In Defence of Crows

[willedoo]

I just saw something I've never seen before. I have a breeding pair of crows at my place who are long term residents and part of the furniture. I've learned a lot about them from observing them and interacting with them over the past few years.

 

Only yesterday, I was thinking it's getting to the time of year when they will be nesting again to produce this year's brood. Every year they make a new nest, as the old one gets soiled and run down. I walked out on the verandah and saw the female busily pulling hair from the tail of my cow/lawnmower. She got quite a few out before the cow grew tired of the game and stood up. Obviously they're nest building.

[facthunter]

Cut up strips of old carpet and see what they do with it. The cow will be happier.  Nev

[red750]

We have an old piece of carpet our golden retriever used to sleep on, folded up on a table on the back porch. Through the kitchen window I saw a magpie on the carpet collecting dog hairs, obviously for the same reason.

[facthunter]

Dog albitey. ! Now I know what the hair of the Dog means.. Nev

[onetrack]

All the crows nests I've ever seen, have been built out of quite large sticks. It never ceases to amaze me how fast the birds can build a nest, and how they do it so surreptitiously.

I've seen a magpie and a grey currawong in the W.A. wheatbelt, having a tug-of-war, over a short length of wire in nesting season, early Winter.

 

The currawongs are another quite amazing bird, they reckon they're more intelligent than magpies.

I once watched one grey currawong try to pull on oxy-acetylene hoses that were attached to bottles and gauges, that were lying down on my welder trailer, with a hessian bag covering the gauges.

Another grey currawong stood by and watched. The first one stopped tugging on the hoses, whereupon the second one moved over to the hessian bag, laid on its side, and lifted the bag up with its feet for a gawk underneath the bag!

It promptly dropped the bag, stood up, squawked to its mate (like, "give up Fred, they're attached to something"), and they then both flew off. I could scarcely believe what I'd seen, but I know I saw what I saw.

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by onetrack

[onetrack]

I'm always fascinated by how the crows can be so noisy one minute - then the next minute, they sneak around in dead silence, without making a single sound. They specialise in sneaking into the local trees in dead silence, intent on robbing nests.

They will land on the street verges and walk around for a while, without making a sound, checking out the likely spots for small birds nests, looking up into the street trees and trees in peoples yards.

Then they'll just fly up into the tree they've selected in dead silence, then hop from branch to branch very quietly, while they plan their nest raid.

If I catch them doing this, I generally disrupt their carefully-orchestrated plan, with a noisy shoo-off. They must hate me, and I bet they've got me tagged. I notice they don't hang around here as much as they used to.

I wonder why they often land in the trees and poles nearby, and start off with a long, raucous, noisy cawing session. I reckon they must be establishing a hunting session with mates, probably discussing where the best food sources are likely to be.

They never stop watching the likely places where food scraps have known to be found. Once the food sources there dry up, they don't hang around, they move on.

[old man emu]

Is "bird brain" a misnomer?

[facthunter]

It refers to the size of their brains. A large brain takes a lot of energy to feed it. Once they got wings they thought they wouldn't have to think much. Geez they must be like Airline Pilots. Nev

[willedoo]

The birds were amusing yesterday. I feed a long term Raven mate regularly and for about four months now, a family of butcher birds have moved in so they get a bit as well. I have a feeding platform set up for the crow which is a pole in the ground about 1.6 meters high with a plywood landing pad on top. This keeps the food high up with less risk of attracting the bush turkeys, and the crow also feels more secure than feeding on the ground.

 

For about the last week a lone kookaburra has shown up and is trying to get in on the act. Yesterday morning I put some crow food on the feeding platform, but for a long time none of them would touch it. The crow was up in his tree, the father butcher bird was on the verandah rail and the kookaburra was on the roof. They were all alternating eyeballing each other and the food, but none were game to make the first move. It was just like that standoff scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

[spacesailor]

What is ? ,

' Crow ' food , vegy or meat .

spacesailor

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, spacesailor said:

What is ? ,

' Crow ' food , vegy or meat .

spacesailor

According to some bird experts, the best food you can feed wild birds is dog pellets. There's nothing harmful in them and they have good fibre, vitamin and nutrition levels. I soak them in water to soften them and keep it in a container in the fridge. How popular the pellets are depends on the type and brand. I've found the best to be Supercoat small breed adult in either chicken or beef. They're a big hit in bird land. Some other brands they just turn their noses (or beaks) up. The large breed pellets once soaked and softened end up too big in size.

