Finding a crows nest.

[Anonymous Poster]

Rich,
I am sure you know a lot about crows etc...a matter of fact I know you know a lot...no question about it.I know it is a commitment and I know how curious a crow is.
I am not planning on keeping one in a bird cage inside of my house.I would keep/raise it in a cage outside and after grew it could come and go as it wants.There curiosity and intellegence makes them such a unique pet.The fish and wildlife game biologist sure wasn't against me having one as a pet.Now as far as it being fair or not fair I will not get into that.I personnaly know of 3 other people who had crows,they even had them talking (repeating things like a parrot would).
I have even heard of them deciding to leave and not come back.I may not even find one,I am not going to be obsessed with finding one. But thanks anyway for your input Richard I know you mean well and I admire people like you who make a profession studying wildlife etc. I would be very suprised if I ever found one..

 

[Anonymous Poster]

It's probably almost 20 years ago now, but I was framing my house in summertime, and a crow came by. He had a red band on his leg...so I figured he was a pet and was not that surprised when he landed on my shoulder.

He hung around for a while...was funny really, as whenever one of the family left in a car, he would land on the roof and stand there, right above the windshield, as the car went up the driveway and down the road. I'm not sure how far he rode like that, but it was at least hundreds of yards. And it was a regular routine over the few days he was around.

Did not realize crows lived so long! As long as sixty years...wow...maybe that guy is still out there somewhere, riding down the road on the roof of someone else's car... /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[thcri]

I don't like crows too much. They seem to make too much noise on Saturday morinings when I want to sleep in late. During the work week they don't make that noise, just when I want to sleep in. They don't go away in the winter, they are always there. They steal the food I put out for the pheasants, turkeys and deer. They are mean, they try and fight the pheasants. 5 crows to one pheasant, huh you should see it when there is 5 pheasants and 5 crows, the crows are chicken.

I was actually hoping that they would go away someday but if they live for 60 years I guess that will never happen. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif


murph

 

[Taylortractornut]

my cousin had a pet crow, they fed it from a little bron paper bag an you had to watch it when you brought one back to his aviary. bexcuase hed take it away from you. wed find al sorts of things in his cage after a day of scavenging.
I ran a scraper in Oxford Mississippi one summer dad was the excavator operator and Superintendent , and wed sit in the mornings watching 2 old crows pick up potato chips, old sandwiches, and the old foil wrappers. i set a hambuger on the back of my truck and went to get a coke out of the cooler i heard a noise and looked around and one of the montsers had my sandwich. it was too big to take off with but hed runn and hop and flap and go about 15 feet farther i eventually stopped and hed hop back infront of me arrogantly. the next morning it was fun because i had a frozen burger staked down took him a wle to steal that one. SOmthing fun to do was put tin foil in a quart plastic jar with a top and watch em rol it aroungd after a while wed notice the jar was empty and the lid was off.

 

[Bird]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I don't like crows too much )</font>

Me neither. It seems there are more of them some years than others, and about 3 years ago, I had to plant my sweet corn 3 times, first time, they got every kernel, second time they only got about half of them. I finally shot one and hung him on the fence after giving up on keeping them run off by just firing a shotgun in the air, and they didn't come back after the third planting then. And I figure they got at least 25% of my pecan crop every year. I never heard of crows being protected by law; just thought they were one of those crop hazards that farmers killed anytime they got a chance. And they're smart enough, fast enough, and careful enough that they're pretty hard to kill.

 

[Wingnut]

If you think it's hard to get rid of a crow ... you should have some magpies around, Bird. I'll swear they're either prescient or incredibly intuitive. They'll steal dog food from the dish by having one bird lure the dog away and the others eat ... and they're noisier than crows.
But just go grab a gun and suddenly they've all vanished. Don't think that in 40 years I ever had a clear shot at one ....

pete

 

[Wingnut]

not only do they migrate in Canada ... but many of the older farmers use the flocking together in preparation of migration as a sure sign that autumn is just about to become winter ...
at least in Alberta ...

pete

 

[Bird]

Pete, we don't have magpies in my part of the country, but saw quite a few in campgrounds and such places on trips across Canada enroute to Alaska. I've heard in some parts of North America, they used to be called "camp robbers" because of what would happen if you left any food sitting out around a camp.

 

[thcri]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( And I figure they got at least 25% of my pecan crop every year )</font>

So like that means you have 75% left of your pecan crop right? Like do you sell them off in bags for the common consumer like me or do they go right to a large company? You don't know how much I miss getting pecans from Texas. I use to have an employee who's father lived in Texas and every year they would bring back gobs of pecans for us to eat. I use to just love sitting around the TV and fireplace shucking them pecans and eating them. Much better than the store bought ones. So if you got some for sale, let me know, I sure would buy them without the crows.

murph

 

[Bird]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( they migrate in Canada )</font>

At least some of them migrate down here, too, apparently. I wonder whether they're like robins; I've read that some robins migrate while others stay in the same place year round. I think in central Texas we had some crows year round, but a lot more in the Spring and Summer than we had the rest of the year.

I wish I had some pictures of the crows around Marlow, OKlahoma 50 years ago because most folks wouldn't believe it now. In the morning, there would frequently be a line of crows flying from their roosting place out to feed and they didn't fly in a wide spread flock, but in a long line and there were times you could see a line of crows from horizon to horizon for over an hour. Then you had the same thing going the other direction late in the evening. Some of us boys used to hide in a ravine and try to shoot them as they flew over; too high for a shotgun and too hard to hit with a .22 so we only occasionally got one. I once found one of the roosting sites late in the evening; a grove of trees we estimated to be 400-500 feet wide and a quarter mile long and the entire grove was black with crows. I didn't get to see it, but I heard about some men going out there in the daytime, inserting sticks of dynamite in cardboard tubes, pouring the tubes full of shot, tying them in the trees and running the wires all to one place where one of the guys got into a hole they dug, and then that night set off the dynamite. They supposedly killed thousands of crows that night.

What I have seen on several occasions was 20 to 50 dead crows at a time under a tree near a highway bridge, and I was told that was the result of someone getting a crippled crow and tying him in the tree, then hiding under the bridge and shooting the crows that came in response to his cries.