Crows Court

Not sure if this should have been posted in Myths and Legends.

Anyway, earlier on i was sat in this room looking out of the window looking at Crows, and remembered something about Crows courts, where crows gather in a field in a circular fashion with one crow in the middle seeming to take some kind of judgement. The judgement either being flying off free or being pecked to death by its fellows. Anyone else heard of or actually witnessed this ? And is there any other animal apart from humans (less the pecking of course) that does this kind of thing ?

Lee.

I think a poetic term for a collection of crows is a "Murder of Crows" which tie in with these tribunals or the links crows and ravens etc have to battlefileds and death in general. There are several posts on the web about how crows are meant to congregate in these courts but they speculate that if they happen then the defendant crow is probably ill, dying or an intruder into that flocks territory.

Never seen it happen and don't know anyone that has.

The area where I live has a lot of Hooded crows but they do not seem to gather together as much as in other areas. They tend to live in pairs and keep to their own. Lately there has been a strong expansion in the numbers of Corvidae with Jay, Crow and Magpie populations all booming.
Anyway to return to your initial question I have heard a similar thing about Magpies. When they gather in large groups these groups are called parliaments because one of the birds usually appears to be addressing the others gathered around it, like a parliament of old.

Saw a Crows Court about 30yrs ago.I was potato picking for a local farmer near my Wiltshire village at the time.The farm worker driving the tractor stopped near me and pointed to the side of a hill where the crows had already gathered.They were about a 1/4 of a mile away from us formed in a circle about 100yrds in diameter with one crow right in the middle.We thought that there were about 100/120 crows in all,very evenly spaced out.Because they were on the side of a hill the shape of the circle looked perfectly oval to us,freaked me a bit just because of the perfection of it all.After about 10 mins and a lot of noise the crow in the center took to the air and flew off, it was a if the rest gave it a bit of a head start before they all took flight and gave chase.Did not see what happened after this but the farmer told me he had seen courts before and it usually ended in death. By the way,Crows are said to be the most intelligent birds on the planet!!! Hope this helps.Cheerz Wilz64.