Everyone. Please explain if you adore crows and why? I recently found them incredbly fasinating. I adore them. This is all new to me. All i did was put out left over Thankgiving Stuffing and the crows did an a turn around.
Now, i have been feeding them every day since Thanksgiving and making them a buffet with fresh water too. When summer comes i goung to get them some kind of bird swing. They like to play. There are so nany good things to say about crows.
I wonder why they get together in the thousands, i wonder if its because we are shooting them? We almost wiped out the buffallo. Please dont kill crows.
While I don’t shoot crows, I don’t “adore” them either.
What’s so great about a bird that gathers in a “murder”, practices “mobbing” to harass other birds and attacks specific humans identified (sometimes falsely) as an enemy? Moreover, crows can get drunk on formic acid when they rub ants into their feathers.
I’ve heard that Crows are quite smart, but I wouldn’t have expected one to figure out how to post on a message board. Still, you don’t fool me OP; I’m on to you.
“It’s still an amazing example of the way crows are really watching us and are mindful of us—and, in their own way, [are] data mining for the best way to manipulate us".
I like crows. They are the only wild animals in my back yard that talk to me. Granted, what they say is, “are you going to hassle us?” But still, i like the interaction. I’ve sometimes put out suet for them. Maybe I’ll do that today. I should check the fat can and see if i have anything. I like to do it when they are around, though. I caw at them to get their attention, and then leave the fat out.
Where I grew up, crows and pigeons are the “rats of the air”. Always too many, causing too much trouble. They were the gangs of the farm. I didn’t shoot them, but I didn’t like them, either.
Give me a nice robin or cardinal, maybe an oriole.
I like crows. They can be messy, loud, theives and general assholes.
I feed all the birds around here. Probably not enough, the crows get the majority of the assets.
They will decimate certain things in a garden plot. I plant extra to sacrifice to them.
Most people hate them in their yard and gardens. Even though there are hunting regulations people just shoot at them willy-nilly.
As I say, I like crows. I live in the woods.
Enjoy yours, OP. Feed and interact.
Do expect the crowd to get bigger. Close neighbors may not appreciate the poopy mess if they roost in a tree near them. Or the noise.
I’m more of a raven guy myself, but I do like crows. I live under the “late afternoon heading-to-the-roost” flight path and it’s always neat to see a stream of them fly past right before sunset.
Crows and other corvids are the most intelligent cold-climate bird species. Crows are social animals and like other highly intelligent species do a lot of things humans do – play with toys, take care of each other, solve difficult problems, collect shiny things just because they’re pretty.
They also make trouble for humans partly for these qualities, and being opportunistic omnivores, do things we particularly do not appreciate, such as peck out the eyes of livestock too ill or too young to defend themselves. They’ve been associated with the aftermaths of battlefields for as long as there have been battlefields. They aren’t called carrion crows for nothing.
They will harass, as a group, animals that they perceive as threats, including predatory birds, and humans with guns (they can distinguish between guns and sticks). They have long memories and they also pass information to the rest of the group and to their children.
They are associated with darkness and death, not for no reason. But the OP doesn’t have to worry about their extinction. They are like coyotes, flexible and opportunistic in the climate of tragic destruction humans are wreaking on the earth. They’ll be one of the last species to go.
A couple of years ago I watched a bunch of ravens pick out all the newly-planted seedlings in a landscaped area looking for bugs in the roots. The workers who had just finished the job were not amused.
My favorite corvid story is one I read some years back, so I may get a few details wrong, but here goes anyway:
A corvid researcher gave a public lecture on how awesome ravens are. Afterwards, an audience member came up to him, and excitedly told him how ravens were her spirit animal and how she had a deep connection to them. She had gone jogging on a remote mountain trail, and a raven had started flying over her and cawing excitedly. She stopped and looked around–and saw a mountain lion behind her, stalking her and getting ready to pounce! “If that raven hadn’t warned me,” she said, “I would have died.”
The researcher agreed it was a great story, but maybe not for the reason she’d thought. The raven, he explained, wasn’t hoping to save her: it was hoping for leftovers.
Ravens sometimes engage in symbiotic hunting with large predators. They fly around, scouting for suitable prey, and when they find it, they make a ruckus. Mountain lions investigate the ruckus, find and kill the prey, and eat their fill. Afterwards, there’s plenty of meat left for the raven.
If anything, the raven was the mountain lion’s spirit animal.
I love the story because it reminds me that we’re not the center of the universe. What terrified Lovecraft–that we’re small and unimportant in the grand scheme of nature–is something I find tremendously comforting.
I enjoy crows. I didn’t always feel that way, but ever since our city started issuing wheeled trash bins with lids instead of having us put out bags, I’ve warmed to them. I toss unsalted peanuts in the shell to them, but it’s not enough to make my house a significant food source or to cause a disruption in migration behavior. I don’t tend to get large numbers of birds, and only the boldest ones get there in time to share in the bounty. I know it’s time to put the peanuts out when I see the bravest (friendliest?) crow standing just in front of the porch looking in at me through the living room window. I go outside with the small bowl of nuts, walk down the driveway and get the paper, and walk back up to the door before scattering them. The bird stays in the yard about 10 feet away as long as I don’t look directly at it, and it’ll stay there while I scatter the nuts now. I always drop a few right in front of the door as I go in, since I know only the birds who are most familiar with me will dare to come that close.
I have no illusions about the crows’ feelings towards me. They’re wild animals, and they want food, not affection. I know they’re kind of assholes and they’re just in it for what they can get, and that’s fine by me. Then again, I also enjoy cats.
My birds are winter-only, since the summers here are way too hot for them. I might be less hospitable if I didn’t know they’d be leaving in a few weeks and not returning until October or so.