9 ms·

The Secret Lives of Urban Crows

106 points by robteix 9y ago

koenigdavidmj 9y ago
The colored bands they mentioned correspond to the study here: http://depts.washington.edu/uwcrows/ http://depts.washington.edu/uwcrows/ Seattle residents are encouraged, when they see a banded crow, to report its location and activity to that page.
- logicallee 9y ago
  >Seattle residents are encouraged, when they see a banded crow, to report its location and activity to that page. if you think about it, the major difference between these crows and users in 2017 is that the crows don't have to have 15 seconds of their life stolen by a popup about the researchers' privacy policy that they have to agree to before they're able to get on with their lives.
Theodores 9y ago
I highly recommend anyone take the time to study the birds that they see on a regular basis. All of yesterday I decided to film the birds in slo-mo with my mobile phone. I wasn't even sure what breed of birds I was filming but today I was back making another video. This time I knew from yesterday all about the lovely gulls I now adore and feed instead of the crows. Crows are next because they are very good at aerobatics too. Just an idea to film the birds coupled with the stellar results you get from a mobile (okay not broadcast quality), means that today I count myself as a budding ornithologist. Today I know that some of 'my gulls' could be 30+ years old. So here are my feathered friends from today, eating fresh wholemeal bread I baked myself: https://youtu.be/UmxZr1aihDQ?t=4m https://youtu.be/UmxZr1aihDQ?t=4m I would urge others to use the gadget in their pocket to record and watch back in slo-mo what the birds do. It is a whole new world.
- gwatstime 9y ago
  I love that on youtube you are a cat
- psy-q 9y ago
  I'd suggest adding sources of fat or protein to their snacks: https://www.thespruce.com/good-bread-for-birds-385833 https://www.thespruce.com/good-bread-for-birds-385833
news_to_me 9y ago
> But the saga reveals the passion and fury crows can elicit Sounds like it reveals the passion and fury of the classic Seattle NIMBY homeowner more than anything.
- throwanem 9y ago
  I like crows a lot and I respect them for their canny nature. I don't know how well I would like having a hundred of them constantly within close earshot.
takk309 9y ago
At one point I was renting a house that had a magpie nest in one tree. I was able to condition the magpies over time with offerings of food scraps. It was a lot of fun to have the magpies hangout on the deck railing and make noise back and forth with me. I got to recognize three of them by their voices. I miss them...
verkter 9y ago
Did anybody else read this as "The Secret Lives of Urban Cows"?
- rconti 9y ago
  Yep.
- nautilus12 9y ago
  Yes, and I got halfway into the article until I realized it was crows. Even the crow picture at the top didn't tip me off.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- himom 9y ago
  Yup. I just watched some video of a hardware engineer expat visiting Mumbai. Freudian YouTubing, for sure.
oasisbob 9y ago
I've been in trees when hundreds of crows show up on their way to the roost, It's a pretty cool experience. This video doesn't quite capture what it really feels like being up in the canopy when they arrive, but I tried: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/74ongr/sharing_a_beacon_hill_tree_with_a_huge_murder_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/74ongr/sharing_a... Barred owls are also fun, they're often really curious, I've never had one live up to their aggressive reputation. Though, apparently green ropes look sufficiently like food ... one spent a good ten minutes trying to fly off with my climb line one time.
l33tbro 9y ago
>She tromped through the wet grass in calf-high Sorel snow boots > At the first sliver of morning light on the eastern horizon, the treetop planet croaks to life. This mass of shrieking marauders lifts up and atomizes again into x-shaped silhouettes, Does anyone else find it distracting when journalists attempt to imitate their literary heroes and write ham-fisted prose like this? I'm all for experimental journalism, but this really took away from the thrust of the article for me.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  Personally I call that NPR style and I hate it as much as I hate NPR. 'We're here to talk to this interesting person who knowings interesting things about X. But first I'l going to drone on about his grandfather who was a tailor in a quaint Italian neighborhood in Pretoria'
himom 9y ago
Crows are crazy smart. One of em snuck into my mechanic’s garage, stole a small package of sunflower seeds from across the other end of the shop and had a sunflower seed party with his buddies in the parking lot.
- coldacid 9y ago
  That goes for pretty much all corvids. Brilliant birds, even if they haven't much of a singing voice.
  - telesilla 9y ago
    Not sure about that! The magpie can be spectacular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw Edit: Australian Magpie is NOT a corvid, they just share the same name as the European Magpie because of the look. Oh well. http://coyot.es/thecorvidblog/2016/03/07/australian-magpies-are-not-corvids/ http://coyot.es/thecorvidblog/2016/03/07/australian-magpies-...
potta_coffee 9y ago
Spent some time at Camp Pendleton. We had a pallet of MREs sitting out at the range. We came back from some training to find numerous boxes of MREs opened, the contents strewn all over those place. It's amazing to me that crows can open a heavy-duty cardboard box, pull out MRE packages and open them, and then get to the individually packed food items inside. These birds are cool.
munificent 9y ago
I live in Seattle. My wife is an animal lover and started feeding peanuts to the squirrels in the backyard. We have a Dutch door in the kitchen, and when she leans out, they will take peanuts out of her hand. It's pretty adorable. It's adorable and also kind of alarming when they squirrels leap onto the window frame of the door and stare at me when I'm making coffee in the morning. Once you start pumping calories into the backyard, all sorts of stuff shows up, so we have a lot of crows now too. They have some sort of schedule they keep, so at specific times of day, there will be about a dozen of them on the power lines and deck railing, waiting for a handout. The poop is annoying, but the noise isn't. Crows have a lot of different vocalizations and they sounds they make when waiting for food tend to be pretty mild.
ablekh 9y ago
I hope that people here will enjoy this amazing video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc) as much as I did. I knew that crows are smart, but this is clearly the next level of intelligence ... By the way, I have discovered this video via the relevant cool project's website: http://www.crowdedcities.com http://www.crowdedcities.com.
zaarn 9y ago
Crows are amazing creatures. And annoying at times. Our garden used to have lots of crows but because they continued to bully our dog (they stole and ate his food, sometimes even seconds after we put the bowl outside) we had to chase them away via various methods so our dog and the neighbors could have some peace.
Rotdhizon 9y ago
I read this as "The secret lives of urban cows" and was genuinely confused for the first several paragraphs until I looked at the title again.

