I left /c/Risa because the moderator there was letting his own personal feelings color rules, removing posts that violated no clearly written rules, and creating new rules without even running it past the community or asking how they feel about it.
The moderator of this community is guilty of that same behavior.
I’ll be over on [email protected].
I have only ever made crow enemies. you do not want crow enemies.
also, if you see a dead or dying crow in your driveway, don’t move it. don’t touch it. even if it’s blocking your car (idk, buy a new car instead?) maybe call animal control but by all means don’t present yourself near the dead crow - the crows will assume you killed it and will make your life hell. i was divebombed multiple times for many blocks from my house. i only gingerly moved the bird a few feet over to the grass so my wife could move the car and get to work. but crows remember. boy do they remember.
this only stopped when i moved to another city
Crows have been shown to hold grudges for years, even if they don’t see the thing they hate for years.
You can never go back to your old house haha
As I understand it, they also communicate with other crows too, so there’s a slim chance I will be found in this city as well. Yay.
Your own personal CORVID-19
*Crowvid-19
Crows are in the Genus (?) Corvidae in case you didn’t know.
Imagine showing your kid the house you used to live in 10 years ago and they remember and dive bomb you.
It has definitely happened to people before!
(puts on disguise) Can you update us with your new address so we can send you a gift?
Look y’all, I don’t want any trouble!
They ALSO hold courts and occasionally kill other crows as a group. It’s possible your interference in their capital punishment ritual is considered a high crime.
Warning: I researched this and can’t find evidence that it’s true, but crow funerals are actually a thing that happens, so my advice stands: do not interfere with crow rituals involving dead crows!
O.O
I first heard about this in a Gaiman story called ‘A Parliament of Rooks’.
My neighbor had a crow die in his backyard and the crows harassed him and his dog mercilessly every time he went outside, until he moved out of the house.
We had this happen and they harassed my dog for a few weeks (and scared the shit out of me for a few days) but then stopped caring.
Here’s a funny story. When my neighbor was telling me about the crows hating him and his dog, we were at a party. Someone else overheard him telling me, but missed the first part, so she only heard “died in our backyard, but they think we killed him, so they keep harassing us now”. The eavesdropper was like “WAIT! What the fuck is going on?”. Haha.
I wonder if it would work to put on a disguise
It can, just don’t let them see you change in or out of it, or go into the same car or house. Don’t let them see the disguise in your possession either. Also don’t talk while disguised.
I think it would need a full body disguise, and possibly to move, since I think they just wait to see whoever leaves a specific building.
I think crows can recognize faces and connect those specific people to cars and houses. I remember reading about a “study” scientists did where they harassed some crows while wearing face masks of former presidents or something until the crows got pissed, and the crows started attacking anybody with those specific masks on.
University of Washington is where that happened, or at least the time I read about it. They started wearing masks when they realized crows remember -and tell other crows about- faces.
I always hear this and I always wonder. What happens if you go to war with them. Like if you start seriously fucking them up, will they keep coming at your till they are all dead or will they realise you are not be fucked with?
one strategy I had was to try to befriend the neighbors crows before the word gets to them. maybe then I will have my own crow gang for protection.
A bird bringing me gifts is one of my biggest dreams in life.
You could try doing what this girl did https://www.audubon.org/news/seattle-girl-befriends-neighborhood-crows-making-bird-lovers-everywhere-jealous
Is she the one who got sued by neighbors?
In their lawsuit, two neighbors – Matt Ashbach and Christine Yokan – claimed the Manns’ bird feeders were drawing rats and flocks of birds to the East Shelby Street home. They demanded $200,000 in compensation for damage they claimed had been done by the birds, and a court order preventing the Manns from setting out more than a quarter-pound of animal food each day.
Bird feeders do attract rats. Everyone who has a bird feeder in their backyard, also has a nest of rats somewhere near by.
If you think you don’t have rats nearby, I’ve got some bad news for you…
I have bird feeders, so there’s a huge nest of them in the backyard. If they don’t have easy access to food, then they move along and go somewhere where they do have easy access.
They like peanuts!
I don’t know about all birds, but peanuts can have this type of fungus or something that is toxic to parrots. Parrot grade peanuts, assuming not false advertising, are higher grade than human food grade.
Roasted and unsalted peanuts which you can get at the grocery store. The roasting kills any fungus.
Me too. I see all these people making crow friends and I want in.
Cat food and unsalted peanuts
I can’t believe this! I’ve been feeding starlings near me with bits of Greggs baguettes and pastries.
Have I received a stone?
Have I bollocks!!
Selfish little bastards - I’m going on strike. No more will they take advantage of my altruistic nature!
I thought I was building an army of starlings! Instead I’ve been taken for a fool!
I hate starlings with a passion. Sorry but they are beating out a lot of my local song birds.
They’re only even in the US because of Shakespeare smh
They’ve taken over a lot of niches in North America.
Like waking me up at 530 am when i had ginally managed to fall asleep an hour ago
3 blue jay couples half a dozen sparrows and 2 wood peckers. Are all that nest in my area. That and 200 starlings…
I don’t think starlings give gifts.I could be wrong tho.
Starlings don’t give presents. They just want to go for a car ride.
You should chew off some of your toenails for them. Don’t be stingy.
Could you share more about what the mods are doing?
While I think it’s better to discuss rule changes ahead of time, many communities are in early stages and are being built up as we go.
In that case it’s still worth discussing the rule changes after they happen. You’re free to use whichever community and not say anything, but it helps to share what you don’t like so others can weigh in (and maybe change unpopular rules)
I have addressed this here: https://lemmy.world/post/11704237
I just realized that this stamets guy posts like 17 posts at once (exactly the same time) every day. I dont think we need something like that.
