In Defence of Crows

[willedoo]

I think the behaviour and habits of ravens can vary with their environment. I assume there would be a big difference between urban and bush feeding practices. The ravens at my place don't seem to bother other bird species and most of the various species get on ok. I put that down to the fact that it's natural bush country and there's plenty of ground tucker available. There's a lot of insect life and thick leaf litter coverage that harbours plenty of creepy crawly critters. Then there's the cane toads.

 

I wouldn't say the same for the local murder of Torresian crows. They're a bunch of total dickheads and no humans or other birds around here like them. For the last few months they have been carrying out very noisy raiding parties trying to expand territory and I suspect they harass other non crow species. Luckily the ravens are smarter and have used their brains to counter the aggressiveness of the Torresian crows.

 

The photo below is typical of most of my place, so there's plenty of natural tucker to go round. I think it stops the need for a lot competition between bird species.

 

[red750]

https://fb.watch/oqoL2x5nFf/

[onetrack]

That raven has had a fair bit of training. I can recall my Dad telling us about how he came across a talking pet raven on one of the stations in the Murchison region of W.A. in the 1930's.

He pulled up to the homestead and called out "Anyone home?" - and this raven (which was partly-hidden in a cage) startled him by repeating his call exactly!

He found out later the raven had quite a vocabulary.

 

Edited November 20, 2023 by onetrack

[willedoo]

What is it about friar birds and mirrors? I've had a pair of noisy friar birds here for months now, and they perch on the door sill of my vehicle and look at themselves in the rear vision mirror. They often peck at it and break out into that crazy friar bird song that they do. You'd think the novelty would wear off after a while but they keep doing it. Maybe they're checking out that big bump on their nose.

[onetrack]

We don't have noisy friar birds on the left coast, but we've got the magpie-lark (mudlark or pee-wee), and they're fearless, aggressive little buggers. They're always attacking their reflection in windows and mirrors. Just saw one this morning on the rear edge of a car bonnet staring at himself in the windscreen reflection.

 

Stepdaughter had a couple in the backyard of her former house near to us. She had a couple of little dogs and one liked chasing the mudlarks as soon as they landed on the lawn. The mudlarks would take it in turns to bait the dog, they were very good at it.

 

https://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Grallina-cyanoleuca

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by onetrack

[willedoo]

You learn something every day. I didn't know the peewee is a magpie-lark. I had a google and it looks like peewee is a generic common name for a few different birds. I assume the pewees here are a magpie-lark.

[Bruce Tuncks]

That's right willedoo. The magpie-lark is the same as the pee-wee. They are NOT magpies.

The reason birds attack their image in a mirror is that they are vision-dominated animals. Dogs will not be taken  in by a mirror because it doesn't smell right. What good would it do a bird to be scent-dominated?

Apparently there is a higher ape that can understand a mirror, but mostly even apes  can't so they try and fight the image then they try and suck up and then they get depressed cos nothing worked.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bruce Tuncks

[nomadpete]

Birds also have a sense of humour.

At one time I was camped at Coen - up Cape York. I woke early and was enjoying the peace and quiet. I noticed a cat stalking a little bird nearby. The bird noticed and just as the cat closed in, it fluttered up to a low branch on a big pine tree. The cat climbed the trunk and as soon as it started out on the bird's branch, the bird twittered and flew up to the next branch where it was joined by a couple of its mates. Predictably, the cat returned to the trunk and climbed up to the next branch. The birds waited until the cat started out along the branch, then noisily flitted up to the next branch, where they were again joined by some mates. Having nothing better to do, I settled in to watch the fun. The birds played the cat skilfully and by the time they had lured the cat to the top of the tree, there were about 20 noisy birds of several species playing the game. With no higher branches above them, the birds raucously left the tree (laughing) and settled around me on fence and grass, leaving the cat 20 mtrs up the tree. Only then did the cat wake up, he paused and let out a most mournful loud growl, and slowly went about reverse climbing back to the ground.

 

The birds had spent sbout 20 minutes teasing the cat  clearly enjoyed their game. The cat took a very long time to get down.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Great story Nomad, and hard to explain without the idea that the birds were playing with the cat. Birds do have good brains, I guess that they need to be fairly smart to avoid flying into trees etc, especially on windy days.

[Marty_d]

2 hours ago, willedoo said:

What is it about friar birds and mirrors? I've had a pair of noisy friar birds here for months now, and they perch on the door sill of my vehicle and look at themselves in the rear vision mirror. They often peck at it and break out into that crazy friar bird song that they do. You'd think the novelty would wear off after a while but they keep doing it. Maybe they're checking out that big bump on their nose.

Don't hold your breath.

We've got a Golden Whistler here who, every day (starting around 6am) attacks every window in the house and shed, and every car mirror on both cars.  All day.

This is his third year.  And now he's got a female doing the same thing.

If the roller door on the shed is open, he flies around inside, attacks the windows from the other side for something different, then often perches on my trailing edge (wings are stored upright) and occasionally shits on them.

[Jerry_Atrick]

That bogger of a bird!

Edited November 25, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[Marty_d]

Fortunately, they are very small leavings.  I'm glad cows don't fly.

[Marty_d]

Or perch on my wing, come to think of it!

[onetrack]

When the brother, SIL and I lived in a rented farmhouse in the wheatbelt (from 1965 to 1972), we had a clothesline strung along the (covered) verandah of the house.

