Carrion Crow

A big, heavy crow, 45 to 47 cm long and 370 to 650 g, black all over: plumage, bill, legs and feet.¹ The bill is stout and blunt, with feathers covering its base, and the crown is rather flat. In good light the black has a gloss, greenish on the head and wings and more purple on the back, and a bird in worn plumage looks dull, unglossed black.²

Adults weighed by BTO ringers average 509 g.³ In flight a crow is level and steady, with slow wingbeats, often low over fields and gardens; it has broad wings and a slightly rounded tail.⁴

Males and females look alike, and young birds are much like them. Young crows in their first months are duller, sooty black, with looser feathers, a greyer eye and, when they open their bills, a pinkish-red mouth (an adult's is grey inside). Some first-year birds show pale patches on the wings.

Four black birds are easily confused: the Carrion Crow, Rook, Raven and Jackdaw.⁵

An adult Rook has a bare, greyish-white face at the base of a thinner, pointier bill, a peaked head and shaggy, feathered thighs, and it is usually seen in company.⁶ A young Rook's bill is all black, so it looks much more like a crow: check the bill shape and the peaked head. In flight a crow's wings look broader and less fingered than a Rook's. A Rook's call is softer and huskier than a crow's ringing caw.

A Raven is far bigger, 60 to 68 cm, with a thick, powerful bill, a shaggy throat, a diamond- or wedge-shaped tail in flight and a deep "cronk". See Raven or crow? A Jackdaw is much smaller, 34 cm, with a grey nape, pale eyes and a short "chack".

The Hooded Crow is the same size and shape, but grey on the back and underparts. It is the commoner crow in Ireland and the Isle of Man, and replaces the Carrion Crow in most of north and west Scotland.⁷ Where the two overlap, in parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, they interbreed, and the hybrids show a mix of grey and black.

Whether they are one species or two is unsettled. British ornithologists treated the Hooded Crow as a separate species from 2002, but the global checklist AviList, which the BTO adopted in January 2026, counts both as one species and says more research is needed.⁸ Their genes mix far beyond the hybrid zone, and almost all the fixed differences lie in one small stretch of DNA linking genes for feather colour and for vision, which may help each kind choose a mate of its own colour.⁹ One explanation of the two colour forms goes back to the last Ice Age, when the all-black crows sat out the cold in Iberia and the grey ones further east; where they met again, they began to interbreed.¹⁰

The familiar call is a harsh, flat "kraa" or "caa", usually given three to six times on one pitch. Crows sometimes give a deeper, almost Raven-like "konk".

They have a song too, though few people notice it: a bubbling mix of call notes with some mimicry.

Hear them all, with recordings and spectrograms: crow sounds and what they mean.

All year, almost everywhere in England, Wales and most of Scotland, except the far north-west, where the Hooded Crow takes over. In Ireland they live only on the eastern fringes. On Breeding Bird Survey squares they are seen most often in towns, and are also common on pasture farmland, in villages and in broadleaved woods, and they also live on moorland and coasts, and along estuaries.

Beyond Britain they live across western Europe, from Spain and Portugal to Denmark, western Germany and northern Italy, and in eastern Asia from Siberia to Japan.

Look for a lone crow or a pair feeding on a lawn or field, flying low and steady over the fields, or perched on a post or a treetop, and listen for the repeated "kraa". A crowd of black birds feeding together is more likely to be Rooks or Jackdaws.

Hardly. British Carrion Crows are largely sedentary: of 945 recoveries of ringed crows, none came from outside Britain and Ireland, and the longest recorded journeys are a few hundred kilometres.¹¹ Some crows from inland continental Europe drift south and west in winter, and the eastern Asian population is partly migratory.

Ten Hooded Crows ringed in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany between 1919 and 1951 have been found in Britain, from Suffolk to the Highlands, and none since.

Almost anything. Carrion Crows are omnivores but mainly meat-eating scavengers: earthworms and other invertebrates, small mammals, frogs, shellfish, birds' eggs and nestlings, and carrion, the dead animals that give the crow its name, with a little grain, seeds and fruit, and scraps in towns.

They feed almost entirely on the ground. Pairs patrol roads early in the morning for roadkill, turn over dung, stones and seaweed for insects, and gather on freshly mown hay and stubble. On the shore they open shellfish by carrying them up and dropping them onto rocks, again if needed. They store surplus food to come back to later.

