ChuSayBok
Songster
Before I had chickens, I had the native romantic idealism about hawks so many do. I still love hawks. They are magnificent, intelligent, fearsome creatures. However, after my role became guardian of the Chu kingdom, the local hawks and I developed a more adversarial relationship.
Likewise, pre-chu, I viewed crows as "other." Nothing personal, but I saw how they would gang up on hawks and eagles, and I consider this a sort of mob bullying behavior to be despised. What I didn't realize was that the crows would win my loyalty in the long run…
This has happened more than once; I've lost chickens to hawks on a few occasions. The first time it was a massive slaughter with a family of foxes hitting my flock the same day. It was the crows that alerted me to the distress. They went SWAT on the hawks in time to save about half my chu and ran them off for a good long time. But a couple years later, same thing. Except this time, the hawks were only picking off the compromised sick birds, one at a time. A couple of weeks ago, the crows ran off a mated pair of red-tails after they had taken out 2 of my sick chickens (the sickness is almost eradicated from the flock at this point.) I left them some corn in the field where I hope they were able to find it to express my appreciate, because I've been told crows keep score and have long memories. So this isn't about predators or chickens nearly as much as it is our newest allies. They may not have any protective inclination toward the chu at all, and may just be trying to steal the hawks food, but they have been more instrumental in keeping hawks away than anything, with the exception of our mockingbirds, which have even put a bald eagle to flight.
The other side is there is one very eerie incident of an old expired egg (I write the dates on them and this one was over 6 months old) that I had thrown out into the field that hadn't busted, but rather must've decomposed in the shell; It was magically back in one of the nests in the shed where the hens have their boxes; this box was up 4 feet attached to a plywood shelf. I wonder sometimes if the crows aren't stealing my eggs and one put this old one back as payment or something.. If so, we are going to have to come to some kind of accord. Crows are also known to be egg thieves.
I don't have any footage of what happened here, but apparently it's not an isolated incident:
Here's another fun one where they bring trinkets to a girl in Seattle:
crow that think's he's a chicken:
Likewise, pre-chu, I viewed crows as "other." Nothing personal, but I saw how they would gang up on hawks and eagles, and I consider this a sort of mob bullying behavior to be despised. What I didn't realize was that the crows would win my loyalty in the long run…
This has happened more than once; I've lost chickens to hawks on a few occasions. The first time it was a massive slaughter with a family of foxes hitting my flock the same day. It was the crows that alerted me to the distress. They went SWAT on the hawks in time to save about half my chu and ran them off for a good long time. But a couple years later, same thing. Except this time, the hawks were only picking off the compromised sick birds, one at a time. A couple of weeks ago, the crows ran off a mated pair of red-tails after they had taken out 2 of my sick chickens (the sickness is almost eradicated from the flock at this point.) I left them some corn in the field where I hope they were able to find it to express my appreciate, because I've been told crows keep score and have long memories. So this isn't about predators or chickens nearly as much as it is our newest allies. They may not have any protective inclination toward the chu at all, and may just be trying to steal the hawks food, but they have been more instrumental in keeping hawks away than anything, with the exception of our mockingbirds, which have even put a bald eagle to flight.
The other side is there is one very eerie incident of an old expired egg (I write the dates on them and this one was over 6 months old) that I had thrown out into the field that hadn't busted, but rather must've decomposed in the shell; It was magically back in one of the nests in the shed where the hens have their boxes; this box was up 4 feet attached to a plywood shelf. I wonder sometimes if the crows aren't stealing my eggs and one put this old one back as payment or something.. If so, we are going to have to come to some kind of accord. Crows are also known to be egg thieves.
I don't have any footage of what happened here, but apparently it's not an isolated incident:
But that was a very interesting video! Thanks for sharing.