A pair of willy-wagtails positioned a nest precariously on the line, and raised several broods from it.

 

And our cats constantly eyed off the willies, and tried to get them - but not a hope, the willies were always alert and very fast.

What's more, when the cats walked the verandah, under the nest, the willies would swoop and peck bits of fur off the cats back, then fly back up to the clothesline again.

 

The cats would get furious, and one black tom we had would effectively swear at the birds, mouthing combined snarls and meows with a constant chattering of his mouth. It was hilarious to watch.

[facthunter]

Jailbirds are the ones to lookout for.  Nev

[facthunter]

A little Birdy flying high.

Dropped a message from the  Sky

 and, as I wiped it from my eye

 I thanked the Lord that Cows don't fly.

                    Nev

[red750]

I saw a video of a crow drinking from an old glass milk bottle, the type with a neck about the size of a 20c coin. The water was too low for the bird to reach, so it dropped stones into the bottle to raise the water level.

[facthunter]

Maybe that's where "Stone the crows" came from.  Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

Jailbirds are the ones to lookout for.  Nev

Especially if they are stool pigeons.

 

"Stool pigeon" has developed from the 15th Century stall "decoy bird" (c. 1500), especially "a pigeon used to entice a hawk into the net". A stool as the movable pole or perch to which a pigeon was fastened to lure wild birds. Compare Old English stælhran "decoy reindeer," German stellvogel "decoy bird." It's use to mean an person who informs on others, one who betrays the unwary (or is used to betray them), appeared in American English in 1859.

 

The English concept of "grassing" on someone is from Cockney rhyming slang 'grasshopper,' meaning 'copper,' i.e., 'policeman. Farmer and Henley's 1893 Dictionary of Slang defines 'grasshopper' as 'copper', that is, policeman. The theory is that a 'grass' is someone who works for the police and so has become a surrogate 'copper'.

[onetrack]

Pigeon stools are the never-ending nightmare for councils and businesses - and statues!

[spacesailor]

Yes But here in Aus , it's the ' Cockatoos ' that rip your wooden windowsills apart .

I wonder if it's tasty wood . Or just nastiness. 

spacesailor

 

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

Yes But here in Aus , it's the ' Cockatoos ' that rip your wooden windowsills apart .

I wonder if it's tasty wood . Or just nastiness. 

spacesailor

 

I wonder if they're smart enough to stay away from treated pine.

[onetrack]

The cockatoos are just plain destructive, they simply love chewing on things.

When the East-West APO microwave repeater network was installed in the late 1960's, not only did the communication engineers have to deal with isolation, heat, distance and a myriad of other extremes that tested their abilities to the limit - but, after the towers were built, they kept going down for initially unexplained reasons.

 

Soon, it was found that cockatoos enjoyed chewing on the dielectric collector/redirector plates of the dish, that I believe were initially made from fibreglass or teflon. 

The communication engineers then fought a constant battle against the predations of the cockatoos on the collector plates, trying various toughened materials to try and defeat them.

I understand the engineers never really did defeat the destructive buggers, they only reduced the damage to controllable levels.

 

https://nickvsnetworking.com/australias-east-west-microwave-link-of-the-1970s/

 

Long billed Corellas have invaded W.A. in recent years and their numbers have exploded. Some of the country towns now have flocks of a thousand or more, and they make themselves a real nuisance.

The Victorian Govt even had a big inquiry in 1995, into cockatoo damage and possible control methods, but I don't know what the outcome was.

 

https://walga.asn.au/getattachment/Policy-Advice-and-Advocacy/Environment/Pest-Birds/Environment/Pest-Birds-Portal/Information-and-Resources/Victoria-Ministerial-enquiry-into-corella-damage.pdf.aspx?lang=en-AU 

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by onetrack

[nomadpete]

7 minutes ago, onetrack said:

The cockatoos are just plain destructive, they simply love chewing on things.

When the East-West APO microwave repeater network was installed in the late 1960's, not only did the communication engineers have to deal with isolation, heat, distance and a myriad of other extremes that tested their abilities to the limit - but, after the towers were built, they kept going down for initially unexplained reasons.

 

Soon, it was found that cockatoos enjoyed chewing on the dielectric collector/redirector plates of the dish, that I believe were initially made from fibreglass or teflon. 

The communication engineers then fought a constant battle against the predations of the cockatoos on the collector plates, trying various toughened materials to try and defeat them.

I understand the engineers never really did defeat the destructive buggers, they only reduced the damage to controllable levels.

 

https://nickvsnetworking.com/australias-east-west-microwave-link-of-the-1970s/

 

Long billed Corellas have invaded W.A. in recent years and their numbers have exploded. Some of the country towns now have flocks of a thousand or more, and they make themselves a real nuisance.

The Victorian Govt even had a big inquiry in 1995, into cockatoo damage and possible control methods,

 

I worked for 17 years, for that big telco that everyone seems to hate.

I was in the microwave radio section.

Cockatoos!

They would strip the microwave feeders running up to antennae.  worst of all they would land on the launcher at the focus of the dish antenna. Then they would hang upside down to peck out the wave guide window of the launcher. While they did this thay blocked the signal.

The feeders were pressurised with dry air, and once that got out, moisture got into the feeder.

We had CSIRO and a zoo doing experiments but nobody found a reliable successful discouragement.

 

Thankfully optical fibre came along and running costs dropped dramatically.

 

Except when ants eat through the fibres.or blacksoil stretches them.

[red750]