What do crows symbolize?

The short answer

Crows carry two sets of meanings. In much of European folklore they are birds of death and bad luck, partly because they feed on carrion and gathered on battlefields. In other traditions they are guides and messengers. Modern readings tend to focus on intelligence, change and insight — which, unusually, the science backs up.

Why crows became omens

Crows and ravens eat dead animals, and for most of history that meant they turned up after battles and at gallows. It is easy to see how a black bird that arrived after death came to be seen as one that announced it. The English collective noun "a murder of crows" goes back to the fifteenth century, appearing in lists of hunting terms such as the Book of St Albans (1486). Those lists were partly a game of clever names, but this one stuck.

Counting rhymes about crows and magpies, where the number of birds foretells sorrow or joy, are found across Britain and were carried to North America.

Crows and ravens as guides

In Japanese mythology, Yatagarasu, a three-legged crow, was sent from heaven to guide the legendary Emperor Jimmu through the mountains. The bird is the emblem of the Japan Football Association today. In Norse myth, the god Odin had two ravens, Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory), who flew over the world each day and brought him news.

Among peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast, including the Haida and Tlingit, Raven is a central figure: a trickster who stole the sun, moon and stars from a box and brought light to the world. Those stories are about the raven, which is bigger than a crow, but the two are often confused.

Crow or raven?

An American Crow is about 17 to 21 inches long with a square-ended tail and a cawing call. A Common Raven is much bigger, close to the size of a Red-tailed Hawk, with a wedge-shaped tail, a heavy bill and a deep croak. Ravens usually travel in pairs; crows gather in family groups and, in winter, roosts of thousands.

What crows actually know

The intelligence in crow symbolism is real. In a study at the University of Washington led by John Marzluff, researchers wearing a particular mask trapped and banded crows. For years afterwards, crows scolded anyone wearing that mask, including birds that had never been caught, which meant the crows had taught each other which face was dangerous. Later work by the same group showed crows gather around a dead crow, calling, apparently learning about danger in that place.

Crows use and shape tools, solve multi-step puzzles in experiments, and live in family groups where young from previous years help raise the next brood. A crow that seems to recognise you very likely does.

What it means when crows gather near you

Crows that gather and call loudly have often found a predator, such as an owl or hawk, or a dead crow. Big winter roosts form in towns because they are warmer and safer from owls. If crows visit your yard, they are usually after food: pet food, spilled seed, open trash. Some people feed crows deliberately with unsalted peanuts and report that the birds learn their routine within weeks.

Crows and people

American Crows have done well alongside people. Towns, farms, landfills and highway verges give them food all year, and city crows have grown more numerous over the last century. That closeness is part of why crows feature so heavily in folklore: they were always nearby, watching.

They have also suffered. When West Nile virus reached North America in 1999, crows proved extremely vulnerable to it, and populations in some regions fell sharply within a few years. Public health agencies used reports of dead crows to track the virus's spread. Many crow populations have since recovered. In the wild, American Crows can live well over a decade, and young birds often stay with their parents for a year or more to help raise the next brood.