"Befriending crows is a wonderful thing"

December 26, 2022 5:50 PM

How to befriend crows. "Only the females rattle-knock."

Previously: Harder with cats; Tiny gifts; urbane crows.

Now I have a resolution for the new year.

posted by gregoreo (24 comments total)

Thanks I’ve been looking for this kind of guide. I’ve long wanted to befriend crows.
posted by interogative mood at 6:01 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

I’d try this but I’m not sure how my (indoor) cat would feel about it.
posted by gottabefunky at 6:09 PM on December 26, 2022

Your indoor cat would probably find it very interesting and exciting. Your indoor cat is probably bored a lot. Your indoor cat should definitely stay indoors to avoid being bullied, but your indoor cat would probably approve otherwise.
posted by amtho at 6:30 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

As an nine year old I raised three crows from fledglings, which then flew free and would come visit me if I went outside and called.
More recently in a local park I helped a young crow off the ground into a tree; it was too young to take off by itself. Next time I went in the park crows mobbed me, shouting "there's the guy who assaulted our kid".
It's time for me to make local corvid friends again.
posted by anadem at 7:03 PM on December 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

Thanks for sharing this!
Lots of pied crows around here.

Also a pair of ravens. Whener I spot them, I feel as if I've seen royalty.
posted by Zumbador at 7:32 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

Only the females rattle-knock.

We've had a couple cats that would sit in the window and vocalize at birds. We were amused at the time because they sounded nothing like a bird.

In retrospect, they did sound a bit like that rattle-knock.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:36 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Something to consider before you befriend crows is that if you do, any other bird who nests in your yard will have their eggs and hatchlings killed and eaten before their and you and your children's eyes. This happened to a pair of Steller's Jays who nested on our property. And in my experience, Steller's Jays are the far more fun corvids -- not they won't do as crows do to eggs and baby birds if they get the chance.

But not as much as crows in my experience -- our crows perch upon the top branches of our tallest trees and stand watch all day to see what birds are nesting where. The only bird standing between them and those nestlings is our male Anna's hummingbird who drives them from their perches all day.

Because gram for gram, he is the meanest toughest bird for blocks and they know it. When I was working, I used to wait for the #9 bus at its terminus stop on Aloha across the street from our property in the morning and watch his dad divebomb the watch crows until they flew off. Which was within seconds when he showed up.

But even within him on the scene, our Steller's Jays lost their chick because Mr. Hummingbird couldn't drive them off often enough to keep them from profiling every nest on the property. Sure the Jays rob nests, too, but they aren't organized like their social cousins -- which is why the group name for more than one crow is a murder. So keep all this in mind.
posted by y2karl at 7:42 PM on December 26, 2022 [23 favorites]

Corvids are the second best birds (hey, parrots are hard to beat.) Crows are pretty cool but a bit too, well, crow. Scrub jays however are downright awesome . And ravens? Well you can see why people thought they were familiars. I would give anything to make friends with one of them.
posted by aspo at 7:48 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

The only bird standing between them and those nestlings is our male Anna's hummingbird who drives them from their perches all day.

Mockingbirds perform this duty in my neighborhood, harassing the crows and ravens all day. But sometimes, the mockingbirds and crows team up to hassle the Cooper's hawks that hang around.
posted by LionIndex at 8:51 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

I saw a one crow mob go after a great blue heron who was scoping out backyard goldfish ponds in the neighborhood as they do, which made it croak like a pterodactyl in the Jurassic Park & World series because *fun fact* that's where JP&W got their pterodactyl croaks -- from a recording of a heron croak on a sound effects record:

Jurassic World's Dinosaurs Roar to Life, Thanks to Bird Calls
posted by y2karl at 9:09 PM on December 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Crows can recognize humans to a degree and they seem to be able to describe humans to each other. So the whole neighborhood may learn if you are friend or foe. For this reason I’ve long fantasized about organizing a group of people to go near Trump owned golf courses, dress up with Trump masks and then annoy the local crows. Imagine if crows just randomly shat in him, dive bombed him, and screeched at him.
posted by interogative mood at 9:34 PM on December 26, 2022 [18 favorites]

I both want to befriend crows and am afraid of what happens if they catch me one day without food. The other bird's nest story is sad too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:44 PM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

For this reason I’ve long fantasized about organizing a group of people to go near Trump owned golf courses, dress up with Trump masks and then annoy the local crows.

Actually, Seattle's own John Marzluff, the total package of crow mavenry, did this using a mask of Dick Cheney back when said Dick was better known as the epitome of pure evil rather than as the father of America's heroine Liz.

Marzluff and his minions would don a Dick Cheney mask and chased crows about the University of Washington campus in it after which the UofW crows vociferously mobbed whoever wore it on sight. Marzluff and minions would then don the same mask 9 miles away across town along Alki Beach in West Seattle and they got attacked by the crows there.

So, interogative mood, as Jack Vance would say:

Your concept has merit.

See Crows, smarter than you think.

