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Crow's Court
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Has anybody ever heard of a Crows Court? If so, what is it?
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.I am sure someone (Quizmonster ?) will be able to answer this. In the mean time here is an interesting site where there might be a link between one of the collective nouns for agroup of crows (a murder of crows) and a crows' court:
http://rinkworks.com/words/collective.shtml
I'm not familiar with this phrase, but it's clearly a reference to a gathering of these birds. Why 'court'? Probably because their black plumage is reminiscent of the robes worn by judges, barristers and court officials. Their constant cawing might be a reference to lawyers bandying arguments across a courtroom, too. To a countryman, a few crows together doubtless looked just like a city courtroom.
Thanks all, but Mike(x3) and quattro seem to be right(ish) - I've heard that it is a gathering of crows that gather in a field and surround one individual crow, seem to chatter and sit in some sort of judgement on him/her, then either let him fly away or kill him by pecking him to death.
Evidently, the circles of worn ground that one finds in the middle of some fields are where this has taken place - but there seems to be a distinct lack of actual witnesses.