My late mother-in-law always said that after her foreign travels she knew she was back in Australia when she heard the call of the magpie. At dusk at Brisbane airport recently it was the echoing call of another Australian bird species, a Torresian crow, that told me I was on home soil after arriving on a flight from Taiwan.
The Torresian crow not only told me I had arrived in Australia but l was actually in Brisbane. Australia has five members of the Corvidae family – crows and ravens – and different species tend to be found in different state capitals.
If I had arrived in Melbourne or Adelaide, the little raven would have welcomed me. In Sydney and Perth, the Australian raven, in Hobart the forest raven. Inland, the Australian raven is the common crow species in Canberra, in the dry interior, Alice Springs, the little crow rules the roost.
Although I am always acutely aware of birdsong wherever I travel it is usually the crows and ravens that I hear first, wherever I might be at home, or abroad. Crows seem to love airports.
Setting off on my latest trip to Britain via Taiwan I had expected to be greeted in the land of my birth by the familiar “caw” of the carrion crow but there was a little surprise in store. Because of a total shutdown of the air-traffic control system at Heathrow Airport, our flight was diverted to southern Germany and I found myself next morning being woken – still in a jet-lag daze – by the call of Munich crows.
Most species of birds are known to develop regional accents and I could have sworn that the European carrion crows in Munich had a guttural tinge to their caws, although that might have been the German lager combined with jet-lag clouding my senses.
There is not a city in the world without one of the 43 crows and ravens recognised globally. Crows are part of the genus Corvus within the wider Corvidae family that includes jays and European magpies. The genus also includes ravens, rooks, and jackdaws, and they are highly adaptable birds found across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and various Pacific islands.
The crows are highly intelligent, socially complex, and ecologically versatile. This diversity explains why they are widespread and successful, with some species like the house crow reaching populations of over 150 million individuals in South Asia
In Australia, the closely-related ravens and crows look remarkably similar. Ravens, though, are generally slightly larger than crows. The most reliable physical distinction is the colour of the down at the base of their neck feathers, crows have white while ravens have brown or dusky down.
I find the best way to identify them is to learn the songs. That way if your plane is diverted you’ll know exactly where you have landed.