Stone the Crows: In praise of a neglected high flyer

On the Norfolk Broads, next to a canal bisecting a colossal sweep of land, the nature writer Mark Cocker sits cross-legged. He observes his surroundings with the keen instinct of a "birder", binoculars at the ready. The landscape here is flat for miles. Cocker seems lost among the lines of dead thistles, which match his sitting height; his soft voice is almost equalled by the urgent fizz of dragonflies.

He refers to this place, Haddiscoe island, hemmed in by the rivers Yare and Waveney, as "crow country". This, also the title of his latest book, is a reference to its residents from the crow family, specifically rooks. The book describes how in roosts around here, 15km east of Norwich, the birds gather together for security, sometimes in staggeringly large groups as big as 40,000.

A local resident, Cocker has used densely evocative prose to chart the bird's immense influence and versatility. He is one of Britain's best known and most erudite rural commentators, and counts among his friends some of the country's top bird experts. But many of them, he complains, have overlooked the importance of this endlessly fascinating animal.

Crows, and fellow members of the corvid family, do not look sexy. They are universally common, and may seem of little interest to twitchers. But Cocker believes they've not been given their due. Not only are these brooding creatures among the nation's most important birds, they're also its most intelligent. Crows make tools and store food, and their feeding patterns have shaped rural England. The British jay, for example, is estimated to store around two billion acorns every year in the soil, creating thousands of acres of natural oak forests.

Corvids are among the world's smartest creatures, with mental capabilities comparable to primates and characters enthused into myth, legend, art and literature. Outside the UK, from the Arctic Circle to America's Death Valley, the crow family has shown an adaptability matched by few other creatures on the planet. And while our country's population of rooks is the largest in Europe – and its history here is extricably linked to humans' – its ubiquity should not dent its fascination.

Cocker raises his binoculars to his face. "The critical thing for me was its ordinariness," he explains. "I wanted to make the rook an icon of wonder – this thing that's everywhere, but which is overlooked. Their fascination for me is about the magic of the everyday."

The author, who has been obsessed by nature since childhood, flew on to natural historians' radar with his 2002 book, Birders. This tongue-in-cheek take on the jaunty underbelly of birdwatching won him plaudits, as did his 2005 tome, Birds Britannica, about the cultural history of birds. Crow Country, a more unlikely bestseller, emerged from the financial security proffered by this earlier pair of works.

Cocker, 47, became obsessed by rooks when he moved house from Norwich to the Norfolk countryside in late 2001. The upheaval threw him into a depression, and he sought solace in his passion: birds. Rooks – with their dense black silky feathers and grey-black bills – were regularly flying over his house.

Within weeks he followed them to discover their destination, and found their nearby roosts, some near Haddiscoe island. He decided to craft a book following in a long tradition of writing about the British landscape. In Crow Country, Cocker fuses personal accounts of his surroundings with detailed observations from the field. He claims to be a great admirer of biologist EO Wilson, who once wrote: "It is possible to spend a lifetime in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree."

Cocker's writing shows evidence of this fascination in small wonders; it is poetic and excruciatingly detailed. A good example of this is when he describes a rook caught in extremely sharp sunlight – when sometimes they can cease to look black and become almost irradiantly white: "The wings glisten, the body is lost to the background so that a whole flock can become a disembodied swirl or huge shiny black petals, or a flurry of metallic flakes."

He is also keen to emphasise where the line must be drawn between fact and fiction. "I would say there's a large body of writing on nature that is inaccurate, that sentimentalises nature, interpreting nature in a way that suits the writer," he says. "The facts are subjugated by the writer's feelings. But my writing is in the poetry of fact. This is not a shallow piece of study. I have found almost every paper on the subject in the English language."

Cocker's fascination with his local environment, combined with his exploration of corvid behaviour, led him to study the rook's place in the scientific world, and then its wider signifance. He discovered through his research how the crow family is remarkably successful – its roughly 120 species have at some point occupied most of the Earth's land surface outside Antarctica.

