Crow and Raven

Feed the crow and watch the crow!

Why did our ancestors say that?

Are crows really very malicious creatures? 

Treacherous! No matter what you do, the crow will not give up its treachery! That's its character!

Are crows really traitors?

There's not the slightest love in them! 

You think you are its owner, but it never sees you as an owner.

Even if he feeds you with what he eats from your hand, he is not grateful to you! 

It will gouge your eyes out when it finds the chance!

***

In fact, crows are a very intelligent species in the bird world.

They also love to make messes.

For example, I once saw a video on the internet of a crow playing with a cat's tail. Some of you may know this video. It drove the cat crazy.

There are also times when a few crows get together and form a gang. There are also videos like that.

I mean, they can act collectively and they are very smart.

***

Yes, crows are one of the most interesting members of the bird kingdom.

There are legends that they live quite a long time. 

Of course, this information is not true. It is known that they live 15-20 years at most in nature. With special care, they can live up to 30 years, for example. The longest-lived crow on record lived for 40 years.

So there is no such thing as a crow that knows your grandfather, they live for 200 years!

However, the most important characteristic of crows, actually we should call it their weakness, is their fondness for shiny things.

Therefore, they are famous for stealing shiny things like trinkets.

In fact, the saying "feed the crow and let it scratch your eye out" was inspired by the crows' weakness for these bead-like things. Maybe he really gouged someone's eyes out in ancient times, if he was a crow feeder.

After all, our eyes are bead-like organs. The eyes may attract the animal's attention.

In other words, if a crow gouges out your eyes, it does it because of its character, not because you are a person whose eyes are worth gouging out, or it does not do this atrocity thinking about it.

***

We Turks met crows in ancient times.

Karga is etymologically a completely Turkish word. It means black bird. It was probably given this name inspired by the sound it makes. It is mentioned in Uighur records dating back to 1000.

I think the "kar" of the crow is actually the sound it makes, so it is not the "kar" of "kara" but the "kar" of the crow. 

In other languages, the crow has names related to the sound it makes.

In this case, I wonder if the "ga" of crow means bird? Are there any other bird names ending in ga? 

For example, the sound of a chicken is "gıt", why aren't chickens called gıtga?

Anyway, it could be a crow, it could be a black bird, it could have an etymological background, it could be the sound it makes.

As you know, there is also raven in Turkish, although they are from the same family, raven is the bigger one of the crow. Etymologically, this word is related to the north. Kuz, sunless place, shadow. Raven is associated with darkness, black color. It means a bird similar to a crow.

It is popularly said that a raven's young looks like a hawk. (There are also those who say phoenix instead of hawk!)

***

Yes, crows make an unbearable noise, especially when they roost in flocks on trees. 

The word "commotion" is probably derived from the sounds that these flocks of crows make together.

I worked in a city called Kostroma, a beautiful city on the banks of the Volga river. The city of the Romanovs, the last Tsar. There were a lot of crows there.

***

Especially when crops are planted, it is an old tradition to plant scarecrows so that they do not haunt the fields. The ancients used to plant scarecrows in the fields because they were useful.

I guess this tradition is no more now.

I guess you know the story of little Mustafa and his sister Makbule chasing crows in their uncle's broad bean field. I love this story.

Yes, there are species of crows that haunt the crops. They call them crop crows.

***

Indeed, although crows may seem like harmful beings, especially when they multiply a lot, both with their noise and the trinkets they steal, or when they haunt the fields when crops are planted, they are actually part of the balance of nature.

They are especially beneficial to the natural balance as they eat insect eggs, tree caterpillars and other insect species that are mostly harmful to fruit trees. 

Also, since they eat seeds with hard shells, they soften these seeds with their feces and carry them to distant places, which is also beneficial for the proliferation of natural diversity.

Yes, in nature, some plants can only reproduce with bird droppings. Otherwise, plants with hard-shelled seeds have no chance of reproduction. 

Crows are also a life cycle for some of these plants.

And since some species of crows also feed on carrion, they are also useful for the elimination of carcasses in nature. Of course, these species are called carrion crows. 

So nature establishes its own balance somehow.

It is said that there are forty species of crows and they are geographically spread almost all over the world.

My favorite is the black and white one called the pied crow, also called magpie. Magpies have long tails.

But this love of mine does not stem from Beşiktaş.

To tell you the truth, I don't have any feeling of being a fan of any team among the big three, or according to some, the big four.

***

There are many stories about crows, one of the most famous being Aesop's story of the crow and the fox.

You know, the story in which the fox, who wants to take the cheese from the crow's mouth, compliments the crow on how beautiful your voice is, the fox tells the crow to sing a song with that beautiful voice and let's have fun, and when the crow believes and opens its mouth with that awful voice, the fox disappears as soon as it grabs the cheese that falls down, that story is one of Aesop's fables.

Aesop the fabulist is believed to have lived in ancient Greece in the 6th century BC and is thought to be the author or compiler of the animal stories known as Aesop's Fables. Aesop the Storyteller probably compiled the tales that were being told by word of mouth at the time.

Similar stories are also found in the Jataka tales from the 4th century BC in India and the Pança-Tantra animal tales dating from 100-300 BC.

The later famous storyteller was the French poet and writer La Fontaine, who lived between 1621 and 1695.

Do we have animal stories or fairy tales?

***

Sometimes we find chicken bones on the balcony. The wife is amazed when she sees them, wondering where they came from, but I know that this is the work of crows. 

They land on the railings of the roof above the balcony and gnaw on the bones left over from the barbecue parties that are held in abundance around the area, especially in summer. Probably because we have built a railing on the edge of the roof, they find our roof quite suitable for roosting, and there you go, we occasionally find chicken bones on our balcony.

I wish they would bring trinkets like they say. 

I don't know, if they had brought a thick gold chain with a big bead on it, I don't think I would have said why did you bring it here and leave it here.

But the crows in my neighborhood seem to be interested in scraping bones.

Of course, there aren't that many crows in my neighborhood, but every now and then I see crows landing on the roof.

It seems that everyone has to scrape bones these days, including crows.

Love crows, they are cute animals.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow.