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Crows - Amazing birds


arjimlad
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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31795681

 

 

I found these stories of people befriended by crows fascinating.

 

I know they are very intelligent birds and obviously we do need to control their numbers for the sake of our songbirds, but all the same, respect to the crow !

 

I wondered if anyone here had any similar stories. Mine have generally been Caw.. Bang... Thud, which has a certain tinge of sadness.

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I used to be the manager of a retail shop in a hospital. I came into the shop via a side door which has a large glass panel from top to bottom. One morning, around 7am, and before the shop opened, I could hear, what sounded like little stones being thrown at the glass panel. I looked towards it, and was amazed to see a large Crow, jumping up about 8 inches off the ground, and tapping the glass with its beak. As I opened the door, it flew onto a low roof, watching towards me. I opened a packet of nuts and raisins, and placed them on the floor, just outside the glass door. I closed the door, and a few minutes later, the Crow came down to feed. I did this on a number of occasions, and showed others what the Crow was doing. How it knew that tapping the glass would get me to provide it with some food, beats me.

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I used to be the manager of a retail shop in a hospital. I came into the shop via a side door which has a large glass panel from top to bottom. One morning, around 7am, and before the shop opened, I could hear, what sounded like little stones being thrown at the glass panel. I looked towards it, and was amazed to see a large Crow, jumping up about 8 inches off the ground, and tapping the glass with its beak. As I opened the door, it flew onto a low roof, watching towards me. I opened a packet of nuts and raisins, and placed them on the floor, just outside the glass door. I closed the door, and a few minutes later, the Crow came down to feed. I did this on a number of occasions, and showed others what the Crow was doing. How it knew that tapping the glass would get me to provide it with some food, beats me.

 

I was called in to sort out a pair of crows a couple of years ago.

 

One crow was continually 'attacking' a conservatory window, and making one helluva racket at 06.00 in the morning; it appeared to be attacking it's reflection in the glass.This apparently had been going on for a week. A pair of crows were nest building in a lone tree 100 yards away, and appeared to be the culprits.

 

The householder kept chickens in the yard, and so I made a nest near to the hutch with a couple of eggs in plain sight.

 

I came the following morning at 05.00 with my HW100 and lay under a cammo net under a hedge 25 yards away, and within an hour had both crows.

 

I do like shooting crows, and those two were probably the easiest I have shot with an air rifle. I still chuckle about it when I have the odd dram.

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Crows are amazing birds and I do sometimes think it is a shame that we shoot something so intelligent, but then I remind myself of how they use that intelligence to prey upon livestock and I don't feel bad at all.

 

It is wrong to anthropomorphise, but crows are wicked things, albeit really smart.

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I used to be the manager of a retail shop in a hospital. I came into the shop via a side door which has a large glass panel from top to bottom. One morning, around 7am, and before the shop opened, I could hear, what sounded like little stones being thrown at the glass panel. I looked towards it, and was amazed to see a large Crow, jumping up about 8 inches off the ground, and tapping the glass with its beak. As I opened the door, it flew onto a low roof, watching towards me. I opened a packet of nuts and raisins, and placed them on the floor, just outside the glass door. I closed the door, and a few minutes later, the Crow came down to feed. I did this on a number of occasions, and showed others what the Crow was doing. How it knew that tapping the glass would get me to provide it with some food, beats me.

I bet you don't do that nowadays Steve...

 

Mike

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All corvids are pretty clever, when my dad was a kid he hand-reared an orphan jackdaw and taught it to sing ring-a-ring of roses. It didn't get to grips with the dance though.

 

My dad had a pet Jackdaw when he was a nipper too.

 

A couple of years ago I learned from a mate, who was the boss of the estates department for the local authority, of a council house he had to visit where the tenant had fenced off about 6 feet of his living room with chicken wire and kept a pet crow in there. I believe it was a wild adult bird that he had somehow captured and thought he would keep it as a pet.

 

He also told me about a woman in a block of flats who kept pot bellied pigs indoor, she actually laid turf over a layer of polythene in her spare bedroom and watered it. It was a short lived affair as the pig scraped through the turf and polythene and the downstairs neighbour had a very messy ceiling collapse.

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