Befriending Crows
I've been befriending a murder of crows in my neighborhood the past few weeks. They haven't touched the large feeder of corn & peanuts I put out for them, but they still come & sit in the nearby trees & call for me to come outside.
(No sound because my daughter was laughing & talking over all of the majestic cawing as they made their exit, satisfied with having seen us. I just missed the entire murder in flight by maybe 30 seconds as a bunch had flown away already. After this, 3-4 of them circled back & did some laps overhead of us & then flew off - of course I hit the wrong button on my camera for that!)
Today, one keeps coming back & calling for me so our backyard security camera picks up the sound to get my attention to come outside just so we can play mimicry back & forth. He caws 4 times & I caw back 4 times. I caw 3 times & he caws back 3. Back & forth.
What's that you're thinking?
Did I purchase a security camera for our backyard specifically so I could watch for my crows, but rationalized it to my husband as a security feature?
I plea the fifth.
Moving on...
One particular crow is currently in the farmer's field behind our backyard, looking for scraps of corn from the harvest weeks ago while doing this. He'll come & fly overhead of me, happily cawing in greeting at times.
(Taken a couple of weeks ago: It might be hard to tell, but all of those black dots are maybe a third of the murder I've seen sitting in the adjacent yard's trees (the leaves have all fallen off of ours, so they're choosing the ones still with leaves).
Absolutely blind to the feeder I made for him & his buddies even though I've shown him & his murder crew multiple times. Three bluejays & a pair of squirrels are getting fat on their ignored bounty...
(The blue jays and squirrels LOVE the feeder. My crows just fly overhead and caw at me in greeting and go out to scavenge food for the day... I thought food was how you befriended crows? They haven't eaten mine!)
I'm 90% sure it's the same one but, the past couple of mornings, one has been sort of standing sentry at the very, very tip top of a tree until I come outside & check the feeder and clean up any empty shells. He'll caw a few times in greeting and fly closer to the yard before going and find the rest of his family group.
And, when I say, "very, very tip top", I mean like somehow balancing on a twig the diameter of a leaf stem, all while bobbing around haphazardly as they get blown- never flapping their wings to steady themselves! It makes sense to see regular birds do this, but crows are bigger! I don't think physics has any sway over them...
(This is the only pic I've managed that's somewhat close to what I was describing. He's at least on a thicker little twig here. Imagine him sitting on the tip of where the leaf to his left is for the typical placement.)
Given how I've read that crows will have a member stand watch while the others eat, I'm kind of wondering if he's making sure that I "eat" (get to the feeder and back) in the morning safely now. The murder already chased off a couple small groups of blackbirds who dared to sit in their trees while I was outside the other day.
I'm an only child with no living parents & who's estranged from the rest of my family, so I've told my daughter that since the murder appears to be adopting me, she can consider them her aunts, uncles, & cousins from my side of the family now. One seems to like to sit in a tree nearby while she's waiting for the bus at the bus stop each morning. She's carrying peanuts to try and feed it.
Basically, I'm just loving my new crow family! (even if I've been interrupted 5x while writing this by a certain someone wanting me to come outside, who's just started cawing yet again!)
Off to play with the fam, I guess!
