A flock of crows is most famously called a “murder” of crows.

Quick Scoop: The short answer

  • The most common term is “a murder of crows.”
  • Other, less common poetic names include a mob, a horde, a brood, a company, or a parliament of crows.

Why “a murder of crows”?

In English, many animal groups have old, poetic “terms of venery” from the Late Middle Ages, like a “pride of lions” or a “gaggle of geese,” and “murder of crows” comes from that same tradition.

Crows often feed on carrion and have long been linked in folklore to death, graveyards, and omens, so the word “murder” reflects human superstition and storytelling more than the birds’ actual behavior.

People once told tales that crows held “trials” and killed guilty members of their own kind, which helped the dark, dramatic term stick in popular imagination, even though those stories are not scientifically supported.

Other names you might hear

You’ll sometimes see other collective nouns for crows, usually in lists of colorful or humorous terms rather than in everyday speech.

Examples include:

  • a mob of crows
  • a horde of crows
  • a brood of crows
  • a company of crows
  • a parliament of crows
  • a storytelling of crows

In normal modern usage, most people just say “a flock of crows” or “a bunch of crows,” and “murder” is used when someone wants to sound vivid, spooky, or poetic.

Tiny bit of context (for the curious)

Crows are part of the corvid family (Corvidae), which includes ravens, magpies, and jays, all known for high intelligence and complex social lives.

In winter, crows can gather in huge communal roosts of hundreds or even thousands of birds, which makes that “murder of crows” scene feel especially dramatic when you see them silhouetted against a grey sky.

TL;DR:
What is a flock of crows called?
Most commonly: a murder of crows , though “flock of crows” is perfectly correct in everyday English.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.