i fed a few blocks of crows for 4 years. mostly dry cat food. each block had a unique family group and they swoop down in succession, hop over and i'd stand there and watch them eat for a bit. I also saw a crow funeral once and I stopped a crow dive bombing run (on other pedestrians).
How to Befriend Crows
101–110 of 229 posts
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#102I saved a blackbird's life once. He was flying low across the road near my house and I saw him get hit by a car. So I went over to stand in the road and make sure the other cars coming drove around him, and I picked him up. One of his eyes was bloody where he'd been hit, and he was stunned and very distressed. I kind of just knew what to do, I held him in my hands by the side of the road for a few minutes which I thi…
I feel bad to have to say that he may have been snacked on by a predator. If he could fly, he would probably have flown while you were there.
Excuse my ignorance, but what type of animal would eat a crow?
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#103> It's probably not good for them, but they adore cheetos. I can relate
If you want a healthy snack for crows that they adore, my local murders (~100 crows) go absolutely nuts for cashews. We put them at the bottom of our peanut can, because as soon as we get the cashews out they will outright refuse peanuts and forego any sort of social etiquette and sometimes even try to steal from each other, so we only start feeding them cashews when most of the murder is sated.
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#104First read this as "how to befriend cows". So, inevitably surprised on visiting the site!
Oh man, cows are awesome. They're smart, lovable, and even playful. And when they reach a certain age, they're even edible . What's not to love?
Having heard stories of my homesteading great-grandparents being chased 'round and 'round their sod house by a steer while screaming at their significant other to "open the **ing door, for **'* sake!" I'm gonna stick with befriending crows.
(Cows give birth to steers, that's what not to like.)
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#105Corvids must be Irish. ;) They have long memories and do exhibit cooperative behaviors with other species. I've watched quasi-documentaries first-hand accounts about this phenom on YT.
They're also quite socially/situationally adept. A crow snuck into my mechanic's garage and stole a bag of sunflower seeds on top of a rolling toolbox about 30 ft / 10 m into the building without being seen. They then proceeded to take their loot back to their murder and had a sunflower seed party in the alley.
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#106When I was in first grade, in the wake of a particularly big year of cicadas, the area around my school and home was overwhelmed with large numbers of crows and ravens. In fall, the numbers were so high that they became somewhat aggressive and on multiple occasions came to the windows of the school and pecked at them, which was, unsurprisingly, an event that could disrupt classroom activity for at least half an hour at a time.
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#107All strategies here are about food, I don't think feeding any kind of wild animals is good
Turns out it's okay nutritionally to feed ducks (for example) fresh (thawed frozen) peas. Just not bread. Changing their habits might be a different consideration.
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, of course. Your tone has to convey not only, "I am not a predator" but also "I do not perceive you as a threat, and so the purpose of my vocalization is not to scare you away because I perceive you as a threat, and if you come close I am likely to try to harm you in order to defend myself." In nature, the Bayesian prior on an entity that is not a member of your species, or even your tribe, seeking an interaction…
Hummingbirds I've noticed are very curious about other creatures. To a fault even, mantises will sometimes exploit this to catch hummingbirds (they are much more powerful than you might expect). I don't know if this is universal across hummingbird species/groups, but I'm able get very close to them by just patiently standing still by the feeder for 10 or 15 minutes, and they'll start investigating me.
I can go outside holding a feeder and as long as I stand still, after about a minute the hummers will feed while I'm holding the thing. Brave little birds.
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#109I saved a blackbird's life once. He was flying low across the road near my house and I saw him get hit by a car. So I went over to stand in the road and make sure the other cars coming drove around him, and I picked him up. One of his eyes was bloody where he'd been hit, and he was stunned and very distressed. I kind of just knew what to do, I held him in my hands by the side of the road for a few minutes which I thi…
So I've done a lot of volunteering at a bird refuge (LPO Ile Grande). Birds hit by traffic get something similar to shock and will sometimes recover and fly again just by resting for some time, which can range from seconds to days. Unless they have broken bones, in which case they're toast. So I'd say it's possible that your bird survived. More likely it didn't, but there is hope.
Re: How to Befriend Crows
#110All strategies here are about food, I don't think feeding any kind of wild animals is good
Yea, generally when people feed animals it is harmful to the animal or potentially dangerous for humans in a variety of ways or you turn the animals into pests. Is there something special about crows where these things aren't so much a factor?
Crows are generally a pest inhibitor, given that they will eat carrion before less desirable "pests" like rats get to it.
They also already are adopted to living in human cities. Usually in parks where they can do some traditional hunting intermixed with trash collecting and some direct feeding. But they are usually not reliant on the later and will move on in Winter if the other sources dry up.