Beware the crows

You can break down the UK into three kinds of environment, defined by the prevailing forms of bird life.

Number one, urban areas – pigeons overrun cities and town centres like a swarm of leprous medieval beggars.

Number two, songbirds definitive of nice suburban and rural areas, characteristic of places like "leafy Surrey" and villages full of holiday homes with names like Cricklewickle-on-the-Dinglywingly.

Number three – the crows. Denizens of places most simply defined as "bleak". Stick up a housing estate on some moorland, the crows don't go away. Because it's still bleak. They remain, eye witnesses of ancient human sacrifice and the horrifying rites of our ancestors. Today, they hunch sneering down at council estates and wind-battered farm houses, miserable dog walkers and the crap-strewn gardens of residential A-roads.

Crows don't just look creepy. They are creepy, as this article I read in a local paper about a "crow court" makes clear. A group of crows is called a "murder" for god's sake.

Wherever I go (outside areas 1 and 2 above) I can be sure that if I look around, I'll spot a crow, watching me. At least, it looks like it's watching me. Against the sky – even the fart-grey skies of the Yorkshire autumn – the silhouette of a crow is like a black hole, sucking the light from around itself to achieve an almost reflecting darkness.

And this is why I believe crows are not birds at all, but rather extra-dimensional entities. That's not a bird watching you from on top of that lamppost while you wait at a lonely bus-stop as the last of the sun's rays fade away. It's a window straight to hell, and something's peering out at you from in there. Read anything on here and you'll know what I mean.