The Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) is the grey-and-black crow familiar across Sweden — an intelligent, highly adaptable omnivore found in almost every habitat, from farmland to city centres. It measures 44–51 cm long, with a wingspan of roughly 84–100 cm and a weight of 400–600 grams, showing a pale grey body, breast and belly sharply contrasting with a black head, throat, wings and tail; the bill and legs are black, and the straight-edged tail separates it from the wedge-tailed Raven. Sexes look alike. An all-black form, the Carrion Crow, occurs in Central Europe and is only rarely seen in Sweden, mainly in the southwest, where hybrids with mixed black-and-grey plumage can also turn up in contact zones.
Its most familiar call is a hard, repeated "kraa-kraa" — drier and less deep than the Raven's hollow croak — though its vocal repertoire is large and varied, and crows are known to mimic other sounds. The species builds a sturdy stick nest high in a tree, where the female lays 4–5 eggs incubated for about 19 days; pairs typically mate for life and hold the same territory year after year. An accomplished omnivore, it eats carrion, eggs, small animals, insects, grain and food waste, and is well known for problem-solving behaviour such as dropping hard nuts from height to crack them open. Found throughout Sweden with a population of 400,000–700,000 pairs, it is mostly resident, though winter flocks swell with visiting birds from Finland and the Baltic states. Research has also shown Hooded Crows can recognise individual human faces and remember people who have threatened them for years afterward.
Read about this species in Swedish →