Crows and Corvids in Early Medieval England

_____

This channel's Patreon (thank you very much to anybody who has donated):

[wordwielder]

This is only my humble opinion, but I do hope that you read this Simon. I believe that with videos like these you have found your YouTube ‘niche’. Combining your interest in linguistics with your knowledge of archaeology is very original. Your use of both to try to understand and present the medieval understanding and view of the material world is quite refreshing and not something I have see presented in so accessible and concise a format.

[peterthomas]

Had a rook as a teenager that had fallen out of a nest & I took home.
Extremely intelligent bird and very devoted - I used to take the bus to school about 4 miles away and he(?) would often follow it and land on my shoulder as I got off.
Wasn't allowed in school of course, but was always waiting for me when I got home. Eventually after several years, he gradually returned to the wild and I hope he had a good life. Fifty years later, still miss him, they're amazing birds.

[richlondonrich]

I was walking down the street. A magpie was trying to eat a corn on the cob left on the pavement. Two pigeons were circling him and challenging him. The magpie retreated two meters. So I came over and moved the pigeons off. The magpie looked at me. I kicked the corn over to the magpie. He looked at me. We shared a moment and then he took off with the corn.
That is my story.

[michaelmcgarrity]

I learned to make Crow Calls as a Child. They really enjoy hollering back and forth with People.
I don't have a clue what any of it means but it's a lot of fun for all.
Ravens here are usually Solitary, Crows hang out in Flocks. Crows have followed me trying to keep the game going.
Crows know how to have Fun. Ravens are grumpy.

[chorabari]

The modern German word for the Eurasian Jay is "Eichelhäher", literally "acorn jay". I note both the explicit link to acorns and the apparent similarity of "häher" and "higera".

[Bildgesmythe]

I remember an old story, I don't remember the source. An old woman was feeding ravens when a young man chastised her. Ravens eat the flesh of fallen warriors! They pluck the eyes of young men. The old woman turned to him and asked Who killed these young men? My Ravens were just cleaning up your sins.

[maggiepieuk]

In my experience as someone who has rescued and rehabilitated crows, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies, they all have a wide range of sounds. Most people don't get close enough to hear any but the loudest calls of course. Rooks in particular have a large vocabulary and talk in long conversations. They count to six, that being the number of forward facing toes! Also, the Cornish language word for jackdaw is chogha (gh is pronounced as the ch in loch), which is one of the main sounds they make. The other commonly heard sound is 'chow' so might relate to ceo?

[MagpieRat]

I can add some anecdotal insight, Carrion Crows in the UK do indeed make a wide variety of vocalisations. I've spent a few years building trust with a large group in my local woods, and I'm constantly hearing new noises from them . My favourite is a soft little "Kyuff" that an individual will make, usually when sat in a tree alone and after having eaten. There's also a "doik, doik, doik" noise like pebbles being dropped into water which I love. The more varied sounds are much quieter than their common raucous calls, I've only really learned them since my "murder" got comfortable with me and started coming very close and being relaxed around me. I had always thought of crows as quite solitary until I got to know this group - there's usually about 8-10 of them waiting for me, but in the depths of winter I've been met by 30+, all waiting for peanuts!

[windhelmguard]

interestingly the german word for corvid is "Rabenvogel" which means raven-like bird, and the carrion crow is referred to as "Rabenkrähe" (raven-crow) due to how similar it is to the raven, so clearly the raven being the catch all term for "big black bird" has precedent in other Germanic languages, which gives validity to the hypothesis that "hraefn" was used similarly in old english.

[cwmyr]

As someone who loves zoology, history, folklore and linguistics this is amazing! Please more! Maybe British birds of prey next?

[Phoebe_like_the_bird]

This was a cool video! As an american wildlife biologist I was surprised to hear that your crows are quiet, ours are always calling to each other! I was also intrigued that jackdaws make such large groups--that's something that our crows do as well, at least in wintertime.

[malicant]

I got to meet a tame raven some years ago, and I was struck by how large he was. I said hello to him, and he looked at me as if he understood. They're very, very interesting animals.

His name was Edgar :)

[ChestersonJack]

I love this video, don’t know how I haven’t seen it before. One of my favorite little research rabbitholes I’ve had has been going down the origin of the magpie number poem, one I often see now attributed to crows and ravens. I had seen a post on tumblr shifting the attribution in that way and wanted to chime in with more info, but when I went to double check my facts, I found a bit of a mystery on my hands! You may know the common start, “One for sorrow/sadness, two for joy/mirth.” Finding what the first published version was has actually been quite tricky, as a lot of resources that seem to get a “source” correct then go on to quote a different version than appears in that publication, not to mention various reprints and addendums that seem to alter it. Not a lot of people reblogged my response, and I’m not even sure if they’ve read it, but it was fun going on that little journey.

I love learning about history of birds, especially in relation to language and folklore.

[MrJeberg]

One fun fact is that Danish do actually have this similarity you mentioned between jays and magpies since they are called "husskade" (house-skade = magpie) and "skovskade" (forest-skade = jay). "Skati" in Old Norse was a tall lean person, later it came to mean a treetop (especially if the tree had lost its top branches) and thus the two birds with the long tails were called "skade". This pointy meaning of "skade" didn't survive in Modern Danish, but can be found in some Swedish dialects, my etym book tells me.

[JackOfSimm]

1:42

I’m from Denmark and i destinctly recognise crawe as krage, hræfn as ravn and hroc as råge.

Damn it’s interesting to see all of the various influences in early English, the whole language really was a stew, with a bit of everything in it.

[ReverendPuffin]

For the Magpie, when in safe or comfortable surroundings, they make a range of lots noises, the laughing sound in my experience is used as warning call to either alert other magpies to a hazard (such as a cat) or to let other magpies know they're there. I used to have magpies living in the trees outside my window so heard their range of friendly chrips.

[DJMavis]

YouTube recommends many things to me. This is the first time it's ever recommended something I actually wanted to watch.

[breakaleg]

The Swedish word for jackdaw is kaja, as in Norwegian, and it was kaia in old Swedish. Likely onomatopoetic. We don't have any carrion crows where I live, but they can be seen further west. Same with rooks. Ravens love our landfills here. Interesting to note about blackbirds. The Swedish word is koltrast (coal thrush).

[wibblywobblyidiotvision]

Great video, Simon.

Ravens can definitely identify individual humans, even when dealing with individual humans wearing the same clothes (plumage?). I work on the ski lifts in the french alps, a friend of mine has a raven that comes to his lift every morning to see him. It will take food from his hand, but when it's his day off, it will circle around, decide it's not the right person, and go away. I replaced him on his days off for a couple of seasons, and it would eventually come and pick up food left for it, but remained extremely wary of me, normally coming and picking stuff up the instant my back was turned :) It's a very chatty bird, and makes all sorts of odd noises, including imitating the lift's startup siren (which is sort of crowish honk, so go figure).

[flodperlen]

Fascinating work! I'm a Danish speaker and I perfectly understood the Saxon and Middle English words for "crow" and "raven" since these are, unsurprisingly, highly related to their modern Danish counterparts of "krage" and "ravn".