See what crows eat for more.

Crows come to gardens for scraps, wary at first, then returning once they learn it is safe, sometimes making quick raids on a bird table. If you feed birds, the RSPB now advises against bird tables and other flat feeders, which spread disease most easily, and asks people to clean feeders weekly.¹²

Carrion Crows nest early. In Britain the first clutch is laid, on average, on 7 April, and most between mid-March and the end of April. They raise one brood a year.³

The nest is big: a heap of sticks and twigs, often with bones, wire or heather worked in, set on a base of mud, with a deep cup lined thickly with wool, fur, grass and feathers. Most are high in the crown of a tall tree, but crows also nest on pylons, cliff ledges and old buildings, and even on the ground. Both birds build, the female doing most of the work, over about 20 days.

The clutch is usually 3 or 4 eggs. The female does almost all the incubating, for 18 to 20 days, and for the first nine or ten days the male brings her food; and the young leave the nest at about 29 days old. They depend on their parents for several weeks more, and some stay with them through their first winter. See crow nesting and baby crows.

Most Carrion Crows breed as a pair, but in one long-studied population in northern Spain about three-quarters of territories were held by groups of up to nine crows, in which grown-up young helped their parents.¹³ Other members were immigrants, mostly males related to the breeder of the same sex, and some shared in the breeding.¹⁴ The helpers feed the chicks and defend the territory.

Breeding pairs hold a territory and defend their nest, mostly against other crows. Pairs are long-term and stay together all year, even in a flock. Crows without a territory roam in loose flocks. At a favourite feeding place, such as a rubbish tip or a tidal mudflat, 50 to 100 may gather, and up to 5,000 may roost together, in mixed flocks, in tall trees.

They are clever and curious. They remember how people and other animals have treated them, ignoring harmless ones and avoiding those that have been aggressive. In Japan, town crows famously drop walnuts on roads for cars to crack, then collect them when the traffic stops. Crows also seem to play: sliding down a sloping roof again and again, or hanging upside down from a washing line.

See do crows remember faces?

A Carrion Crow that survives to breed typically lives about 4 years, first breeding at 2; about half of adults survive from one year to the next.³

Some live far longer. The oldest on record was ringed in its first year at Dirleton, East Lothian, in June 1996 and found dead at Gullane, 4 km away, in May 2017: 20 years 10 months 7 days later.¹⁵ That bird is also the oldest Carrion Crow on the European list.¹⁶ See how long crows live.

The Carrion Crow is on the UK Green List and is of Least Concern worldwide. There are about 1.1 million territories in the UK (2016).³

UK numbers climbed for about three decades from the early 1970s and have changed little since the early 2000s. Breeding Bird Survey counts were up 15% between 1995 and 2024, with a rise in England but no clear change in Scotland or Wales, and down 4% between 2014 and 2024.¹⁷ Few studies have looked at why. Better breeding success has been important: nests have failed less often since 1968, and crows lay about 8 days earlier. More food and the spread of towns may have helped.

Crows were long persecuted as "vermin" by gamekeepers and farmers. Across much of Europe they have increased since gamekeeping declined after the 1920s, and faster from the 1950s, as suburban gardens and parks gave them safer homes. In Britain, though, the BTO finds little evidence that less gamekeeping explains the rise: the numbers of crows killed on shooting estates show no overall change since 1961.

Crows take eggs and young birds, and they are sometimes blamed for the decline of other species. The BTO's summary is that they may reduce songbird breeding locally, but an effect on whole populations is uncertain. For ground-nesting waders the studies differ: one found three of six wader species nested more successfully where crows and gulls were controlled, while another, on moorland, found predator control made no difference to wader trends.

Like all wild birds, Carrion Crows, their eggs and their nests in use are protected by law in Great Britain¹⁸ and Northern Ireland.¹⁹ In England, Wales and Scotland, general licences allow authorised people to kill or take them for set purposes: in England to conserve wild birds of conservation concern or to prevent serious damage to livestock, their food or crops²⁰; in Wales to protect livestock and, from February to August, to protect the eggs and chicks of listed species²¹; in Scotland to conserve wild birds or prevent serious damage.²² In England and Wales users must first make reasonable efforts with other lawful methods. The Carrion Crow is not named on any of Northern Ireland's three general licences for 2026.²³