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Meet The Corvids: Crows, Rooks, Jackdaws & Others (Misc.)

Crows to pick up cigarette butts in Sweden

Crows are being recruited to pick up discarded cigarette butts from the streets and squares of a Swedish city as part of a cost-cutting drive.

The wild birds carry out the task as they receive a little food for every butt that they deposit in a bespoke machine designed by a startup in Södertälje, near Stockholm.

“They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis,” said Christian Günther-Hanssen, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, the company behind the method.
The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation says that more than 1bn cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets each year, representing 62% of all litter. Södertälje spends 20m Swedish kronor (£1.6m) on street cleaning.

Günther-Hanssen estimates his method could save at least 75% of costs involved with picking up cigarette butts in the city.

Södertälje is carrying out a pilot project before potentially rolling out the operation across the city, with the health of the birds being the key consideration given the type of waste involved.
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A village in Cheshire has an annual performance by men dressed as crows.

The bizarre Cheshire village festival where men dress as crows and dance through the streets

Every July a group of men dressed as crows circle around a scarecrow and flap their wings in a choreographed danced at local fairs in Northwich.

The men - whose identities are kept anonymous - are known as the Moulton Crows, and were seen as the highlight of the Moulton Town Fair.

As part of the dance, the crows dance around a scarecrow, also somebody in costume, before the scarecrow and a crow are ‘shot and killed’ by a local farmer. Undeterred, the crows continue their ritualistic dance around their bodies before leaving the stage.
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About 11 years ago I was sitting outside a Sports Social Club near Banstead ( work related, honest) and there was a large area of grass between the road and this car park, a ‘classic’ council type area, well established oak trees on its boundary, etc.
Now the grass had been cut, by the old sit along mower, leaving long trails of grass cuttings, and I noticed that there was a lot of magpie activity in the trees, cawing, fluttering around etc, and a then I saw a single crow, which was meandering around the car park, so as is my wont, I often throw a bit of sarnie or cake etc out for the birds, which I did to this crow- he was very quick off the mark and grabbed a couple of pieces before the magpies descended.

Now whilst the magpies pretty much gobbled down their share straight away and then scrabbled around, the crow held his bits in his beak, the magpies retreated to the trees, and only then did the crow glide over to the grass, and making a bit of a show of it, broke up the food into smaller parts and began to bury his grub in a few places, in the grass cuttings, taking his time, scuffing around, basically seeming to make a bit of a “production” of the whole process... to me making it really obvious where he’d placed his stash, which I thought would soon be nicked by the surrounding audience...
All the while he was being watched by the magpies, and he would now and again pause, have a good look at them- who were of course observing where he had buried his food; eventually as he’d taken so long to bury the last bits, the magpies lost interest and gradually departed.
The crow waited, strolled around a bit more and only then when he was satisfied they had all gone, he uncovered his food, and reburied it in entirely new places...

Now I’m no ornithologist, but that struck me as pretty smart, and it was fascinating to observe what I regarded as an almost human level of subterfuge, cunning and possible planning?
 
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Maybe we could merge these threads:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/crows.4805/
 
Are corvids particularly grumpy just at this time? I was on my way out this morning when there was a noisy fracas around the tree in from tof our house. At first I thought it was crows having a go at a magpie, just as the magpies hassle the jays, but when a second fight erupted I could see that it was crow-on-crow violence. The victim looked smaller and scrawnier, so I wondered if it was a young one being taught a lesson, or a territorial dispute. Then coming home, by a local playground, there were more corvids getting agitated with each other. Is this about nesting rights? Shagging rights? Knowing-your-place? Or do the birds know something we don't???
 
As I learned on here from @Min Bannister , there's nothing birds like more than a good fight. I imagine it's all territorial, even if that "territory" is food.
 
Breeding season is getting underway, the crows will be carving out their territory for the Spring/Summer and defending it against all comers.

I've posted before about the crows at my workplace - they can be brutal to interlopers, or even to their own chicks that thry regard ss a liability.
 
Corvid Blimey! Next they'll be wanting to vote in elections!

Jackdaws use a "democratic" process to decide when to leave their roosts en masse, scientists have discovered.

Thousands of jackdaws can suddenly take to the morning skies in winter, creating a whirling black cloud of creatures. Researchers have now found that the birds call out when they want to leave. Then when the noise reaches a critical level, it signals the roost is ready to depart, and the birds fly away.

It's a rare insight into how animals make group decisions, Alex Thornton, professor of cognitive evolution at University of Exeter, told BBC News.

"When a bird calls, it's casting a vote or signalling it wants to leave," Prof Thornton explains. The collective decision to depart then rests on two things.

The first is noise volume and the second is the crescendo or how rapidly the noise levels increase. Once the birds reach consensus, the roost of thousands launches from the tree within five seconds on average, forming one of the famous winter UK spectacles.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61551496
 
Saw this article today in The Observer:

Queen of the corvids: the scientist fighting to save the world’s brainiest birds​

A pioneering research laboratory in Cambridge proves that corvids are delightfully clever. Here, its founder reveals what the crow family has taught her – and her heartbreak at the centre’s closure.

Link here.
 
Crows are aggressively harassing visitors to a California park.
Dive-bombing crows targeting visitors to California park

Visitors to a park in California's Los Angeles County have been dealing with an unusual problem in recent weeks -- constant attacks from dive-bombing crows.

Multiple visitors to Noble Park in Hermosa Beach reported being dive-bombed by crows in recent weeks, with some saying the birds were most likely to attack dog-walkers. ...

"They're just coming out of the trees and kind of dive-bombing you and trying to get you out of the park," Dan Cohen, who was recently attacked by the crows, told NBC Los Angeles.

The crows haven't caused any serious injuries, but the Beach House Hotel, located across the street from the park, hired a falconer to use his trained hawk to scare the birds away twice a week.

The falconer, James Andrade, said the crows have even attempted to mob his hawk, Richter.

Bob Shanman, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited, said crows are particularly aggressive in May and June, when their eggs are hatching ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/0...-Park-Hermosa-Beach-California/1471656098427/
 
There is a crow here who comes down to the children's play area every morning and pecks the slide at his reflection, making a very loud clanging noise that reverberates all over the park.
 
Floyd1 said:
There is a crow here who comes down to the children's play area every morning and pecks the slide at his reflection, making a very loud clanging noise that reverberates all over the park.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of the world's greatest avian minds.
 
Floyd1 said:
I want to get a video of him doing it because he's hilarious, but I'm thinking that hanging around the children's play area with my phone out might not be the greatest move I've ever made.
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That was the crow's plan all along, to put you on a register. They're gods of mischief are crows. You clearly outsmarted him.

Or, it's another example of how we struggle to understand intelligence. Crows can use tools and figure out all kinds of clever ways to acquire food, but some behaviour ingrained by evolution causes this crow to peck at its reflection every day. I see humans acting similarly all the time, but I'm very much a, 'We're all poorly programmed squishy machines,' kind of person.
 
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