A caw is the hard, rough cry a crow makes — that open, cracked “caw!” you hear from a tree or a rooftop. People wrote the word by copying the sound; that is the whole trick. You can use it as a name for the sound (“a loud caw”) or as a verb (“the crows cawed at dawn”). It really belongs to crows and a few close birds. A duck does not caw, a pigeon does not caw, and a pretty songbird does not caw. In cartoons, one “Caw!” is enough to put a crow on the page. It is a plain, slightly old-fashioned word. In everyday talk many people just say the crow called or the crow made a noise. You will still meet caw in stories, nature writing, and anywhere a writer wants you to hear the bird, not just see it.