 

It seems to be mainly only the crow and the butcher birds that go for it. The noisy miners and the friar birds don't seem interested in anything but their native food. Then there's the bush turkeys. They'd eat the diff out of a sh*t truck if you let them. They were getting to be a bit of a pest, but I went to Bunnings and bought a compost bin for the scraps and that seems to have discouraged them. I make sure now that everything goes in the compost bin and no more scraps turfed out the kitchen window. Being able to do that sort of thing is one of the advantages of a bushy block with no lawn, but I figured out that it was the main thing attracting the turkeys. A very destructive bird, those turkeys. Apart from destroying gardens, they constantly dig holes and undermine footings.

[willedoo]

You certainly can't overfeed a crow. If they're not hungry enough to eat it on the spot, they cache it in multiple stash points. I suppose that way if some other animal finds a stash of food, they don't lose the lot. The raven here at my place will normally have about half a dozen different stashes of tucker hidden away. He doesn't go to too much trouble; he just scrapes a bit of leaf litter away by swiping his beak from side to side, drops the food in and covers it up again with some leaves. He doesn't always use the same spots so it's got me beat how he remembers where they all are. Inbuilt GPS maybe.

[onetrack]

Put out a bag of rubbish, some empty chip packets, or some other empty food containers and the ravens will go for them every time. They know exactly what to look for.

I've watched two ravens working over a thrown-away chip or cheezel bag - one stood guard, while the other went to town on the bag.

[red750]

Our supermarket had open topped rubbish bins outside the entrance that attracted lots of crows. There was a KFC close by, and the crows would pull out the KFC bags to see if anything was left. The bins have been replaced with ones with a top, and a slot to put the rubbish in. Haven't been often enough to see if the birds have worked out how to get stuff out.

[willedoo]

On 26/10/2023 at 9:57 PM, onetrack said:

I've watched two ravens working over a thrown-away chip or cheezel bag - one stood guard, while the other went to town on the bag.

It seems to be the way they do it, always having one handling security while the others eat. My raven always does the watch duty first while his wife and any kids eat. When they are finished, he has a bite to eat.

 

If she's on the nest, he will always fill his beak up and ferry food to her before he eats.

[onetrack]

I drive the ravens away from here, because they're nest robbers, and they are always hunting out the little birds nests and killing their young. They're really devious about it, too - they will make a lot of racket normally - but when they're nest-hunting, they're dead silent.

They walk along the footpaths and verges looking up into the trees, and when they spot something, they fly silently up into the branches and grab eggs and chicks without a sound. 

 

We've also got Kookaburras here, and what's worse, the dopey, ignoramus of a neighbour is feeding them. While I know the Kookas get rats and other vermin, I believe they're little bird killers, too.

I much prefer the honeyeaters and wrens and other small birds, because they're tigers on little bugs, as well as sipping on nectar.

 

We had a bit of trauma yesterday, the Red Wattlebirds have been hanging around and we suspected they had a nest in a street tree (a Qld Box). But the day before yesterday, we had a rotten screaming Northerly wind that blew everything around, and then yesterday, we found a Red Wattlebird chick on the front lawn. He was just resting and we were trying to figure out what the story was behind him being there - and we suspected he'd fallen out of a nearby nest and ended up on the front lawn. I tried to get a little closer to him (I was about 3M away) to see if he was O.K., or what was going on - and he jumped to his feet and started hopping away, with little flutters.

 

He was about 3/4-7/8ths feathered, but he couldn't fly, just flutter a metre or two. I was concerned about him getting grabbed by a cat (or a raven), and while I was mulling what to do, he got panicky and hopped and fluttered out the gate, and across the road, and then hopped into a tiny bush outside the house over the road. The bush was solitary and gave him minimal cover. I looked again a while later and he was gone.