106 points by robteix 9y ago

The colored bands they mentioned correspond to the study here: http://depts.washington.edu/uwcrows/ http://depts.washington.edu/uwcrows/ Seattle residents are encouraged, when they see a banded crow, to report its location and activity to that page.

logicallee 9y ago
>Seattle residents are encouraged, when they see a banded crow, to report its location and activity to that page. if you think about it, the major difference between these crows and users in 2017 is that the crows don't have to have 15 seconds of their life stolen by a popup about the researchers' privacy policy that they have to agree to before they're able to get on with their lives.

Theodores 9y ago

I highly recommend anyone take the time to study the birds that they see on a regular basis. All of yesterday I decided to film the birds in slo-mo with my mobile phone. I wasn't even sure what breed of birds I was filming but today I was back making another video. This time I knew from yesterday all about the lovely gulls I now adore and feed instead of the crows. Crows are next because they are very good at aerobatics too. Just an idea to film the birds coupled with the stellar results you get from a mobile (okay not broadcast quality), means that today I count myself as a budding ornithologist. Today I know that some of 'my gulls' could be 30+ years old. So here are my feathered friends from today, eating fresh wholemeal bread I baked myself: https://youtu.be/UmxZr1aihDQ?t=4m https://youtu.be/UmxZr1aihDQ?t=4m I would urge others to use the gadget in their pocket to record and watch back in slo-mo what the birds do. It is a whole new world.

gwatstime 9y ago
I love that on youtube you are a cat
psy-q 9y ago
I'd suggest adding sources of fat or protein to their snacks: https://www.thespruce.com/good-bread-for-birds-385833 https://www.thespruce.com/good-bread-for-birds-385833

news_to_me 9y ago

> But the saga reveals the passion and fury crows can elicit Sounds like it reveals the passion and fury of the classic Seattle NIMBY homeowner more than anything.

throwanem 9y ago
I like crows a lot and I respect them for their canny nature. I don't know how well I would like having a hundred of them constantly within close earshot.