This has partly been accomplished because this group of birds will eat almost anything, from insects to crops (especially corn) and occasionally even the eggs of other birds. Voracious feeding habits can sometimes be a hindrance, though: in the UK, most corvids are classified as vermin, and subject to control by farmers, sportsmen and gamekeepers.

"Even in the frozen north," writes Cocker, "the northern raven, the largest corvid on the planet, extends its range beyond the Arctic Circle to the edge of the pack ice, where its uncanny survival skills have earned it the status of cultural hero among the Inuit people."

Cocker goes on to detail how the crow family has flown through many strands of British culture, beginning with an anecodote about his own childhood. As a boy, his father described to him a moment when the elder Cocker noticed what appeared to be a "court-like" gathering of rooks at the side of the road. It seemed to him that the rooks were "discussing an urgent matter". A ring of birds was scrutinising two others that were stood at its centre.

Later, Cocker's father saw several black-feathered corpses at the same location, and remarked that there had seemingly been some kind of "judgment".

This memory became embedded in the author's psyche for many years. In some traditions, rooks are said to foresee the future and sense the approach of death. It was said that if a rookery, the bird's nesting and breeding area, was abandoned, bad fortune would befall the family that owned the land.

"The bird is so important because it seems to live in the way that we do," says Cocker. "It seems to inhabit little parishes. Its sociability is the bass note for the use of the rook as a metaphor of ourselves."

Cocker writes how one Victorian sentimentalist, the Reverend Bosworth Smith, an Oxford don, interprets a rook holding a twig as a symbolic "badge of office", evidence of its status above other rooks. "As the planet performed its utterly indifferent evolutions through time and space," he recounts, "how pleasant to think that some small portion of the natural world might just have a human soul."

In Macbeth, the eponymous thane registers the fall of dusk with the words: "Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to th' rocky wood." Writers frequently make comparisons between rook vocalisations and our own voices. The poet WS Graham, hearing the birds in his adopted Cornish village of Madron, wrote in mid-20th century poem "The Word's Name" that: "The talking rooks across/ The white Winter put/ Their noisy flying language."

Cocker says: "What was weird was that I had uncovered the layers of meaning that rooks had acquired." The writer describes how, on television programmes, the caw of a rook is often played by producers to signal a cut to some bucolic idyll. "The sound of rooks is universal," he says.

Looking at him in the field, Cocker resembles a snooker player, with his pasty face and fidgeting hands. A birder for some 25 years, he says he is looking for anything out of the ordinary. "It's an instant process," he says. "Like driving a car. Most people are not engaged in this thing – I'm looking for everything I know might be there."

Cocker's birdwatching pals call him "the shaman" because he identifies 90 per cent of the species he sees. He says he almost instinctively picks out rooks from larger groups of birds, so absorbed is he in their behaviour. Of being a birdwatcher, Cocker is unapologetic.

"Why is it that people who are absorbed by something are seen as sad? To be cool, to be detached from things and to have no passionate feeling is the real sadness, in my opinion."

Cocker's colourful writing is an attempt to make wildlife accessible. In the current climate of environmental change, when species are dying due to global warming, this could be seen as a means of re-engaging people with the natural world.

"Every action we take has a consequence for the environment. There will be a massive extinction of species. Global warming is both a crisis and an opportunity for us to see the value of nature. Ecology teaches us that we are related to everything else," he says.

This interest in a human reaquaintance with the environment pervades Crow Country. A large chunk of the book is devoted to the history of naturalist writing about Cocker's surrounding area, his little piece of countryside, and his obsession with rooks provides a conduit through which this flows. He writes, for example, how the Yare valley and its environs are steeped in cultural and ecological history.

Haddiscoe island, where he has spent many hours observing birds, used to be underwater until the Romans began the process of land reclamation 2,000 years ago. As it developed into an expansive area of grass, rooks arrived.

