as she wanted, I just sat with her on our garden bench. A sunny day, peace and quiet, I didn’t even have my phone with me (gasp). Rae hopped onto my shoulder and hunkered down in a crow-y kind of way. Her head rested against my cheek and then I heard her snore. Asleep. Fast asleep. Was I going to get up and move? No, no I was not. So there we were, me and the crow, for maybe half an hour. It became a daily routine.

This quiet, relaxed version of Rae was adorable and irresistible. She would sometimes sit next to me, warbling away with the rich vocabulary that crows share. She’d sit on my shoulder or my head, and chatter in my ear as we moved about the garden together, a keen assistant who particularly liked to find an ant nest, stir it up, and then lie down to have the ants crawl all over her and take whatever irritants she wanted out of her feathers. She was also an enthusiastic dead-header of non-dead flowers, and a generous food tester with a penchant for peas, fresh from the pod.

Rae became a companion on my daily walk with my husband. She’d stay with us all the way, occasionally hopping down to fly alongside until the crows resident in whatever field we were crossing decided to attack. Then it was back onto my shoulder with some interesting crow words for the bullies. As she grew stronger and better at flying, she’d take off and head home, only to be waiting for us on the garden gate when we got back.

Despite all her time spent with humans, Rae remained a wild crow. She was undoubtedly imprinted on at least three of us in terms of expecting us to feed her and having us as a safe place, but she was wild, and began to show particular and fascinating behaviours.

My very favourite was cacheing. I could try to draw you a word picture of this but fortunately I have video. This was taken fairly early on in Rae’s stay and she got far more particular about what she used to cover her saved food. So good was she at hiding it, that she never found it again. I did, however, witness a very smart rat and an equally smart hedgehog start to do a daily clean-up around Rae’s favourite spots. Watch this… (By the way, for the first weeks we knew her, Rae was Ray, so you may hear me call her a good boy. As she grew we all agreed she seemed more like a female carrion crow.)

No one taught Rae to cache. No bird parents, no human stand-ins. “Oh, it’s instinctual,” we say. But what even IS that? I’d certainly never questioned that before. Some things are just instinct. We know how to do them at some points of our development. It’s somehow programmed into our bodies. Well okay…but how? Being with Rae and watching her skill set grow, made me question my/our (non)understanding of “instinct” in a way I’d never done before. I found myself wondering if perhaps our brains (our, as in human and More Than Human), or even a different part of us, might not be connected into a collective consciousness. How much of my own behaviour is instinctual/collective when I might prefer to think I’m Ms Independently-Brilliant?

Through summer days, we grew used to Rae’s company. I’d hear her caw - the kind that let me know she was looking for some company or maybe just a meal - I’d head outside, and in she’d fly to my shoulder. I’d sit on the bench with a bowl of food, and she’d eat-cache-eat, the two of us falling into a companionable silence before, almost inevitably, she’d take a nap on me.

There was something special about those moments. Rae’s presence drew me into an even more mindful relationship with the world around me. I paid attention in a new way. Our interactions added a new rhythm to my days, and without doubt helped me through the loss of my last dog in late April.

As summer went on, Rae grew stronger and more independent. Seemingly still rejected and bullied by other crows, she never went too far, but her visits went from many times a day, to four, three, two… Then for a couple of weeks she wasn’t around every day. One day she sat with me and when I gently blocked her from unstuffing a cushion by placing my hand over the hole she’d pecked in it, she threw a tantrum and stamped up and down on my hand. She never aggressively pecked me (I can’t say the same for others) but I was beginning to annoy her. I’m the mother of a teenage human. I know it when I see it.

By late August the wheat was ready, and the fields were suddenly full of the grains that had escaped the machines. Territories previously defended so fiercely were abandoned in the face of mass ingress, and corvids (and pigeons) of all shapes and sizes covered the landscape.

From the first day of harvest, Rae was gone. I sincerely believe she was accepted after months of hanging around the edges of her natural society. Once there, why would she come back to us? She was resourceful, wild, grown, and finally back home. No more watching from our roof as the other crows flew into their woodland roost; no more sleeping in an open shed and eating mealworms. She was one of them in all the ways.

There is only one cat here (the same neighbour’s) and Rae was wise to her. She was car-savvy and we have little passing traffic. There’s no shooting here. Very little risk to a crow. I believe she is safe and free.

Now that she’s gone, the garden feels quieter. It is quieter! It may sound silly but I think I could identify her call. I still hope to hear her, and have to duck as she flies to my head (she never was very good at sticking the landing), but I know she’s out there, living the life she’s meant to lead. Our time was never meant to be permanent, but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful.

There is a delicate balance between helping and letting go, between loving someone wild and stepping back when the time is right. She wasn’t mine, and I wasn’t hers, but we were friends for a short while, both of us learning something from the other. She was a wonderful Wild Collaborator for the summer.

Just yesterday - this draft already written - I was out walking when a distant flock of mixed crows was sent up by a freelancing dog. I watched as they flew up and scattered, all but one of them flying away from me. Just one. One crow who turned and headed towards me.

My heart leapt and I started to call her, the way I always did, certain that this random, very wild bird would hear my loud voice and fly away from me as fast as possible. That crow kept coming. Flying in from my right and over my head, just a little too high for eye contact (on my short-sighted part), she flew slowly over me and off to the left where she dithered a moment then circled back, me still calling her name. She circled once more then flew off to her bird people.

I can’t know for sure but I’d put money on that crow being Rae. No fear, just curiosity and no doubt a memory of my face. I’d like to think that - chatterbox that she is - she’s pointed us out to the others and, should I ever need them, I can call upon a flock of corvids to fly to my aid. A girl can dream, and I still dream of crows.

Wild Imaginings

• What do you feel that “instinct” is? Subconscious programming? From where? Collective consciousness? With whom?

• What might be “instinctual” for you that you may have believed thus far to be chosen?

• Is there a hope, wish or dream that you’ve cached? What did you use to cover it up?