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- Hacker News
- They forgot to mention the most famous corvids in mythology, Odin’s familiars Huginn and Muninnby fmajid
- I can't believe they left out Gothi and Gethli in Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky.by marshray
- the article gets my up vote for at least admitting some bird scientists think a lot of this may be projection (one I am also fond of making) and that crows are a lot less into us than we might think.by ggm
- We started feeding a small group of crows that hung out in our neighborhood but after a while decided to back off to only occasionally because their constant presence kept other types of birds away from our backyard. They are very talkative and I often banter back and forth with them saying hello when they occasionally visit now and have taken to showing up when I take walks to squawk at me and i assume to say hello. Very fascinating creatures
I also tell my young daughter to always be nice to them, because they will pass information not only among themselves but also down generations.
by Aboutplants - A murder of crows lives about 200 m away and whenever a predatory bird enters their perimeter, they swarm it until vacates the area. Everything from osprey, hawks, vultures, and eagles, they leave Great Blue Herons alone though.
I don't want to go out of my way to befriend them, because they may harass people who are not me on the property.
by tyjen - They are, until a murder takes up residency in a tree outside your apartment in Emeryvile. Then they are cool roommates you have to get away from else you lose your sanity.by Avicebron
- Or is it the roommate that always brings his friends over totally disregarding your personal space? Same result thoughby dylan604
- The park across from our apartment in Cupertino was the morning gathering point for every crow in the Bay Area. They showed up at about 3:30-4:00a every day. It was as loud and obnoxious as you might otherwise imagine.
Now, in Seattle, we just have a nice family of three crows that hang out on our balcony on a daily basis. I much prefer this arrangement.
- A friend is someone you’ll spend time around given other options. If you’ve spent any time getting to know crows (or jays, or any other corvids), it’s quite obvious this is the case. I had a scrub jay who’d perch on my foot while I read in the morning. I considered him a friend, and by that standard, he me.by roughly
- I have been lead to believe that blue scrub jays have a lot of different vocalizations but the only sounds I've caught out of them over the past 15ish years of paying attention have been the raucous shouting shrieks they seem so fond of doing. I perceive this as their species equivalent of cursing xD
- How folksy. Give that jay a hat and we got a Disney movie cooking.by lelandfe
- Crows are fascinating creatures. My wife read that they will chase hawks and eagles away, so she started putting food out for the crows near the tree where they gather (we have chickens and ducks that we don't want the hawks near).
Now they bring trinkets as gifts and leave them near the tree. We also had a crow in the past that would make barking noises when it saw our dogs and freak them out. I'm convinced it was messing with them.
by sethev - I have seen many times a group of crows harassing a hawk. They are unrelenting. OTOH, I have seen a hawk eating a crow. It’s a delicate balance of power.by e40
- We have quite a few birds around our house and it has been quite gratifying to see how much they accept your presence after a while. While making coffee yesterday morning, there were three tauhau hopping around in the tree outside the window, less than a meter away, unconcerned. If I go outside they'll keep to about 2 meters. When I'm working in the garage, a piwakawaka often comes in to watch me. If I'm digging in the garden there are a few (I'm going to guess starlings) that watch me digging in the garden close enough I'm surprised they don't land on me. As soon as I stop digging, they're in the dirt rummaging for what I might have turned up. Collectively they have all decided that I'm not out to get them so just go about their business. Except for the piwakawaka, which does seem to go out of its way to just watch me make things.
It possibly helps that I have a dog that will not tolerate a cat on the property and seems to believe that birds don't exist.
by Lerc
Which is very odd, considering that all birds are cats. [0]It possibly helps that I have a dog that will not tolerate a cat on the property and seems to believe that birds don't exist.by PyWoody- For anybody else also doing image searches for these birds, it's tauhou. Seemingly these colonized New Zealand in 1832.by card_zero
- From a bird’s point of view, large mammals must be interesting. You are just doing a little digging in the garden, but it’s an absolutely tremendous amount of earth you’ve moved compared to their ability to dig.
