No, seriously, will someone please stone the bloody crows?
Now, I’ll be the first to express a grudging admiration for our corvid friends. They’re immensely successful and indeed valuable in a changing urban environment, and their intelligence has been extensively documented. The sight of literally tens of thousands of crows on their daily commute from Vancouver to the adjacent city of Burnaby is quite spectacular; you’ll find photos of this local phenomenon here and here. (I meant to get some of my own photos last night, but it was raining).
However.
Was there ever a more annoying creature?
At my old shared house, dozens of them would congregate in the trees in the back garden. They started making their dreadful racket at first light, which in the summer is around 4 am. Why can’t they sound more like their relatives? We’ve often been woken by the pleasant throaty sound of a massive raven while camping, and the two experiences are like night and day.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The nesting crows in the tree in the front garden decided that the house was actually theirs, and that any human daring to use the path from street to door should be instantly attacked. Everyone had their own technique for getting in and out of the house; I would put a heavy object into a cheap rustly plastic bag and start whizzing it around above my head when I left the safety of the front door, and keep it up until they stopped dive-bombing me about ten metres from the front gate. My flatmate preferred swinging a tennis racquet, although he did say that he felt guilty when he actually hit one of the attacking crows and sent it flying. He felt somewhat responsible for the crow infestation, as his attempts to stop them claiming the territory in the first place had been thwarted; he’d invested in a catapult, and used to shower the tree with handfuls of dried peas from the front balcony as the nest was being built, but to no avail.
I no longer live in that house, but the fear of being dive-bombed by angry crows still haunts me. It’s not entirely unusual to see a pedestrian or cyclist being chased down the street, and with that in mind, the angry noises from above scare me every. single. day.
It starts in the morning, when I head into the back garden to get my bike, to angry disapproval from the crows who hang out on the wires in the back alley, and who fascinate and terrify my cats in equal measure. If the raccoons are out there too, the outraged caws reach cacophony levels.
It continues as I follow the bike route into the cemetery. The path is lined with perfect nesting trees, and at this time of year, I apparently represent a clear and present danger to every crow couple’s territory claim.
Pulling clear from the trees, I usually have a clear run for a couple of kilometres. But, what’s this – they’ve spread fresh grass seed on the soil outside the newly completed Olympic curling venue, and my commute suddenly resembles a Hitchcock movie. And then, oh good, more trees overhead as I turn West towards work. Caw blimey, I’m glad I’m wearing a helmet.
You’d really think they’d be used to us by now. Aren’t they supposed to be smart?
I’ve seen those crows on my daily Skytrain commute and had no idea why they were doing that! And it’s quite incredible that they all move at the same time…it’s like a huge long flock of birds going past, just before sunset.
At least they aren’t as scary as a population of giant social amoebas in Texas!
They are smart. They just don’t like you.
Caw blimey ARGH.
Also – Bird Brains by Candace Savage is a very good book on the topic of corvid intelligence, and has lots of nice photos in it, to boot.
Kyrsten, on some evenings at this time of year, they come over the cemetery just as I’m cycling through it. It’s quite amazing. I have a couple of friends who live directly under the flight path, and on summer evenings, it takes the flock (or rather the murder, right?) up to half an hour to fly over us as we sit on the deck with a drink, admiring the commuting corvids.
Richard, sorry, that was a rather dodgy pun. And they definitely don’t like me.
They’re raven mad, so they are.
It’s not entirely unusual to see a pedestrian or cyclist being chased down the street
Are you kidding?? That’s cool!! (I can say that from a safe distance…)
I’ve always been nervous around gulls.
The local gulls will try to steal your food, but they don’t have the aggressive territorial nature of the local crows.
One of the coolest things I’ve seen from a kayak was a group of gulls harassing a bald eagle that had caught a fish. The eagle eventually dropped the fish, and one of the gulls swooped down and caught it in mid-air. All this within sight of the skyscrapers of downtown Vancouver.
