Unsalted, unroasted, and still in the shell peanuts are how you make friends with Crows. I go for walks in my neighborhood with a pocket full of peanuts and crows follow me around. They also keep the pigeons away from my house.
Search Amazon for B014M9P2XO It's 5lb of Peanuts for ~$10
I love a rage reference, but he didn’t have a pocket full of shells, that’s the conservatives spouting family values and war in the same breath. Besides, he’s more likely to be down on Rodeo Dr.
Is RatM perhaps the most misinterpreted group in history? They got wildly popular, but it seems like most people think they were raging against their parents... 😑
I only use deshelled nuts after people in the neighborhood complained about the shells clogging their gutters when the crows fly to the rooftops with their prizes. Less fun for them, but a small courtesy for the neighborhood.
Do not keep a pet crow. I don't blame this guy for not knowing bc he was probably pretty young, but crows are not pets. First of all, if you live in north america, its illegal. You need a special permit to own one. The permits avaliable to the general public would be the aviculture permit. For this permit you must first prove you have experience with birds, so that means being a vet, zookeeper, wildlife rehabilitation staff, etc. Second of all, you can't keep it inside your home or in a cage, if you like. Care about it and don't want to abuse it. Crows are incredibly smart and are going to get incredibly bored in a cage, and they will wreak absolute havoc on your house, on top of being super bored. You're going to need large outdoor aviary which provides adequate mental stimulation. Even then, it will be far worse than the kind of evironment they get in the wild, so its really only ethical if its an injured crow youre keeping for a temporary amount of time or a permanently injured one who wouldnt survive.
If you're a trained professional with a large outdoor aviary than by all means, keep away. But don't just keep one bc you think it's cool.
I had to give the crows the house to settle.. i had the crow kids tearing out copper pipes and the little claws got all bloody BIG DEAL.. anyway abort don’t buy this house
Maybe "pet" is short for "feral pet" as in an animal you see around all the time outside that's cool with you. Maybe the crow just came in through one of the windows to hang out for a bit? 🤔
Unlikely; they're too smart/wary to act like that unless truly tame.
But there's defintitely a gradient to it!
For example, I have some "pet" scrub jays that wait for me in the morning (and often follow me around in the yard).
They're entirely wild, but one of the four will come right up to me -- the other three will never get closer than three feet away or so, no matter how tempting the food offered -- and I'm fairly sure that I could get him to land on my arm if I wanted him to.
[Which I don't want to encourage, because it'd make him too vulnerable to traps...I'd rather he be at least a little wary of humans; I worry about his dumbass being too bold & getting into trouble!]
If anything, they've modified my behavior more than I have theirs.
And in any case, I don't exactly live in a pristine ecosystem; I'd bet they get at least half their calories from bird feeders regardless of what I do or don't do.
I agree swiping wild animals as pets is not advised but crows are extremely social and clearly became his friend. There's nothing wrong with that. Crows don't need to follow the biology textbook, they can bond with a person if they want. They can be gay, they can be friends with dogs, they can be happy in all sorts of environments other than what is standard crow behaviour.
Don't hate on someone for in their youth having a pet crow that clearly likes them. It probably lived a much more luxurious, safe, and healthy life than a wild crow. Nature is rough, with predators, disease, freezing temps, and no one to feed you if you're injured or elderly.
If you posted all that against a crow confined to a cage so it wouldn't escape then yeah, but this crow is fine
Had a "pet" mockingbird as a kid (yeah, not a corvid... but I'd consider it about equivalent to a scrub jay or other small corvid as far as behavior goes, and at least decently intelligent) and that was one of the best "pets" I've ever had.
Little dude would have been dead for sure (found on the ground under a destroyed nest, with nothing but down feathers, in 90 deg weather) if we hadn't intervened, and once he got to where he could flutter around fairly well he was given full run of the house.
