Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Befriend Crows

fediscience.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 229 posts

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#121

Post by aidenn0 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #83
asdf123wtf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think a lot of it is the high intelligence of crows. If you feed say, wild deer or other animals they become dependent on humans to survive or end up sticking around human areas. Crows are already everywhere and their intelligence means that if the food source stops, they can still just do their thing. It doesn't disrupt the ecosystem though it can make them into an annoyance for neighbors. The more we learn about…

Also crows can tell humans apart, so feeding crows makes them less afraid of you while feeding other animals can make them less afraid of all humans.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#122

Post by quercusa »

gonehome wrote: post #115
maxbond wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My sister had one land on her finger and point with its head to which flowers it wanted her to move her hand to. This was without a feeder, but in an area with lots of people around (at a winery).

We used to have one that would hover in front of our kitchen window when the feeder (at the other end of the house) was empty.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#123

Post by arcturus17 »

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'…

Pigeons may be dumb as bricks but I’ve never seen one hit by a car. When I’m driving I think I’m going to hit them but they always bail. Credit where credit is due!

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#124

Post by jalada »

Cute. My parents' house has, for a few years now, been plagued by crows attacking the windows in the early hours of the morning, dive-bombing them, standing outside them screaming, pecking them, etc. If they're not attacking the house they're on the roof or in nearby trees screaming.

The closest to a solution has been to cover every window with outside blinds to at least stop them smashing into them.

I stayed with them for a few months and was woken up by this every morning without fail. Honestly, it was pretty distressing.

I love birds and feed them in our garden (so do my parents!), but I wouldn't want to encourage crows to follow me around after that. I'm always in two minds about this tendency for humans to...humanise...animal behaviour.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#125

Post by polishdude20 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #40
lisper wrote: post #27

Earlier 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…

> the Bayesian prior ... is very, very low. Felis Catus: OK, stubclaws, listen up. You're going to toil the fields and by the sweat of your brow fill up a barn to attract my mice. Got that? Agriculture, Architecture, the works? Good. I'd explain to you how to make laser pointers for chasing, but I doubt you'd understand ... your kind always has to work things out for themselves, anyway. Now go forth and do your best…

Is this from a book?

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#127

Post by Retric »

lisper wrote: post #27
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.

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…

There are quite a few symbiotic relationships in nature.

There are several examples where small birds, mammals, fish, or even some invertebrates clean much larger animals. The exchange straightforward, large animal gets clean smaller one eats the parasites, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaning_symbiosis

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#128

Post by newshorts »

I can’t confirm “befriending” crows, but I can confirm that you can make them your enemy.

A while back I had found what I thought was an injured bird. I captured it and brought it to a rehabilitation center for wild birds.

Turns out I had just capture a baby crow that hadn’t learned to fly yet, which explains why there were two other crows (parents) barking at me from trees as I tried to capture their chick.

After the rehab center verified I had not injured the chick during capture they let me return it where I found it.

Let me just say the parents were not happy with me when I let that chick out of the box they started divebombing me.

I had my own baby about a month later and as I was carrying my kid in from the parking lot I got dive Bombed by a crow.

I’ve always thought it was one of the parents retaliating.

From that point on every time they saw me they would start barking at me

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#129

Post by austinjp »

geocrasher wrote: post #13
tasty_freeze wrote: post #10

My wife set up a bird feeder on our floor to ceiling glass windows in our living room -- it is a plexiglass module with suction cups. It was nice seeing the birds, but it was really entertaining watching the squirrels trying to get the food. At first she tried to thwart the them, but in no time started recognizing the squirrels as individuals and noticing their personality and behavioral differences, and gave them na…

This is just wonderful. I'm so glad that your wife has something to keep her going on her bad days. My wife passed away at 46 years old, and the years leading up to her death were very hard. I learned that sometimes it's the smallest things that really bring joy- not things . Interacting with nature whether by observation or active participation is a wonderful thing.

A comment like this shouldn't go without a reply. Saying "sorry for your loss" always seems inadequate, so here's a brief recollection instead. A few months ago, in one of the covid lock downs when social distancing was a thing, I was walking in a park. About 200 metres away I noticed a woman walking a small dog, possibly a puppy. The woman had stopped to watch the dog, something was going on. Then i realised the dog was playing with a magpie. The magpie would hop up to the dog then flap off when the dog bounded over. Then the magpie lay on its back and let the dog sniff it before kicking its legs and flapping its wings, making the dog bounce in delight. The woman crouched nearby watching. I've no idea if any of them noticed me. It went on for at least 5 minutes before i had to leave. A wonderfully surreal, poignant moment during the pandemic. Seems like aeons ago now.

Re: How to Befriend Crows

#130

Post by lisper »

Retric wrote: post #127
lisper wrote: post #27

Earlier 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…

There are quite a few symbiotic relationships in nature. There are several examples where small birds, mammals, fish, or even some invertebrates clean much larger animals. The exchange straightforward, large animal gets clean smaller one eats the parasites, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaning_symbiosis

> There are quite a few symbiotic relationships in nature.

Yes, of course, but unless such a relationship is already established the odds are very much against a random encounter between different species being mutually beneficial.

Post reply on HN