Crebain

The birds over Hollin

On the morning after the Fellowship's first long march south from Rivendell, in the empty land of Hollin under the Misty Mountains, Aragorn was troubled by the silence: no bird sang, no beast stirred, the country was too quiet. Then a shadow passed across the sky, a great flock of large black crows wheeling low over the ground as if searching, and then another, and another, sweeping the whole country from the south back toward Fangorn and Dunland. Sam had seen them first, thinking them a cloud. When they had passed Aragorn named them crebain, the crows of Dunland and Fangorn, which had no business in Hollin, and he and Gandalf agreed that they were spying. Hollin was not safe. The company put out its fire, lay hidden all day, and marched by night thereafter, and it was in part because of the crebain that Gandalf chose to try the Redhorn Pass over Caradhras rather than linger in the open.

Flocks of the same birds were seen again over Rohan when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were hunting the Orcs across the plains, wheeling over the country and turning back toward Isengard, and Éomer too spoke of Saruman's birds as spies over the Mark.

What is stated and what is guessed

The text is careful not to say whose the crebain were. Aragorn and Gandalf suspected spies; Gandalf feared Saruman as much as Sauron; and the direction of the flocks, from Dunland and Fangorn, points at Isengard, which lay at the southern end of the Misty Mountains between those two lands. Saruman was later shown to have birds in his service, and the crows over Rohan in the following months are treated as his. But no crebain is ever shown reporting to Saruman, and the Atlas records their service to Isengard as the strong implication of the text rather than its statement.

The crebain were ordinary crows in body, only unusually large, and unlike the Ravens of Erebor they had no speech. Their use as spies is the kind of mastery over beasts that Saruman, like Radagast, possessed; it does not make the birds themselves evil.

Fate

With the fall of Isengard the crebain lose their purpose in the story and are not mentioned again.

Large black crows, flying in great flocks low over the ground, croaking as they wheel.

None; wild crows of Dunland and Fangorn, gathered and sent out by a master.

Not told; native crows of the lands about Isengard.

Not mentioned after the War of the Ring.