Stamets provides a lot of the content on the startrek.website server, and apparently beyond. They’re very active and I appreciate what they do fwiw.
I provide zero content on Startrek.website. I left that server a few months ago and migrated to lemmy.world. I haven’t posted to any startrek.website community since November. I even deleted my startrek.website account. If you’re looking for Star Trek based memes though, check out [email protected]
Thank you though. Seriously <3 Can’t take too much credit though, I just post stuff I have saved.
Oh sorry for the fake news then. I’m out of the loop. I’ve seen your username a lot in the past and assumed. I knew you’d left Risa, I didn’t realize it was the whole startrek.website. Sorry it came to that, I appreciated your content! 😁
You have created a friendship with a murder of crows. Be well with your new power.
That’s a jackdaw.
Don’t start.
I thought it was a Grackle.
'Hmmm - what can I bring in return? No cool shiny things around here- ooh! Gizzard stones! They’re useful! Hope this one’s big enough ‘cause they’re much bigger than I am!’
My crows have never brought me anything :/ They’ve followed me home from the shop squawking to be fed, and they’ll hang around and chat, but they have yet to sully our relationship with remuneration.
*remurderation
Our crows seem entirely uninterested in the idea of a friendship. They will hang around talking to each other and waiting for a time to grab food, but they aren’t interested in coming to get it. The [Australian] Magpies will happily be your friend if you need them. I used to like them up along our fence and hand feed them one by one.
My dad fed magpies, and there was an especially pushy juvenile who’s come right up to the kitchen window and let him know when it was feeding time. I didn’t think he tried hand feeding.
I live in the US now and one of our crows reminds me of that magpie, real talkative juvenile, quite demanding. I’ve tried hand feeding but no luck so far.
There’s a really difficult trail around here that has birds at the top that will land on your palm and eat out of your hand. It’s wild that they’ve learned to do that, because it’s a grueling trail that people only use for training, but everyone takes extra food now and feeds the birds at the top before heading back down.
That’s payment for a second piece of pastry. Failure to complete the transaction will result in your status being marked contemptible by the Crow Commerce Coalition. Appropriate sanctions and penalties will apply. They’re gonna follow you home, tell their friends and track your vehicle. They’ll probably harass your kids. Crow clan ain’t nothing to fuck with.
The Murder of Crows has a Crow Commerce Coalition‽
For real, nobody messes with the CCC
i concur
I’ve been feeding my local crow family, unsalted roasted peanuts almost every day for two years now. They know me and come flying over whenever they see me walk outside my house, sometimes they even follow me home in my car or on my bike. They’ve never brought me shit, ungrateful little bastards.
Well have you ever asked for anything?
I’ve been trying to do this. I seem to have several separate groups of crows living in the nearby woods. But they are super skittish. If they are in the yard and I open the door, they immediately fly away.
I’ve been trying to do a mix of a unique whistling call, and throwing food, but I don’t think they’ve even found the food, let alone connected it to the whistle.
Do you have dogs? You will not be able to befriend crows if you have dogs or cats. They will always immediately fly away. I tried to befriend our neighborhood crows for years, with zero success. They’d always fly away, like you said. But within a week of our dogs passing, the crows stopped flying away when we went outside. Idk how they know, but they know.
That’s plausible.
Fenced in, three legged, and old for a dog.
If I were a crow I might even be hanging around for the dog.
The crows I’ve seen seem to do this based on which dog it is. I’ve seen them stay put when it’s a dog on a leash, but fly off when it’s a dog that seems too playful/fast and isn’t secured on a leash.
I’ve been feeding crows, magpies, and jackdaws with my partner for a bit over the year. They are now much friendlier towards us, and the pappa crow started flying into our path and standing 1-2 meters away from us to get his snacks.
Here are some other things that helped us be closer to them:
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Leaving food outside in a bowl with water, preferably in some high place (a table or chair) so that other animals don’t get it. Crows sometimes dip their food in water or like to have a little drink. They will also likely depend on sight rather than smell to find this food, so putting it somewhere where a bird could clearly see nuts or cheese in a bowl could help attract them. Once they find it, they will always remember.
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Unsalted Peanuts, walnuts, the ocassional piece of cheese, and sweet red/black grapes – these things are guaranteed to make crows love you!
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Always doing things at the same time every day. Crows are great at telling time and will be waiting for your food if you make it a habit to always restock it in a timely fashion. We go to the park every day around noon (we adjust this for daylight saving time) to feed the crows and magpies and now they follow us from the outside corners of the park and onto the bench – if we are late, one of them is always scouting and will call the others when we arrive.
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Do you have a glass door opening to your yard? If so, and if you have not done this already, try standing behind the glass where they can see you until they are used to your presence. When opening the door, it’s good to do it slowly - push down the handle first, then wait, then open the door a bit, then wait, etc. It’s the quick motions of doors opening or food being thrown too high that can make crows warry and scared quite quickly.
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If you throw them food, are you throwing it high or low? If it goes quite some way above their heads, they might get scared.
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What kind of calls have you tried? We have magpies that come to our balcony and (sometimes) respond to a bike bell ring. I keep filling their food bowl then ringing the bike bell… they often show up 5-10 minutes later to get their treat. Have you tried a crow whistle? They can be bought from hunting shops (I don’t particularly like giving my money to them, but it’s possible to find it in other stores). This video was also helpful but we never got enough practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbpE-5sGQBk.
Best of luck with your crow friends. 😊
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Crow stones bring luck for the rest of the crow’s lifespan!
The crows in Seattle are a special kind of smart. I always enjoyed watching them doing their thing. Watching them fly west in the morning and east in the evening is magical. So many crows for a brief moment!
I think he just proposed to you. You’re obligated to help it build a nest, now.
Don’t eat it! It’s a trap!