Hens imitate crows!?

[shegeekster]

Hi all,

This is a sort of odd thing, or maybe not, but sometimes when I am out in the yard with the birds and the crows are cawing their heads off, I swear that one or two (can't tell for sure) of my hens is cawing back! I mean it really sounds like she (or they) is trying to imitate the crow's call. Is that sort of thing normal? Anybody else have chicken impersonators? One of my hens is very vocal..if I had to bet on one it is probably her. She makes all kinds of noise and is quite loud.

 

[grace112]

Never had that but when my two girls were young a mockingbird learned the chick distress call and every day i would year a baby sounding like she getting attack by something and come running out with a broom in hand just to see them sitting there totally chill while a mockingbird would just sit in the tree above and look away trying to look innocent. I never knew mockingbirds could do chicken calls

.

 

[centrarchid]

Chickens make an alarm call when a hawk is perched nearby that is sort of crow like.

 

[shegeekster]

That could be it -- because they are very aware (more so than I am) of the hawks around there, and that particular day it turned out the crows were going on because the Cooper's Hawk was haunting the pigeon coop. So maybe it is a warning noise