"The rook's relationship with the UK is entwined with humans' relationship with the landscape," explains Cocker. "Its presence is dependent on our presence. No humans, no birds. Our destinies are entwined."

The author colourfully recounts the thoughts of the Reverend Richard Lubbock, another Yare valley-dwelling bird enthusiast whose colourful 1819 writings recall that he happily shot 11 bitterns (a wading bird), "without searching particularly for them".

In 1721, in a tour through England and Wales,the author Daniel Defoe described the area as "a long tract of the richest meadows, and the largest, take them all together, that are anywhere in England."

Indeed, the Yare valley, partly thanks to its diverse range of fauna, has a near legendary status among environmentalists. Around 20 years ago, Andrew Lees, the late Friends of the Earth campaigns director, lay down in front of bulldozers to prevent this crucial habitat being converted into featureless arable farmland.

Like Lees' famous stand, the rook has an iconic status among those that love the region. "It is a fixture of human imagination," Cocker says. "The crow family is, by nature, more common on this landscape than anywhere else in Europe."

Here, close to the spot where Lees once took to the earth, in the saucer-like environs of Haddiscoe island, Cocker's energy is beginning to flag. He is drained from the heightened state of alertness that accompanies his trips. He springs to his feet, and attempts to summarise what Crow Country has come to mean.

"I battle with my trenchant materialist scientific friends because I think there is a spiritual value to our relationship with nature," he says. "I find it fraught with danger. I think [my friends] feel liberated and empowered but they just don't like the language that I use. I feel spiritually uplifted by this landscape." BBC producer Tim Dee, to whom Crow Country is dedicated, describes Cocker as having a "constant sense of sensual awareness of the world".

"Just as the flight lines of the rooks interlace this country," Cocker writes, "so my pursuit of them has drawn the whole landscape together as one distinct place."

As the author puts away his notebook and begins the walk back to his car, the evening silhouettes small flecks of matter darting in the sky.

Crow Country by Mark Cocker is published by Jonathan Cape, £16.99. To order a copy for the special price of £15.29 (with free P&P) call Independent Books Direct on 08700 798 897, or visit www.independent.co.uk

Black magic: Britain's native corvids

Crows are the biggest of the passerines – the songbirds. Strange to think that a raven is on the same bit of the evolutionary tree as the chaffinch, but then evolution is full of unlikely surprises. Several of the corvidae share characteristics that have made them more interesting to us than many other medium-sized birds: intelligence, tameability and a penchant for stealing bright objects. Here is a brief guide to Britain's resident species.

Carrion Crow (Corvus corone)

Probably people's least favourite corvid: think of the name, and think of "scarecrow". All black and to some eyes, slightly sinister; if ever a bird was born to wear dark glasses in the daytime, this is it. Carrion crows are opportunistic feeders, and like Shakespeare's Autolycus, snappers-up of unconsidered trifles; they have successfully invaded the towns, and are present in every London park. They nest singly, unlike rooks which nest in colonies.

Chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax)

Perhaps the birdwatcher's favourite corvid, choughs (pronounced "chuffs") are splendid, charismatic birds, their black plumage set off by a scarlet down-turned bill and bright red legs. Inhabitants of mountains and coastal cliffs, they are acrobatic flyers (and have been seen to fly upside down). The chough is the symbol of Cornwall, but became extinct there in 1973. However, in 2002 a pair bred in Cornwall once again (having probably flown over from Brittany) and this year two pairs bred successfully.

Jay (Garrulus glandarius)

The jay, by far the prettiest of our corvids, has followed the magpie into the suburbs, but its shyness means it is not nearly so visible as its cousin. It has a distinctive squawk, and its principal food is acorns: its scientific name means "chattering acorn-eater".

Rook (Corvus frugilegus)

Superficially very similar to the carrion crow, rooks can be told apart by a white face-patch and a high-domed head. If you see a crow-like bird in a central London park it's a carrion crow, because rooks need the countryside, and in particular ploughed fields, where they search for their favourite food, leatherjackets (the larvae of daddy longlegs). The last rookery in the capital, in south-east London, closed for business 50 years ago.

