Crow Business
Crow Business Part 1
I
Birds
Don’t’ blame our expansion for your postcode brawls
We only take what we need
Which is really just all
II
A conflict is raging in the glowering skies above the peace of the Downs.
A battle for a tiny piece of Britain
But there are no machine-gun rattling Messerschmitts to be seen
No plucky Spitfires or Hurricanes trailing clouds of glory home
The dogfighting combatants wheeling, cawing, swooping and shrieking overhead
Are neither goodies nor baddies
Just birds
Crows and gulls
Squeezed inland and outland and into the breaches
White gulls on green downs
Black crows on the beaches
Birds not of a feather
Must fight forever
Survival of the fittest
That’s the lesson life teaches
Nations at war ranting populist speeches
Old football scores, birds squabbling
Darwin's thesis
When all’s said and done it's much the same thing
But in this poem who shall have the upper wing?
III
Well
Crows are masters of the air and button bright
I saw one re-steal a sandwich from a seagull
In flight
Livid it was
Artful and crafty
In solving problems they take a particular delight
Japanese crows have cracked cracking walnuts
Using traffic lights!
Corvids have an exceptional memory
The land we claim is under their sky
They will attack and bully those who transgress their territories
They can even recognize individual human faces
Especially if they belong to people who’ve done them harm
So, if this means you
Best keep your head down
As you’re passing through
IV
As for gulls
Don’t be fooled by their cheeky seaside postcard persona
To gull means to deceive but I’ve never known a more brazen thief
No mean flyers themselves
Apex opportunists
Intent on their share
And yours as well
So just beware
And they’re bigger and faster than their corvid foes
So, the match is pretty even
I suppose
V
But in this skirmish at least
The more organised crows are claiming victory
Mobbed and harried away by the clan
The white birds are on the run.
The victorious defenders are returning triumphantly home
Their rasping calls echo across the sky in noisy celebration
In the distance, safe
A retreating gull screeches one last insult
They’ll be back
Crow Business Part 2
VI
Through the mist and drizzle
Like grainy footage of an old prop engine fighter plane
A windblown juvenile descends
Approaching the runway
Too fast
He lands
First on one foot and then the other
And caught off-balance
One wing undercut by a sudden gust
He skids and skitters to a halt on the shining grass
VII
The young bird looks around suspiciously and preens himself
Have some laughing gulls or worse,
Any of his peers observed his less than elegant landing?
Respect is all in this pecking order.
He consoles himself with an unfortunate bug that’s strayed
Too close to his razor beak
One lightning stab and it’s down the hatch
Soon other members of the squadron arrive
Fluttering to the ground like black snowdrops
An impromptu war cabinet is forming
Time to refuel, discuss tactics and exchange battle stories
VIII
A grey muzzled, official- looking bird spots me, lurking
He hops forward to assess my potential threat
He’s definitely of some importance (if only of self)
A wing commander perhaps
Possibly even an Air Marshall
But I can’t take him seriously
Crows epitomise grace on the wing
But on the ground….
With their stiff- legged hop steps, they seem comical
Silent movie stars
I almost expect this one to produce a tiny bowler hat and cane
I can' help but smile
The grizzled veteran fixes me with a fierce corvid eye
A sideways look that glitters with an alien, earlier intelligence
Ca Caw, Ca Caw, he croaks
(it sounded a bit like that, but more rasping)
I stop smile
IX
“How big you think you are (says the Crow)
Yet you krawl akkross the ground
And you kannot fly
You are like bugs to us
As we soar and weave across the Sky
There was a battle in this place long season ago
No time at all in the mind of a Crow
High in the air we watched your warriors die
Chop, chop, chop, stabbing and sticking
Such a waste we thought
Why leave behind such glorious pickings?
Blood on our beaks, slapping and licking
Such fleshy delights, such succulent eating
We can hardly wait until your next meeting
Laugh you do
But when your shops close
Who will survive, us or you?
Out here under the big Sky
When your world has closed
Then we will feast
Now begone!
This crow business is no business of yours”
X
Yes, I know I don’t speak Crow
I made that last bit up
I can only guess at what they’re really thinking
Humans anthromorphize and Disneyfy
We turn animals to our likeness
To make sense of their otherness
But our stories are our own, not theirs
XI
Why do I like Crows so much?
Hard to say
I mean I certainly don’t like all of their ways
They can be nearly as cruel as us
They’re also carrion eaters
But so are a lot of humans
Dark heralds, harbingers
Crossers of portals between the worlds
No chilly committal in an English churchyard
Is complete without the caw of a watching crow
And I feel connected to a realer life as I watch them
watching me
They know something about living and dying
That I’d like to know
Perhaps If crows do recognise faces
These ones at least will know I mean them no harm
But now it’s turned chilly and it’s time to go
Coffee and the comforts of home are calling
Suddenly there’s a thrumming sound and a change of pressure
As if in response to some arcane signal the Murder lift off as one bird
Air is displaced from beneath beating wings
And amidst a cacophony of rasping calls,
Spirals skywards in an inky shape- shifting vortex
Towards the roost
© SEH
10.05.25