Connecting with Crows

Human Nature | Murder of Mornings Series| Part One

This past weekend I started a new routine of morning mindfulness where I sit outside and let nature be the first thing I take in before I start the workday. After months of my mobility keeping me close to home, I decided the four walls of my house would not be the boundary of my days.The first morning I sat outside, I became more keenly aware of the sounds of nature around me, the bird calls especially. It made me think of a client who had recently taken up bird watching as a coping skill. She would mention it in sessions, and the way she talked about how the experience helped center her and calm her stayed with me. I had been introduced to birdwatching as a hobby only recently, through a Netflix murder mystery by Shonda Rhimes called The Residence and thought of it as a peculiar and interesting hobby. Meeting someone in real life who found genuine peace in it reinforced it as something worth considering, and sitting outside that morning listening to all of those bird calls, I started to think about incorporating bird watching into my new morning mindfulness routine.

As it turned out, I did not have to look far. Living close to a bird sanctuary means there is no shortage of birds moving through the yard, and I had been noticing them, mostly subconsciously, the variety of them, the sounds, the movement. The crows in particular had been hard to ignore. They are large enough to regularly set off my security cameras, and their call cuts through everything else in a way that is impossible to miss once you start paying attention. I decided to do a little research.

I discovered that about a year ago I unintentionally began building a relationship with them. When my rescue work ended I had leftover cat food I did not want to waste, and so I started putting a little out each day to feed the wildlife until it was gone. Once it was gone, I stopped. The crows apparently never forgot it and continued to visit my yard. I learned that crows have exceptional long term memories for both places and people. They recognize individual human faces, remember whether a person has been a source of food or kindness, and pass that information along to their family group, called a murder, including younger birds who were never part of the original encounter.

It was an interesting feeling to learn that I was already in a relationship I didn't know I was in, a mix of surprise and recognition. We tend to believe that connection requires intention from the start, that it begins when we decide to pursue it. But sometimes the groundwork was laid in a moment that felt like nothing, a small kindness, a brief unremarkable gesture, and something was already forming before we realized it.

Given everything I had learned, I decided to be a bit more intentional about developing the relationship. I set a bowl out near a wooden basket in my yard, put some leftover rice and peas and some dog kibble in it, and came back later to find it empty. The next morning I did the same thing, while I was sitting in my usual spot outside, a crow flew into the yard and perched itself on a high branch above the basket. It vocalized once, surveyed the area for a moment, and then flew away without touching the food. Curiosity got the best of me, so I researched that behavior and learned that it is called scouting, that the crow was assessing the safety of the area and communicating back to the rest of the family. Sure enough, once I went back inside and settled into my sessions, I noticed through the window that multiple crows came and ate from the bowl.

Watching them from the window, I found myself thinking about what it means to build something with another living thing, even one that shares your world but belongs to the wild. There is something deeply appealing to me about a relationship that asks very little, one where showing up consistently and without harm is the whole requirement. A family of crows coming to know me as a safe place and returning because of it is exactly the kind of connection that accumulates quietly in the background of ordinary mornings, one that had been there waiting for me to return to it. I started this new routine to reclaim something, to push back against four walls and the smallness that comes with limited mobility. I came outside to let the sun kiss my skin and to be still before the workday started. I didn't exect to discover that I had already been chosen.

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