Background:
I have been attempting to befriend the neighborhood crows. I have been leaving food for them and whistling to get their attention. They don't always hang about in the courtyard of my building, but I can usually see a couple off in the distance, and they're out and about every day. I think that someone else in my apartment complex, on the far side of the courtyard, is also feeding them, and currently, they have a hangout spot on that other balcony, which I am jealous of.
I currently feed them cat kibble. My balcony is fairly small, so for me to be out there with them, they'd be about 4-5 feet away from me. They come right after I call about 1/4 of the time, I would say. The rest of the time, they stop by later to quickly take the food I have left for them.
Please feel free to suggest new options, give advice on how to befriend the crows, etc.
Criteria:
Each option that occurs by the end of the year resolves YES. Each that does not resolves NO at the end of the year.
I reserve the right to resolve options to 50/50 or another probability if there is gray area, but I will try fairly hard to avoid this.
I will not bet in this market.
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@bens first answer resolved YES and it was the one that the market gave the highest probability to, 89%!!!
I sat about 15 feet away with the balcony door open and two crows (or perhaps one crow twice?) came and fed while very clearly noting my presence. I did my food whistle a couple times to put it at ease.
@bens Got pretty close to this just now. I was sitting at my dining table about 10 feet away; a crow saw me and very cautiously ate; I averted eye contact to not spook it. This is the closest they've let me stay without leaving. Door closed though.
Right after I whistled this morning, a crow did a fly-by, but took a detour to troll this dog across the courtyard first for a couple minutes before coming to my balcony to eat. I think this counts as “coming immediately/rapidly for food” and I’m gonna start a rough rolling average of how often this happens.
Big problem... my cat loves to scare the crows. I try to keep her in my office when I feed them but the crows are coming irregularly so I can't keep her under lock and key all the time. Today she ran at the window right when there were two crows enjoying some kibble... and they got spooked. This is really bad for building up trust.
I'm gonna try to get a feeder on the railing so that they are more elevated and feel more secure?
This morning, a crow flew back and forth right in front of my (home) office window to look at me, in a u-shaped pattern, if that makes sense? It was quite cool! I thought it might be asking for food so I ran out to the balcony and put out the bowl of food which we had taken inside bc of rain. But it didn’t come back for the food 🤷♂️
That would have qualified as begging if it had gone for the food immediately, I think? But perhaps it was just inspecting me for its own purposes.
Okay, more crows came after I posted that last comment. I initially thought one of them was ALREADY exhibiting begging behavior, but I think that it might have just been cawing at other crows to come and check out the new food I put into the bowl. The crows do not like the newer, cheaper cat food (I can't keep giving them the fancy expensive cat food), and left that behind. Hopefully they'll come and try it tomorrow.
In any case, cautious optimism that they might be starting to come and call for me to bring food.
Today I got somewhere between 3 and 5 crows. I tried a mixture of kibble and peanuts but the crows were not interested in the peanuts. They seemed to take a little more time to eat today, but hard to tell.
I want to:
1) figure out a way of mounting the food onto the railing of the balcony so the crows feel more comfortable and don’t have to jump down into the balcony
2) set up a crow-cam (my gf who is more tech savvy should do this for me and I think we have a cat cam that can be converted for this)
3) see if I can leave the crows shiny things they’ll like
@bens do you plan to do anything specifically to nurture this one, or would it be a matter of them recognising you purely out of context? just wondering if you plan to bring snacks/kibble/nuts with you when you're outside of the apartment and offer it to them in another place/in passing.
@shankypanky hmm, I want to try walks with some food but unsure if I can do this consistently enough that the crows will bother giving me attention
@GleamingRhino I have friends with Steller's Jays that do this in their backyard! they send me videos regularly and I'm riddled with envy lol