I’m always curious about animals’ perception of us. I think they don’t really have the concepts of things like doors, lids, etc, as constructed devices that are made to be manipulated. I wonder if they think we’re very clever at getting into things. And does the dog worry every day that we won’t find food?
by bee_rider - I don't know the answer, generally speaking, but we've got a pair that pop onto the back fence every morning waiting for their peanuts. I think they're multigenerational, as I have reasons to suspect that the "original" Mr. Peanut has passed on. Anyway, the bold one will come sit with me in the front yard. When I walk the dog, they'll follow me for a bit, flying a few feet off the ground right in front of me, I assume to make their presence known and get a piece of dog biscuit (which I oblige). They have never gotten obnoxious about it by crowing at me, just silently hanging around: "if you could spare a bit of dog food, kind sir..."
Friends? It's probably transactional from the crow's POV, but OTOH they hang out on the fence and just sit sometimes even if there are peanuts on the ground. I enjoy seeing them, though. I will say, though, that after many pounds of peanuts not a single one of the little bastards has ever brought me a present, as is advertised. :-)
by mikestew - You should have started by putting some money on the ground when they aren't there....and then when they come you pick up the money and leave the peanuts.....do this a few times on a daily schedule and then "miss" a day or two so they associate having money on the ground with getting peanuts....then the profit comesby jzemeocala
- We have crows we feed. They sometimes will come to the back door and caw really softly. Clearly it’s a “hey, I’m here, can I have sone peanuts?” It feels really nice when they do that.by e40
- > Even when humans have a friendship—or something that feels like it—with a crow, the relationship happens on the wild animal’s terms. They visit when they want to, and they may disappear from our life suddenly.
It goes also the other way around. I do not leave a note to my neighborhood crows when I move town.
I think that it has nothing to do in which terms it happens but the communication barrier. It is very possible that the crows signal that they are leaving for good but we are just missing the message. And my reason to not leave them a note is because they cant read, if they could I would.
by Frieren - Crows can remember a dangerous person and tell their friends about it. From "Social learning spreads knowledge about dangerous humans among American crows" (https://faculty.washington.edu/wirsinga/Cornell2011.pdf)
We exposed wild crows to a novel ‘dangerous face’ by wearing a unique mask as we trapped, banded and released 7 –15 birds at five study sites near Seattle, WA, USA. An immediate scolding response to the dangerous mask after trapping by previously captured crows demonstrates individual learning, while an immediate response by crows that were not captured probably represents conditioning to the trapping scene by the mob of birds that assembled during the capture. Later recognition of dangerous masks by lone crows that were never captured is consistent with horizontal social learning. Independent scolding by young crows, whose parents had conditioned them to scold the dangerous mask, demonstrates vertical social learning.
by smurda - And most importantly they teach their offspring about the dangers!by UI_at_80x24
- What gets me is that it is not just "crows remember faces". Apparently the information can outlive the original encounter entirely. You can end up on the neighborhood crow blacklist without some of the crows ever having met you before.by veunes
- What does scolding look like in crows? Sincere question.by tescreal
- This is tangential but our monk parakeets make a special sound when they see something they don't like. We have learned to identify it, and hilarously, our dogs did too.
Now when they see something weird (recently, a bird of prey in street light they saw through the window) they sound the alarm and the dogs go absolutely crazy.
by kobalsky - I like the fact that they are so ... observant. A specific crow (I recognize him due to the missing feathers around his collar) will spend a while sitting on a tree outside my window, observing me for no reason. I do feed them generally by leaving peanuts in a specific area in the backyard early in the morning, and I'm sure this one partakes in the feast; but I have never rewarded his presence in any form, and yet there he is, in the middle of the day, just hanging out on the branch of the leafless tree, just sitting there, observing me. If I turn around and make eye contact, he often flies away. But I can see him in the reflection on my ipad's screen, and if I don't turn around and make eye contact, he will stay there for a while. It is fun interacting with "smart" creatures who have their own personalities and active social lives.by mlmonkey
- What else is he gonna do? Our ancestors spent a lot of time around observing things because the days are long and there’s no WiFi.by unsupp0rted
- Isn't he just checking/waiting for the food to come out? If he's the first to it, he gets the best haul.by dinfinity
- sounds like my dog. he knows when to sit and stare at me to wait for his usual food routine and, occasionally, treats. once he realizes that no it isn't time for either, he goes away.by spike021