 

I hope he survived, but I don't rate his chances highly, what with ravens, kookaburras and cats all hanging about. Funny thing was, his parents weren't to be seen anywhere, and I haven't see them for about 3 days. Usually with a non-flying chick on the ground, the parents are hanging around, kicking up a storm - especially Red Wattlebirds, they're aggressive as Willy Wagtails.

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by onetrack

[nomadpete]

When it comes to courage I rate the humble willy wagtail highly. Yesterday I watched one chase the wedgetail away. He just wouldn't give up and kept dive bombing as harassing the eagle for half a kilometres and about 500' height gain. Poor little buggah must have been  really bushed! I hope his missus was suitably impressed.

[onetrack]

I've got a video on my old phone of a willy-wagtail harrassing a raven on the road outside some shops in Midland a couple of years ago. It was really amusing, the Willy kept at the raven almost non-stop for about 15 minutes, flying up behind him and snapping at his tailfeathers, and generally giving the raven the sh**s.

The raven just kept trying to shrug the Willy off, but he was driven away from the area he initially wanted to inspect, where he obviously saw some interesting rubbish.

[spacesailor]

Most birds eat their lesser species. 

But I don't know about Cockatoos. 

One species in ' Galapagos ' pecks the back of its own species to get a drink of blood, without which it would starve to death . ( according to a doco) .

spacesailor

[facthunter]

  I have that sort of thing at the local medical centre.   Nev

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

pecks the back of its own species to get a drink of blood,

Are our politicians related to these birds?

[facthunter]

Blood thirsty? They eat polished coal and raw onions. Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

I have heard about a crow that wanted to eat the food of a big tied-up dog. The problem was that the dog's lead enabled it to protect its feed-bowl. The crow strutted around and wound the dog up, till it's lead was too short to reach the bowl of food anymore.  Then the crow helped itself.

If this is true, and I think it was, this shows amazing intelligence from the crow.

[onetrack]

I have little doubt it's true, Bruce. The ravens are crafty beyond belief, their intelligence is amazing - and their eyesight is also incredible.

When we would shoot at them on telephone lines in the country, as young blokes, they would immediately recognise a rifle barrel out of a ute window, and take off. 

And when we fired at them from the farmhouse, they knew exactly how far to keep back, to stay out of range.

 

Had to laugh today, we were having lunch in a Greek restaurant in the City, and were were right in the front corner of the restaurant with glass from top to bottom at where we were sitting - and a raven landed on the footpath outside, and proceeded to carry out his bold footpath exploration stroll.

 

There was a gum tree about 8M high on the verge outside the window - and as the raven strolled past the tree, there was this flash as a Red Wattlebird dive-bombed the raven, and made him jump!

The Wattlebird flew back up into the tree, and did it again! - and again! - and again!! He forced the raven out onto the road, but he still wasn't going to leave him alone!

 

Finally, the raven decided it was time to address these Hun-style dive-bombing attacks from the rear and above, and he spun around to face the Wattlebird as he dived on him! The Wattlebird couldn't care less, he still dive-bombed the raven, but swerved a little at the last second to avoid the ravens beak.

 

Finally, the raven had had enough - he flew up and over the road, and over a big security fence, into the front yard of a big commercial property. There he proceeded to stroll around as bold as brass, entering archways into confined porch areas in front of doors, to check them out for goodies - knowing full well it was Sunday, and humans weren't about in those premises.

Last we saw of him, he was strolling past the garden beds in the next property further up, checking to see if there was anything food-related in them.

[nomadpete]

My grandad (yeah it was a long time ago) had a veggie patch in the back yard. There were a couple of crows dropping in regularly to check the patch out. Grandad started keeping a rifle by the back door and he found  that after the first couple of shots, the crows learnt to scarper as soon as he emerged with gun in hand. They just had to see the gun, to leave.

One day, grandma had put the gun away because it shouldn't be  seen when us grandkids arrived, so in frustration grandad grabbed a nearby broomhandle, went out and took aim at the birds. He thought it should look about the same as a gun to a birds. But the birds ignored him. They knew that although it was aimed at them, it wasn't  a real gun. We kids laughed!

Smart birds indeed.