Along the Ozark streams, a favorite place of mine nowadays, as it gets hot and muggy, there comes the cry of a strange type of crow, a kind of caw that sounds like the black rascal is choking on something or trying to gargle. When I take people down the river who aren’t familiar with the ‘fish crow’ they are puzzled by the call.

There’s nothing wrong with the crow they are hearing, it is just a different subspecies, a tiny bit smaller and thinner than a regular crow with a different call entirely. They were not in the Ozarks 10 or 15 years ago but they are spreading northward and westward, wherever wetlands or rivers are found. They don’t live on ridgetops or in deep woods. The scientific name of the fish crow is Corvis ossifragus. The common crow’s scientific name is Corvis brachyrynchos.

From the raven, a northern crow that is found across Canada and much larger than any others, to the smaller fish crow, there are a heck of a lot of separate subspecies of the black rascals everyone seems to look upon rather unfavorably. The common crow, or American crow, is something I know a lot about, because I had several for pets as a boy. They are rascals!

One of my pets, Ol’ Black Joe, got into our house on a hot summer day through a bedroom window that had been left open. He found my mom’s jewelry box. As a wife in the rather poor Dablemont clan, Mom had no expensive jewelry, but she still wanted too keep what she had and she saw Joe take off with some as he flew through the window carrying with him a beakful of shiny treasure. I recovered it, and saved Joe from a shotgun blast. I knew that he took all his treasure to our woodpile, where there were golf tees and spoons and shiny tins and even coins (always pennies and nickels)…and Mom’s jewelry. One old ear-ring showed up that wasn’t even hers! He was one to wander and once showed up on Main Street, several miles away. Eventually he was shot by a farmer who didn’t realize he was a pet.

Some pet crows can live up to ten years old, but if they roam free they aren’t apt to. One pet crow I had when I was about 6 years old won second place in a pet parade in Houston Mo. Mom and Grandma made him a little Styrofoam hat and a vest and he sat on a little perch he was tied to just like he knew he was an attraction as we marched down Main Street, actually cawing at the crowd as we went.

Obviously, Blackie was the crowd favorite, but first place was won by a little girl dressed up cuter than me, carrying a big old furry cat. I wasn’t able to dress up like that, wearing my overalls and a St Louis Cardinals ball cap. I should have worn some kind of shirt, I guess.

But politics were involved. The little girl was the granddaughter of a town matriarch from old days ancestry and the cat had a pedigree! Blackie and me won two dollars though, which mom kept to pay for his hat.

So you see why I know so much about crows? And I have spent so much time in the Canadian wilderness that I know a great deal about ravens too, pure outlaws of the north country which you could never confuse with any other of the many subspecies of crows. In the open community dumps found in the small settlements of northwest Ontario, around Indian reservations, ravens and black bears almost outnumber the Indians.

I won’t go into stuff about how the fish crow lives and thrives along the streams of the Ozarks. You can get most of that off the computer, which says this about crows of all kinds…

1. Crows are super smart. ( I go along with that, but so are pigeons and wild geese) 2. Crows mate for life. (I doubt that but can’t prove it) 3. Crows can remember faces (aka hold a grudge… that is silly) 4. Crows have regional dialects. (Even sillier) 5. Crows hold funerals for the deceased. (dumbest thing I ever heard… I have seen nothing like that and I have kilt many) 6. Crows have huge brains! (If you look at a skull of one you really have to laugh at that, so many birds have huger brains, eagles owls, etc. 7. Crows can make tools. (They make nothing — they use some, on rare occasions.) 8. Crows hide their food. (Heck they hide everything).

People who search the Internet, for info on wild creatures are often misinformed but they do not know it. There are many things found there that are not accurate, woven in around the things that are generally known to be fact. Suburban outdoor writers of today often go to the Internet to create articles about nature. I don’t, I write about what I have seen and experienced and know or still wonder about because there seems to be no solid answers. But I know that one pet crow of mine could paint. He ate elderberries from a bush only a few feet from our porch, then sat on the porch swing painting the concrete slab below a pretty purple color. Or should I call it a completely new shade… elderberry blue! My dad hated that crow, but concrete is just as pretty painted elderberry blue as it is concrete gray.

Anyway, next time you are along a stream and hear a crow gargling, or choking on something as he tries to caw, remember it is an ossifragus, not a brachyrinchus.

If you want to see and fish a Canadian wilderness lake you can go with me in late July to a fly-in cabin that is my favorite. But you have to have a passport. Cost is minimal if you have a party of 3 or 4. And you will meet the best guide and bush pilot in Northwest Ontario, Tinker Helseth. Also fish with one of the best guides in the north country… me!