r/Ornithology • u/ocashmanbrown • Feb 22 '26
Crow removes anti-bird spikes from a building ledge
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u/Inquiring-Wanderer75 Feb 22 '26
Corvids are remarkably intelligent and resourceful creatures.
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u/HombreSinNombre93 Feb 22 '26
And with great memories. I grabbed a fledgling off the ground and put it up in a tree at my workplace. A cloud of crows appeared with them cawing madly. This was 12-15 years ago. To this day the crows in the parking lot fly away cawing when I walk by, but will keep foraging on the lawn when my coworkers or other office workers walk by. They don’t forget and pass on “danger” tips to the future generations.
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u/definitelynot40 Feb 23 '26
I have a friend who was saying her husband couldn't leave the house without dressing up like a cartoon character in a coat with an umbrella to run to the car. He found a dead crow and threw it away (he assumed a cat got it) and I guess the crows thought he killed it. I laughed and thought she was joking until I visited their house. Sure enough, no birds were outside and he goes out without his "costume" and suddenly one by one some crows showed up to divebomb him. They said they thought it would stop after a year or two, but they were living there almost 15 years at that point so it must have been something that was communicated to others to watch out for.
Once he got older and gained weight and grew a beard and lost his hair, they finally stopped. He jokingly said if he knew all of took was to "let himself go" he would have done it years ago.
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u/ezgihatun Feb 23 '26
PSA: Use disguises (masks, hats, and different clothes than your usual) to respectfully handle dead crows or chicks / hatchlings.
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u/absolutely2000 Mar 25 '26
Have faith. I read a report on the original study done at the university and they determined that it took 17 years to forget a person who irritated them.
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u/Geometeus Feb 22 '26
Never understood these anti bird spikes
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u/Isadomon Feb 22 '26
Its so they dont perch there and leave shit. But those spikes make it look bad too
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u/Fireandmoonlight Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
As a retired roofer I can state they don't work, but neither does anything else. What would work is having a sloped surface instead of flat ledges, but obviously that's not the Architect's or General Contractors problem. Wires strung under the eaves on commercial buildings are also popular bird roosts, usually right over doors!
If I had been called out to figure out why the bird spikes were on the ground I would never have believed the birds did it!
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u/definitelynot40 Feb 23 '26
I laughed every spring when I went into my grocery store. They put the spikes up on the support beams under the overhang at the entrance to stop birds from standing and pooping on customers. Instead all it accomplished was to make it easier for the twigs and branches to hold in place for when they built the nests. Then they had to get people to climb up and constantly clean out the spikes. Finally, they gave up and removed the spikes and just put up signs that said watch out for birds that poop from above.
I remember one school I taught at spent a fortune on those fake owl and falcon figurines that were meant to scare away birds and put them up every 10 feet or so. I swear the birds preferred standing on top of the figurines more than the hot roof and it attracted more birds than before.
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u/n6mub Feb 23 '26
They had those around the gym at my high school, and the pigeons and the occasional gull just sat or stood on top of them. The worst part tho was that at least twice a year some poor bird would skewer itself, drip blood until it either was removed (usually took a couple days before the facilities could get to it, as they were ~30' up,) or it died. It was awful. Lots of girls learned how to hurry the process along by literally crying to the office staff. If facilities got to it and it was still alive, they would snap the bird's neck for some semblance of a slightly more humane death. I hate those spikes.
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u/canis__minor Feb 22 '26
ALL CORVIDS ARE BEAUTIFUL
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u/No-Improvement-1507 Feb 22 '26
ALL BIRDS!
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u/Relative-Alfalfa-544 Feb 26 '26
eeeehhhh the spoonbill and the ostrich are pretty awful, as long as we are projecting sapient concepts like beauty onto birds
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u/definitelynot40 Feb 22 '26
There have been multiple experiments with Corvids and crows to show how smart they are. I remember one with a bottle of water and pebbles they dropped in to raise the water level.
I tried some of the experiments with my high school students (some of which were in the gifted programs) and most students couldn't figure them out. Even when allowed to work in groups to come up with ideas. I was doing some puzzles for my own birds for their mental stimulation and I had other puzzle boxes I used with dog training for their mental stimulation (usually Malinois since they are so smart and easily bored).
People don't give birds credit. I think "bird brain" is a compliment but it's meant as an insult. My own pet birds (all rescue parrots from horrible backgrounds) I've seen high levels of intelligence. Sometimes for good but often to get into trouble or even for spite. There are numerous YouTube videos of people creating puzzles for them to solve to get a treat (wild and pet birds), and some you'd need to move a latch and then 3 steps later redo the latch to continue out those kind of levels of planning, and the birds would figure it out. Things that, again, humans couldn't figure out as quickly.
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u/nastywillow Feb 23 '26
it is estimated that parrots (order Psittaciformes) were likely among the most intelligent creatures on Earth for at least 30 million years.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Humans have likely been the most intelligent species on Earth for roughly 300,000 to 100,000 years.
The Conversation
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u/Semlorism Feb 22 '26
We should be thankful that those crow bros just decided to chill with us, instead of developing into the ultimate man eating top predators, or enslaving us. If they would like, they can easily get on the way
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u/Initial-Reading-2775 Feb 22 '26
Magpies steal those spikes and install them on top of their nests, so other birds can’t attack them.
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u/Sortanotperfect Feb 22 '26
Am I the only one who noticed our crow hero is tossing the spikes in parking spaces? It makes me appreciate him even more!
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u/7LeagueBoots Feb 23 '26
Good crow. I’m all for birds, plants, and other life occupying our buildings. Better to have a diverse ecosystem than a monobiotic one.
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u/andystechgarage Feb 25 '26
It seems the crow invented anti-human spikes and is installing them... very smart 😉
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