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How to Befriend Crows

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Re: How to Befriend Crows

#71

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

oasisbob wrote: post #42
prox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My amateur theory is that talking makes you less likely to be a predator. You basically say “here I am”, Predators tend to be quiet and sneak up on their prey. I think the tone does indeed help somewhat in my experience.

Makes sense to me. Crows have caught me tree climbing under them during their evening flights to the communal roost, the result was always a chaotic mess. They just couldn't leave it alone. Without fail, eventually one crow would notice and start the alarm call, then the hundreds of crows arriving at the situation would break off flight and begin mobbing as well. I must have seemed very novel and sneaky. https://yout…

Great video. Were you scared? I once walked under some trees in which many crows were roosting. Scared the crap out of me. I thought they were going to attack. Maybe they had young and wanted to protect them, I don’t know, but I ran.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#72

Post by superkuh »

allenbrunson wrote: post #4

i kind of love the fact that posting fediverse links on hacker news is coming to be almost as common as posting twitter links. and i already read this, because one of the mastodon accounts i follow boosted this into my timeline. all hail decentralized social media!

I just wish there were an html interface to read mastadon posts. Something like nitter.net is for twitter. Right now to read them I have to use the general RSS feed and then find the post. And the .rss feature is only available on some implementations of mastadon.

https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom/109571409346371116 -> https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom.rss

My browser displays RSS natively well enough. It just can't display mastadon pages even with JS on because it's old.

The api interface through https://fediscience.org/api/v1/statuses/109571409346371116 is handy but it doesn't seem to give the full post.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#75

Post by jimmaswell »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #32

Just from my experience as a cyclist in Amsterdam, crows are amazingly intelligent. They actually participate in traffic, and know the difference between bicycles, motor vehicles and light rail (they will get out of the way just-in-time for the first two, and happily ignore the latter if they're outside the profile of the train set). Pigeons, on the other hand, are the species that gave birth to the term 'bird brain'…

Waiting until the last second and zigzagging out of the way works on animal predators, just not manmade machines

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#77

Post by naniwaduni »

082349872349872 wrote: post #28
prox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My amateur theory is that talking makes you less likely to be a predator. You basically say “here I am”, Predators tend to be quiet and sneak up on their prey. I think the tone does indeed help somewhat in my experience.

I have an amateur theory that strange wildlife, unlike strange people, are made much more comfortable by avoiding eye contact. Parent comment would explain this observation: predators gaze upon their prey. (flipping the arrows around, I've seen the advice to dance tango, not so much with "snappiness" as is popularly supposed, but in a predatory manner: slow stalking, interspersed with rapid pounces)

> unlike strange people

and ... like ... non-strange people?

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#78

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

dilap wrote: post #11

Does it work with grackles? I'd really love to befriend a grackle or two.

You probably don’t want to befriend grackles - they are absolutely magnificent to look at but they crap twice their weight every hour, they chirp to each other around the clock, and if you are feeding them they will bring dozens or hundreds of their closest friends to the party, and they won’t leave.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#79

Post by macrolime »

Once when I visiting a friend I heard someone saying hello, hello outside the window. I looked out and couldn't see anyone. Then I saw this crow standing there and it said hello again.

Turns out one of my friends neighbors used to feed the crows and taught one of them to say hello like a parrot.

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