(Sorry, I have to bring this up…) Antarctic birds, such as Skuas, are of course also very good at stealing other birds’ food (the Antarctic being somewhat resource-limited unless you happen to live in the water)… Skuas are such successful scavengers that the ‘lost and found’ bins on the US research stations in the Antarctic are called ‘Skua box’.
Don’t apologise, I love little snippets of information like that one!
In that case, glad to oblige 🙂
that does sound like something out of a hitchcock movie when they were nesting outside the house u used to live in. the gulls and bald eagle squabble sounds really cool though, the eagles are just beautiful.
i know every spring in canberra the local magpies get really territorial. everyone gets attacked, especially the cyclists. so a nifty trend sprung up: ppl stuck plastic cables on the top of their helmets or painted eyes on them. That usually freaks the birds out. Also, holding a stick in one hand while riding helps, especially after throwing it at them a couple of times. they usually learn to caw at u after that, instead of grabbing ur helmet.
I think crows are also sacred birds to the West Coast First Nations. I remember something about how Raven brought fire to the tribes,…or when people die their souls become ravens…
“ppl stuck plastic cables on the top of their helmets or painted eyes on them.”
Ooh, I bet that looks stylin’. Actually, I have a bunch of plastic lift ticket cables attached to my ski jacket that I could potentially recycle in this way…
I worked with a guy from Melbourne, and someone from our lab who went and visited him there, long story. They had a story of going for a picnic, and ending up hiding under a blanket to deter a persistent Kookaburra that was trying to steal their cheese sandwiches.
Have you seen a Kookaburra up close? Those things have beaks.
Also, Red-Winged Blackbirds in nesting season will dive-bomb you if you get too close. This, I know from personal experience.
(Google Image search) yowza! That’s a beak alright.
My first up-close-and-personal encounter with a raven was a bit scary – huge birds, but like I said, more curious than agressive. (And solitary, thank goodness – at least the ones I’ve seen in BC).
Another of our favourite campsites was shared one year by a nest full of bald eagles – two adults and two half-sized juveniles. We saw them a few times on the first day, but as we started to pack up to leave on the second day, they started to circle the site, getting gradually lower and lower. It was a bit intimidating – never mind the beaks, those talons are terrifying when they’re just a metre or so over your head! They landed just as we launched the kayaks, to scavenge for whatever we’d left behind (no garbage, obviously, but maybe a few scraps of food that we’d dropped, and definitely some oyster shells with bits of flesh still attached).
Aside from crows, the only time I’ve been dive-bombed was by the Arctic Terns on the Farne Islands. And boatloads of tourists pay for this pleasure, every single day… cue my visiting pen-pal running away with her arms over her head, shouting “no, no, no, not me, I’m German!”.
cue my visiting pen-pal running away with her arms over her head, shouting “no, no, no, not me, I’m German!”
Did that line work? If it did, I should write it down…
No, it did not. It amused everyone else on the island, though, so that’s something.
Hm. Eagles just overhead – that would be dramatic, but a bit disconcerting. I was overflown by one on the beach near Qualicum on Vancouver Island once – lovely birds.
I’ve held a number of saw-whet owls in hand on a couple of occasions – even those little guys have talons that would make a mess of an un-gloved hand (or un-hatted head, I suppose).
Hilarious bald eagle story:
We were once waiting for a ferry just outside of Vancouver, and eavesdropping on the group next to us. They were talking about some American tourists they’d just met, who were outraged at Canada’s impudence. They allegedly asked “what the f$*@ are all these American eagles doing up here? Are you guys stealing them??!!”
Barely remembered fact from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: there are more Bald Eagles in British Columbia than in all of the United States of America.
Said fact may or may not be 20 years out of date. But I bet it’s still true.
It sounds plausible enough, I mean, I see them within the actual city sometimes. My friend saw one eating a pigeon on the roof of our building a couple of years ago, and we’re only a few hundred metres from the downtown core as the
croweagle flies.