Jackdaw (Corvus monedula)

It was named in Latin by Linnaeus as "the little money bird", probably after its habit of stealing bright objects such as coins. The smallest of the crows, the jackdaw is bigger than a blackbird but smaller than a carrion crow and is distinguished by a grey nape (the back of its neck). Pet jackdaws were once common. It was originally the daw, as the magpie was the pie – then they were given first names (Jack and Mag).

Hooded Crow (Corvus corone cornix)

This sub-species of the carrion crow is found in Scotland and Ireland. It boasts much more striking plumage, with a grey back, nape and stomach contrasting with the black of the rest. The is the "corbie" of all those old Scottish poems, such as the "Twa Corbies", one of which tells the other of a new-slain knight whose eyes are just waiting to be pecked out. The same race of the carrion crow you will see if you go to Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.

Magpie (Pica pica)

Once a bird of the countryside, from the 1970s onwards the magpie began moving into British urban areas and is now ubiquitous. Striking in its black-and-white plumage, its high visibility has led to it being blamed for the decline in songbirds that is evident in British gardens. But although it will take passerines, and their chicks and eggs, ornithologists insist that there is no observable statistical link between magpie predation and songbird decline. No matter. People cheerfully hate it, anyway.

Raven (Corvus corax)

The biggest of the crows and one of the great birds of legend, freely associated with death, most likely from its habit of feeding on the dead bodies left on battlefields. (The collective noun for ravens is "an unkindness"). By the end of the 19th century gamekeepers on the great aristocratic shooting estates had exterminated the raven from most of England, but it is now steadily spreading back from its strongholds in the mountains of the north and west.

Michael McCarthy

Lord of the wings: culture and the crow

Crows in Myth

In mythology, crows find themselves confused, and interchangeable, with ravens. Whatever one calls the corvids, they have played a potent role in the popular imaginations of cultures all over the world. They are demi-Gods, harbingers of doom, safe-keepers and messengers.

The ancient Greeks accounted for the crow's black feathers with a tale of infidelity. Ischys, the son of Elatus and Hippea, had fallen in love with Coronis, who was carrying Apollo's child. When a passing crow – who was then, like all crows, white-feathered – told Apollo of Coronis' infidelity, he was so angered that he turned the crow's feathers black, before killing Ischys.

In Norse mythology the god Odin keeps two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who represent Thought and Memory. Odin sends his ravens around the world at daybreak, to bring him news. In Irish and Welsh myth, the Raven plays the role of prophet, and in the shamanistic cultures of the North-west American Indians, the raven helps to create the world.

Crows in Culture

Perhaps the most famous literary corvid is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" – a work first published in the New York Evening Mirror in 1845. The narrative poem is a gothic tale of a distraught young woman visited by a talking raven in the night, and gives an account of her descent into madness. The eponymous bird is thought to have been inspired by Grip, in Dickens' Barnaby Rudge.

Ted Hughes's haunting work, Crow, was published in 1970. Hughes started to write the "Crow" poems as a response to the American artist Leonard Baskin, who rendered crows in pen and ink. The collection would become one of Hughes's most celebrated works, delving into Christian mythology and Hughes's bleak experience.

Shakespeare used the raven both as an image of wickedness, and as a harbinger of ill tidings. Juliet, for instance, calls Romeo a dissembler, by brandishing him a "dove-feather'd raven". The threat of the raven was more pressing for tragic heroes. Othello talks of Iago's pernicious suggestion, which "comes o'er my memory/ As does the raven o'er the infected house/ Boding to all." And, when Lady Macbeth spits that "the raven himself is hoarse/ That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan/ Under my battlements," we know the game is up.

In Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain, Faunia rhapsodises about becoming a "crow", and washing off the stain of humanity.

Crows also have their place in film, with a famously malevolent presence in Alfred Hitchcock's chilling 1963 film, The Birds.

Ed Caesar