Across North America, ribbons of crows stretch over highways, rivers, and neighborhoods, converging with uncanny precision on favored roosts. They arrive in waves, first a dozen, then hundreds, then thousands, until entire trees seem to pulse with life. The air fills with a chorus of caws, clicks, and rattling calls.

At 7 a.m., as the sun rises over Seoul, the nearby granite slopes of Bukhansan are already alive. Elderly hikers in neon visors tap their trekking poles like drumbeats, exhaling clouds of mist into the crisp, pine-scented air.

At dawn in the German-speaking Alps, the world begins in silence. The sky’s first pink breath brushes the knife-edge peaks, and the crisp air carries only the faint clang of distant cowbells. Then a voice rises, not loud but confident, its notes curling upward like smoke toward the ridgelines. Another voice answers. Soon two or three weave together, a trail-side chorus drifting through the valley.