takk309 9y ago

At one point I was renting a house that had a magpie nest in one tree. I was able to condition the magpies over time with offerings of food scraps. It was a lot of fun to have the magpies hangout on the deck railing and make noise back and forth with me. I got to recognize three of them by their voices. I miss them...

verkter 9y ago

Did anybody else read this as "The Secret Lives of Urban Cows"?

rconti 9y ago
Yep.
nautilus12 9y ago
Yes, and I got halfway into the article until I realized it was crows. Even the crow picture at the top didn't tip me off.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
himom 9y ago
Yup. I just watched some video of a hardware engineer expat visiting Mumbai. Freudian YouTubing, for sure.

oasisbob 9y ago

I've been in trees when hundreds of crows show up on their way to the roost, It's a pretty cool experience. This video doesn't quite capture what it really feels like being up in the canopy when they arrive, but I tried: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/74ongr/sharing_a_beacon_hill_tree_with_a_huge_murder_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/74ongr/sharing_a... Barred owls are also fun, they're often really curious, I've never had one live up to their aggressive reputation. Though, apparently green ropes look sufficiently like food ... one spent a good ten minutes trying to fly off with my climb line one time.

l33tbro 9y ago

>She tromped through the wet grass in calf-high Sorel snow boots > At the first sliver of morning light on the eastern horizon, the treetop planet croaks to life. This mass of shrieking marauders lifts up and atomizes again into x-shaped silhouettes, Does anyone else find it distracting when journalists attempt to imitate their literary heroes and write ham-fisted prose like this? I'm all for experimental journalism, but this really took away from the thrust of the article for me.

Gibbon1 9y ago
Personally I call that NPR style and I hate it as much as I hate NPR. 'We're here to talk to this interesting person who knowings interesting things about X. But first I'l going to drone on about his grandfather who was a tailor in a quaint Italian neighborhood in Pretoria'

himom 9y ago

Crows are crazy smart. One of em snuck into my mechanic’s garage, stole a small package of sunflower seeds from across the other end of the shop and had a sunflower seed party with his buddies in the parking lot.

coldacid 9y ago
That goes for pretty much all corvids. Brilliant birds, even if they haven't much of a singing voice.
- telesilla 9y ago
  Not sure about that! The magpie can be spectacular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw Edit: Australian Magpie is NOT a corvid, they just share the same name as the European Magpie because of the look. Oh well. http://coyot.es/thecorvidblog/2016/03/07/australian-magpies-are-not-corvids/ http://coyot.es/thecorvidblog/2016/03/07/australian-magpies-...

potta_coffee 9y ago

Spent some time at Camp Pendleton. We had a pallet of MREs sitting out at the range. We came back from some training to find numerous boxes of MREs opened, the contents strewn all over those place. It's amazing to me that crows can open a heavy-duty cardboard box, pull out MRE packages and open them, and then get to the individually packed food items inside. These birds are cool.

munificent 9y ago

I live in Seattle. My wife is an animal lover and started feeding peanuts to the squirrels in the backyard. We have a Dutch door in the kitchen, and when she leans out, they will take peanuts out of her hand. It's pretty adorable. It's adorable and also kind of alarming when they squirrels leap onto the window frame of the door and stare at me when I'm making coffee in the morning. Once you start pumping calories into the backyard, all sorts of stuff shows up, so we have a lot of crows now too. They have some sort of schedule they keep, so at specific times of day, there will be about a dozen of them on the power lines and deck railing, waiting for a handout. The poop is annoying, but the noise isn't. Crows have a lot of different vocalizations and they sounds they make when waiting for food tend to be pretty mild.

ablekh 9y ago

I hope that people here will enjoy this amazing video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc) as much as I did. I knew that crows are smart, but this is clearly the next level of intelligence ... By the way, I have discovered this video via the relevant cool project's website: http://www.crowdedcities.com http://www.crowdedcities.com.

zaarn 9y ago

Crows are amazing creatures. And annoying at times. Our garden used to have lots of crows but because they continued to bully our dog (they stole and ate his food, sometimes even seconds after we put the bowl outside) we had to chase them away via various methods so our dog and the neighbors could have some peace.

Rotdhizon 9y ago

I read this as "The secret lives of urban cows" and was genuinely confused for the first several paragraphs until I looked at the title again.