About crows

Apropos of the crows (pole) that appear in Saturn, Paradiso. 21: 34-39:

In Ancient Greece and Rome, several myths about crows and jackdaws included:

• An ancient Greek and Roman adage, told by Erasmus runs, "The swans will sing when the jackdaws are silent," meaning that educated or wise people will speak after the foolish become quiet.
• The Roman poet Ovid saw the crow as a harbinger of rain (Amores 2,6, 34).
• Pliny noted how the Thessalians, Illyrians, and Lemnians cherished jackdaws for destroying grasshoppers' eggs. The Veneti are fabled to have bribed the jackdaws to spare their crops.
• Ancient Greek authors tell how a jackdaw, being a social creature, may be caught with a dish of oil into which it falls while looking at its own reflection.
• In Greek legend, princess Arne was bribed with gold by King Minos of Crete and was punished for her avarice by being transformed into an equally avaricious jackdaw, which still seeks shiny things. (Wikipedia)

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Crows have been congregating in large roosts in the fall and winter for as long as there have been crows. Crow roosts can range from small scattered roosts of under one hundred individuals to the spectacularly large roosts of hundreds of thousands, or even more than a million crows! A roost in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma was estimated to hold over two million crows. (source)

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Peace and harmony aren't major crow traits. Crows may fight other crows to defend territory or some other resource, or they may be protecting a mate. Family conflicts are typically short-lived and limited to a few pecks. Fights between different families can be long and potentially lethal. (source)

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The intelligence of the corvid family—a group of birds that includes crows, ravens, magpies, rooks and jackdaws—rivals that of apes and dolphins. Recent studies are revealing impressive details about crows' social reasoning, offering hints about how our own interpersonal intelligence may have evolved. (SA)

"Coly" birds in Dante, Ovid, and the 12 Days of Christmas

The appearance of the gaggle of pole -- jackdaws, or grey crows (cornacchie grige) -- in Paradiso 21 is a strangely unsolemn moment in an otherwise almost forbiddingly sober canto. Jackaws are usually not associated with contemplation -- and the variously active groups of birds described in the simile seem busy, but not intent upon higher things:

And as accordant with their natural custom
  The rooks together at the break of day
  Bestir themselves to warm their feathers cold;

Then some of them fly off without return,
  Others come back to where they started from,
  And others, wheeling round, still keep at home; 

Such fashion it appeared to me was there
  Within the sparkling that together came,  (21:34-41)

Robert Hollander notes that these birds have "black wings, silver eyes, and large red beaks encircled by yellow," and adds that according to Benvenuto, they love solitude and choose the desert for their habitation.

Thanks to Dren, we now know our black birds have a holiday tie-in, via Ovid, no less. He shared this piece from the Washington Post that offers a bit of philological archaeology. It turns out that while we all sing "four calling birds," during the "Twelve Days of Christmas," the original line involved "coally birds," an adjective derived from, and sounding like, "coal."

The OED finds the word in Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses - the tale of Coronis and the raven who told Apollo of her infidelity.

As thou thou prating Raven white by nature being bred,
Hadst on thy fethers justly late a coly colour spred.

Indeed, we might have Ovid to thank for Golding's bringing the word into print, and giving it the opportunity to be mistaken for "calling birds," thus helping perpetuate the derangement of language which happens to be a prominent theme in the second book of the Metamorphoses. (See, for example, here.)