See also

John Marzluff: In the Company of Crows and Ravens 1/5

John Marzluff: In the Company of Crows and Ravens 2/5

John Marzluff: In the Company of Crows and Ravens 3/5

John Marzluff: In the Company of Crows and Ravens 4/5

John Marzluff: In the Company of Crows and Ravens 5/5
posted by y2karl at 1:51 AM on December 27, 2022 [8 favorites]

On my street in SF, for a week every spring or so, a group of crows descends on the cherry/plum/whatever trees that line the sidewalk across from my apartment and loudly ravage them. Loudly. I've long thought I could leverage this pattern to befriend one or more of these folks. Now I have a method to give it a try!
posted by rhizome at 2:04 AM on December 27, 2022

Little known fact: until the invention of the crowbar, crows simply drank at home.
posted by DreamerFi at 2:13 AM on December 27, 2022 [34 favorites]

Here's my crow story, and I wish I could have had more personal interaction with these guys and gals: I spent a year living in a remote house on a lake north of Montreal. I committed to a bird feeder and to keeping it full at all times, going through barrels of seed. It worked as hoped for a while, with a constant hoard of various species feeding outside my glassed-in porch. Then it took a turn, when the hawks noticed this and my bird-feeder became a hawk-feeder, and the hawks littered the ground by the feeder with the wings they had snipped off my invited guests.

The local crows, who don't eat the seeds on offer, took it upon themselves to post all around the little lake and relay warnings when a hawk was coming. The various seed-feeders understood these alert calls and quickly went into hiding on signal (tucking themselves under leaves on the tree, or under leaves on the ground, for instance), and the crows had a different "all clear" signal that brought the birds out to swarm the feeder again.

The crows would also dive down to peck and harass squirrels raiding the feeder, but that effort was not as effective, and seemed more like bravado on the part of those brave crows that got a peck in on a squirrel.

Their altruism and brave community service made them seem to be good bird citizens, and I bet they had a lot of stories to tell.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:06 AM on December 27, 2022 [25 favorites]

Many years back in undergrad, I was commuting in from a (kinda) nearby town and would park each morning in the same parking lot, which was the regular morning hangout for a lot of crows, perching on phone lines and scavenging litter and so on. It is a minor regret of mine that I only learned about befriending crows a long time later, as it would have been extremely the kind of thing I'd have been into.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:36 AM on December 27, 2022

We’ve had a barred owl living around our property for several years. The owl seems to be followed by crows making a racket, whenever I trace the racket I find the owl, just calmly perched and looking very unstressed (they’re huge).
posted by waving at 8:11 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

The local ravens are huge and hilarious, but always seem a little too wary to be befriended. They do seem to take delight in making strange noises: one will sit on a pole and start making "eh-oh" noises, then try variations with extra squeaks and parps, all the time rocking backwards and forwards. It'll do it for 30 minutes or more.
posted by scruss at 10:19 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

How to Befriend a Crow

There's a (I think) crow who cruises around in our neighborhood. I want to be friends!
posted by storybored at 1:38 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well, from accidental experience I can vouch that it's far far safer trying to befriend a crow than a swan. Unless you are a repeat triple loop rollercoaster rider type -- the fear factor is in the same range -- which I am most decidely not, that is in the category of Do Not Attempt This Anywhere At Any Time Ever. Angry swans are the angriest of Angry Birds. Scary³ A successful encounter is not getting capsized as you paddle as fast you can paddle away with no blood of yours drawn in the process.
posted by y2karl at 3:51 PM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

My husband has always loved corvids, and passed along that love to me. He’s fed the crows consistently over the 20 years we’ve lived in this house, to the point that when he whistles his special signal for them, they show up (unless it’s low tide, then they’re all down at the waterfront gorging on shellfish).
We get ravens occasionally too. Anyone who watches crows knows they are pretty secretive about where their nests are. A couple of years ago, we found out why. We watched as a solo raven methodically predated a crow’s nest in a nearby evergreen. One by one, each baby crow was carried off by the raven (there were four babies). With the first one, the crow parents set up a fuss, but couldn’t stop the raven, and there were no nearby crows to help mob the raven. After that, the crow parents just perched a ways away, and watched. To my knowledge, that nest hasn’t been reused since.
posted by dbmcd at 3:56 PM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Will crows take out hummingbird nests?
posted by coberh at 10:51 PM on December 27, 2022

My wife and I started working to befriend the lakefront crows here in Chicago in November. It's going slowly but they do seem to be responding. They don't seem to be at the point at recognizing us quite yet but they are starting to approach more quickly when we wave to them and throw walnut pieces. The main issue is that they are quite mobile and don't really always hang out in the same area.

We do handfeed White-breasted nuthatches and black-capped chickadees almost every day and I've managed to get a female downy woodpecker to eat from my hand a couple of times but this is much easier than crows because they all have very small defined territories. The little birds definitely do recognize us as they will start hovering near us and "yelling" at us when we approach their territory well before we have our bags of seeds out. It's pure delight to have birds yelling at you! Also it is amazing to have them land on your hand and realize that they weigh almost nothing.
posted by srboisvert at 11:10 AM on December 28, 2022 [3 favorites]