Crows are scary
They
- use tools
- Can be taught to speak (like parrots)
- Have huge brains for birds
- like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee
- They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things
- they are scary smart at solving puzzles
- some crows stay with their mates until one of them dies
- they can remember faces
- SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT. They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows. Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag. But the nice guys with masks they left alone. THEN, OH WE’RE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WEREN’T EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight. THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.
- They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.
Guys I’m really scared of crows now.
(q)Yeah but have you seen this
YEAH! THEY ALSO PLAY FOR NO EVIDENT REASON OTHER THAN FUN AND THEY LOVE THE SNOW!
Crows are seriously the coolest birbs ever.I WANT ONE!
A colleague of my dad’s lives next to a lake, and looked out the window one morning to see a duck trapped in the ice. A crow swooped down. “Oh hell,” she thought, expecting carnage, because crows are opportunists. But the crow chipped at the ice with its beak until the duck was free.
Idk of this counts but a few crows saved me from a magpie swooping attack once ,they’re bros who can tell when magpies are being unreasonable and need to chill
I love crows so damn much. When I was fifteen, I hit a pretty serious bout of depression, to the point I was in my room for months. Well, a family of crows made a nest in a tree outside my window. There were two parents and two chicks. One chick was healthy and strong. One was weak, and had a caw like something being strained. It sounded more like a rooster crowing and so my parents jokingly named him ‘Buck’.Well… months passed and Buck’s sibling was taught to fly. His parents focused on the sibling because the sibling was strong. The father stayed behind to try and teach Buck, but I saw him try to fly, fail, and crash to the floor. His father helped him back up into the tree.
Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldn’t caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Well… near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumped… and just before he hit the ground, he soared back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.
That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like I’d lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him.
Cut to the next spring? I’m walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a sound… a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree.
That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buck… and one from his chick.
Cut to ten years later? We have a family of crows who all have a very distinct caw and they come here and spend every spring, summer, and fall on our property. Buck still greets me every spring.
that last reply made me wanna cry. that’s so beautiful.
When I was a kid there was a crow (or possibly a raven) that made a nest in the tree outside my bedroom window. She and her mate (who was slightly smaller than her) came back every single spring for eleven years. They would arrive around the end of March, spend a couple of weeks fixing up the old nest, making it secure and watertight, etc, and then she would lay her eggs. They raised and fledged at least one chick successfully every year, and usually at least two.
The spring after I turned 16, though, she and her mate didn’t show up. I’m not sure what happened, if one or both of them somehow died, or if they just decided on a new nest site finally, or if it was something else entirely.
Anyway, two years later, I woke up one morning to really loud cawing outside my window. I was like UGH because it was literally the crack of dawn, but once I figured out what was happening I sat up and looked out. I was actually kind of excited.
The birds in the tree weren’t the original pair, but I recognized one of them (the female, I think) as one of the chicks from about six years earlier. She had some lighter grey feathers around her neck that were really unique so she was always easy to identify. That spring, she and her mate claimed the tree her parents had used, and even used the old nest, though by the time they finished repairing it and making it usable it was probably 90% new material haha.
And those two birds continued to use that tree and nest every year until last summer when that tree and the one beside it actually come down in a really bad windstorm we had. It happened near the end of August so they had already fledged their chicks and everything, but the tree was a total loss after that. If they came back this spring they obviously didn’t stick around.
tldr; I had a couple of “pet” crows/ravens and I can’t tell you enough how amazing and entertaining they are. They’re SO smart and funny, and they 100% knew I was watching them. Sometimes they would even do little self-taught behaviors/tricks just to see my reaction. Sometimes I gave them bits of bread afterward and they looooved it. Corvids in general are literally the best. ♥
