Do Scarecrows actually work?

[What_Exit]

@Chez Guevara

There’s a BBC documentary (can’t cite it unfortunately) which shows two crows operating as a pair.

One of them distracts a dog from its meal and the other one steals the food. They are seen sharing the spoils following the heist.

I think I’ve seen it, I remember thinking to myself, “It’s Heckle and Jeckle”*.

Jim

• Yes, I do know H&J were magpies, but they are close relatives of the crows.

[Musicat]

@Chez Guevara

There’s a BBC documentary (can’t cite it unfortunately) which shows two crows operating as a pair.

One of them distracts a dog from its meal and the other one steals the food. They are seen sharing the spoils following the heist.

If you mean that they were consciously planning that inter-cooperation, I have my doubts. How would it have been different if one crow was doing its thing which the dog found interesting, the second took off with the food, and the first grabbed a bite of the spoils? Animals are always helping themselves to what others earn. That scenario wouldn’t require any cooperation to work, just a serendipidous sequence of events.

With regard to scarecrows…

@CalMeacham

Prokopy’s results were impressive. Before any scarecrows were used in the fruit orchard he examined, bird damage affected 12.2% of the fruit. He put a single Scare Eyes balloon in the center. Trees were four yards apart in each row, with rows six yards apart. At the end of the season, damage to trees within six yards of the balloon was 1.5 percent, while twelve yards away it was at 11.7%. The next two years he placed balloons every 12 yards throughout the orchard. He had 0.4% bird damage that year, and 0.9% the next.

Without reading the method of the experiment, I would take the results with a grain of salt. Nothing is mentioned as to how the “damage…was 1.5 %” numbers were obtained. What were the controls?

I can imagine it going something like this:

“Here’s some fruit from near the new scarecrow. This one must have a really low number! What’s the damage?”

[CalMeacham]

“Here’s some fruit from near the new scarecrow. This one must have a really low number! What’s the damage?”

Possibly, but Prokopy is a for-real Professor of Entomology*. Presumably he knows better than to bias his own research so blatantly. I’ve talked to him on the phone, and he seems a knowledgeable guy, although I never asked him about that.

*Yeah, I know – what’s a Bug guy doing looking at Bird Damage. I never asked him that, either.

[JKellyMap]

@Liberal

My wife’s worked for about two days. Apparently the birds are smart enough to have realized that it’s a dead thing after all.

I read this as “My wife has worked…”, and I was surprised that:

1. You can get paid to be a scarecrow.
2. You can get paid to be a scarecrow even if you’re dead.
3. Liberal is so callous about his deceased wife, he refers to her as “it”!

[Liberal]

That’s pretty funny!

[Chez_Guevara]

@Musicat

If you mean that they were consciously planning that inter-cooperation, I have my doubts. How would it have been different if one crow was doing its thing which the dog found interesting, the second took off with the food, and the first grabbed a bite of the spoils? Animals are always helping themselves to what others earn. That scenario wouldn’t require any cooperation to work, just a serendipidous sequence of events.

Regrettably I can’t add much to my previous post.

I was hoping the programme was part of the Life of Birds series but there’s nothing in the companion book about crow teamwork. The documentary, as I recall, homed in on the resourcefulness of the crow family when scavenging for food. The same programme showed some footage of crows stealing workers’ sandwiches from their snow vehicles by opening the velcro-sealed compartments on the back of said vehicles. I got the impression from the commentary that the dog incident was planned rather than serendipitous.

Anyone else recall this documentary in addition to What Exit?

[ltfire]

There is a small farm down the road from me, and it has a fenced in area about 50’ by 50’, planted with corn. At each corner there are 2x4’s, and hanging from the top of each is a dead crow.
I have NEVER seen a live crow in this garden. :eek:

[What_Exit]

@Chez Guevara

Anyone else recall this documentary in addition to What Exit?

I think I saw it, or maybe the the clip you spoke of on Animal Planet. My daughter loves that station. I was probably only paying half attention at the time. I recall the Heckle & Jeckle remark and my daughter going “Who?” So any other Animal Planet watchers out there?