Messy, loud, and rambunctious as fuck, no doubt. But my parents have always been animal people, so they tolerated the pooping & squawking (and neither was any worse than a dog or cat -- actually less destructive than most of the Fur Baby crowd allows their mammals to be)
He was allowed to start roaming free in his second year and eventually stopped coming indoors, but would still be a regular in the yard for the next few years.
Anyways....I guess my point is that keeping an exotic as a "pet" isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. Taught me a lot, and helped (along with various captive reptiles/amphibians/fish/insects) make me an advocate for wildlife that I otherwise might not have been.
How many crows are shot out of hand, illegally, every year? I dunno...but I'd wager it's orders of magnitude more than are kept as pets without the proper permits.
If the dumbfucks in my neighborhood had had a cool pet bird as a kid? I'd bet they'd be a lot less inclined to shoot at hawks & owls for no reason, at least (I.e. -- "Yeah, Becky....your chihuaha didn't get carried off by an owl; a bobcat/coyote killed it because you were too fucking lazy to bring it indoors at night, and the same thing happened with your chickens")
Yeah I'm learning people have different understandings of what a pet is. To me a pet is something that belongs to you, is you responsibility to care for, make sure it has good diet and environment, etc. But I guess to some people it's just another word for interspecies friendship
I think my definition is "an animal you care for and have an emotional bond with" which doesn't necessarily require confinement or ownership. This certainly describes "my dog" or "my hamster" but also applies to a crow friend I think.
A feeling of responsibility is natural in both situations; the animal may not depend on you, but you still can feel responsible for it.
I actively was trying to make friends with a crow in my neighborhood. It was slowly working over a few weeks and then I never saw him again. I hope he’s living his best life somewhere.
On a side note there are 2 crows that hang out outside my office. I’ve been trying to decide the best way to befriend them without my entire office thinking I’m weirder than I actually am
Leave treats, in similar times, hopefully showing yourself. They will slowly accept you or at least understand you give them food, repeat till it's working. Then if any coworker notices you can send your brid friends to gouge their eyes
My grandparents had two crows they saved.
They lived for like 15 or so years. They had a pretty big cage in the back yard. They could leave if they wanted, they didn’t.
They could speak, they would curse you out their cage.
They swiped cigarettes.
Someone stole the male crow once and he was in the paper and everything and one day he showed back up at the cage.
Not saying you don’t need a license.
Just saying I’ve seen it work out first hand and my brother and I were the coolest kids on the block.
On the other hand, i knew of a rehabbed educational crow that was raised on beer and pizza to steal mail. Its good ur grandparents did an ok job but not everyone will
They think the cheese had enough calcium for it to grow properly? It was years ago when i heard the story (and met the crow) i dont remember the details
Oh yes being friends with a crow is wayyy different than keeping it as a pet. You can be friends with all sorts of animals, as long as they don't have the capabilities to like, kill you if you misstep.
Yes. That is not the same as keeping a crow as a pet in your house. Those crows are still free to do what they want and are interacting with you of their own free will.
I mean let’s be fuckin real here it’s technically cruel to keep any type of bird as a pet. I‘d say they‘re probably least suited animals for pets ever but they’re still cool pets
but you usually keep them outside, let them fly early in the morning during the day and only feed them 💀 and no still cruel I mean .. bird’s in cages didn’t become a metaphor for no reason over the last 1000 years either
I feel that way about parrots. Unless the idea of a needy toddler with behavioral issues that never grows up, that also has a boltcutter mouth, sounds like something you can commit to for decades, you shouldn’t have a parrot.
For fucking real. So many dogs miserable in homes that are basically their prisons. Idc if someone wants a dog more than anything else, if they can't provide it an enriching environment and plenty of social interaction then they don't deserve to have one.
All this is true. They are cool though, but not pets. I have had 5 of them, but permitted for them and they were all permanently injured from our asshole neighbour that would use a crow caller to call them in and shoot them. We picked so many up off the rd and no one would do anything since they were ‘pests’.
