The much maligned, sometimes vicious, sometimes tender-hearted, and frighteningly intelligent crow often appears in Shane Peacock's work — most prominently in Eye of the Crow, the first Boy Sherlock Holmes case, and in the fourth Dylan Maples Adventure, Monster in the Mountains, in the form of a raven named Poe.
Excerpts from both books can be found on www.shanepeacock.ca and across this site.
Interesting Facts About Crows
- Intelligence: Crows — and their cousin, the raven — are arguably the most intelligent of all birds. Their brains are roughly five times the size of a pigeon's relative to body mass.
- Recognition: Crows can recognize individual human beings and remember faces for years, even passing that knowledge on to other crows.
- Tool use: They are known to fashion and use tools, solve multi-step puzzles, and plan for future needs.
- Social bonds: Despite their sometimes fierce reputation, crows form strong family bonds and have been observed displaying what can only be described as tender-hearted behaviour toward their mates and young.
- In literature: Beyond Peacock's work, crows and ravens have long fascinated writers — from Edgar Allan Poe's famous raven to the trickster crow figures of Indigenous folklore.
Crows in Shane Peacock's Work
The crow is central to Eye of the Crow, the first case in The Boy Sherlock Holmes series, where a young Sherlock's investigation is intertwined with the fate of a crow. Peacock also explored corvid intelligence in his award-winning article "As the Crow Flies," and brought a raven named Poe to life in Monster in the Mountains, part of the Dylan Maples Adventure series.