Jim

[JSpelling]

I think it’s safe to say that crows are smarter than squirrels:

Crows as Clever as Great Apes, Study Says
Masters of Deceit (actually about ravens, but close enough)

[Liberal]

@Chez Guevara

Anyone else recall this documentary in addition to What Exit?

I do not recall the documentary, but I do recall What Exit?.

[Chez_Guevara]

I happened across an article concerning the rook in a copy of Birds Britannica.

The Welsh name for rook is ydfran otherwise ‘corn crow’ and it is the bird’s habit to take grain from cornfields. This circumstance apparently gave rise to the use of the traditional scarecrow figure discussed upthread. The article continues:

‘Another standard method was for a landowner to employ bird scarers. Armed with sling and shot and something to make a loud noise, the youths were in great demand at critical moments in the corn season. The scarer’s lot was one of low pay and semi-isolation and was probably reserved for the youngest and oldest members of the rural community. That image certainly squares with the character of Hugh, Charles Dickens’ central villain in Barnaby Rudge. The illiterate hostler at the Maypole Inn is described as having had to mind cows and frighten birds away for a few pence to live on during his orphaned childhood. Yet the bird scarer’s arts continued for at least 2,000 years and probably died out only in the early twentieth century.’

There follows a picture, no title given, of an 1896 painting by George Clausen which ‘evokes the lonely and desperate life of the Victorian bird scarer’.

This image has proved elusive, hence no link.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

@CalMeacham

The film I saw was FAR more complex than that. To get to the food, the squirrel had to solve, in order, a series of something like eight problems, each of which brought it incrementally closer to its goal.

A similar show had birds solving problems to get to food as well. But the squirrel had easily the most complex maze of tests to get through.

These types of films used to be popular in the UK when I was small. People used to custom make the assault courses and film the squirrels solving them. Some are available on YouTube:

Mission Impossible Squirrel

This one is particularly impressive: http://youtube.com/watch?v=u4Eb1Nt6WIE

[Dunderman]

@t-bonham@scc.net

Note that a traditional scarecrow is supposed to be dressed in old, used clothes – unwashed! The human smell of those clothes is an element in discouraging the birds.

I thought birds had a shitty sense of smell.

[JustThinkin]

I was hoping the programme was part of the Life of Birds series but there’s nothing in the companion book about crow teamwork. The documentary, as I recall, homed in on the resourcefulness of the crow family when scavenging for food. The same programme showed some footage of crows stealing workers’ sandwiches from their snow vehicles by opening the velcro-sealed compartments on the back of said vehicles. I got the impression from the commentary that the dog incident was planned rather than serendipitous.

I’ve seen it. IIRC, it was ravens not crows doing all the fancy problem solving. One was shown pulling up a thread with meat attached - using beak to pull and feet to hold the string. Seems like the show was about animal intelligence in general, not specifically about corvids. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you a title or anything.

[chorpler]

Somewhere on my computer is a video clip of a crow trying to get a tiny bucket of food out of a bottle, then trying to use a piece of wire to grab the bucket, and finally bending the wire into a hook and using it to lift the bucket out of the bottle. That seems to be a pretty sophisticated level of reasoning, doesn’t it?

[CalMeacham]

Somewhere on my computer is a video clip of a crow trying to get a tiny bucket of food out of a bottle, then trying to use a piece of wire to grab the bucket, and finally bending the wire into a hook and using it to lift the bucket out of the bottle. That seems to be a pretty sophisticated level of reasoning, doesn’t it?

Sophisticated, but I maintain that the very complex series of operatiobns that squirrels have been shown to remember and perform , in order, are far more complex and suggest even higher function.

[chorpler]

@CalMeacham

Sophisticated, but I maintain that the very complex series of operatiobns that squirrels have been shown to remember and perform , in order, are far more complex and suggest even higher function.

Are you talking about stuff like the videos that Dominic Mulligan linked to? Because those squirrel obstacle courses don’t seem nearly as impressive as actually fashioning a tool to solve a problem.