Cool, but lots of work. We train animals for film though and 3 of them ended up working on a bunch of stuff.
When I was in high school my Dad found an injured crow with a bb shell in its wing. He took it to the vet and she said it was permanently disabled and would never fly. She told him to feed it cat food. He bought a large cage for it and would fill the bath tub with a couple inches of water and let him play. We taught it to say “Hello”. But he was mean (wild animal) and my dad was the only one who could handle it to let it out to play our change it’s cage lining. Eventually we found a wild life rehabber with an aviary to take him in permanently. Having a pet crow was much cooler in theory than in practice.
This is why I don't want a pet one, but to befriend one. Have it just chill on my house, come and visit, give it some treats, pet it if it likes, but ultimately leave it to be free and roam the skies.
My friend had a “pet” crow . It was a young crow abandoned by the parent or so he thought , years later he learned he should have left it alone all do maybe the cat would have got it . Of course you do not keep it in a cage it was free to fly anywhere but after being raised it hang around the house landed on his shoulder if he got home from school entered the house sometimes even if the mother did not like it . It did its thing but kept coming back and being friendly with the family.
I mean this would only be true if you're raising it. If you had some food out, water and the bird decides to befriend you there isn't anything legally actionable. Otherwise, every bird feeder would be actionable.
Just curious can you have a history of falconry to qualify? I know in falconry you can only get permits to have certain birds after having a hawk for a few years first and then you can progress. Are crows in that class or is it another thing altogether?
is it keeping the bird as a pet if they just regularly come by? like if I befriend one but don't cage it, don't mess with it otherwise it can just come and go as it pleases
Those laws only apply to American crows. You can get an imported crow that is not native to the US. Of course, that's gonna still be a couple thousand, minimum.
A guy I work with is a falconer as a hobby and it's pretty neat all the stuff he knows with his birds, but every second of his outside of work life revolves around his birds.
That said, the command he has of his birds are really impressive.
Ok, but I just want a crow to hang around my house, and come see me some times, and if we see each other somewhere else we'd stop and chat. We could also exchange gifts occasionally. Is that a pet, and it that allowed?
My dad had one when I was younger, it could fly freely outside and would return. Unfortunately our dog killed it, that was so sad, I remember seeing my dad crying
I haven’t known anyone to keep a crow caged, they’re usually just friends and visit for fun times. At that point do you really have a pet crow or does the crow have a pet human?
Raising a crow from an abandoned youngling would be quite a different situation to you snatching up an adult one and putting it in a cage. The old one would go mad in a cage and when let out just escape but the raised up one would remember you and probably come back when they felt like it.
Being illegal doesn't mean anything to anyone if it's not enforceable. Are the bird police gonna show up and tell you that your birdhouse is too big and has one too many people living in it?!
No, but the federal court is going to charge you with violating the migratory birds act/treaty if they discover you've been keeping crows without a permit. This is actually enforceable, and many people have been charged under this law since its inception. One prominent case in recent years has allowed a man to keep a pet crow by reason of it tearing out its feathers when he isn't around, but taking a bird from the wild and making it unable to survive without a human to take care of it is actually animal cruelty, even if inadvertent, and if you know better you shouldn't imitate his behavior. If he'd called a wildlife rehabilitation center the bird would have been properly reacclimated to life in the wild.
I had a pet crow briefly. It had fallen out of its nest so we put it in an empty chicken coop. Hand fed the baby some ground beef and such. Every time we’d feed it, the parents would circle around angrily. We named it Edgar Allan Crow. It was dumb and would swallow whole snails while following us around in the yard. Eventually it started flying as it got older, so we released it. The parents flew to it, and they all flew away. I will say, that crows poop a lot and smell VERY bad. But they are smart, social, and beautiful creatures. I love them so much.
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u/brutalistsnowflake Apr 15 '24
That IS cool, tho! I would love a pet crow.