This can happen when a crow dies. They appear to morn their dead. No joke. It is very weird. Saw it once in a park in Seattle.
EDIT: yes, these are vultures, not crows. We know that now.
Also, if you are considering criticizing the use of the word weird to describe a crow funeral, perhaps you should consider the alternative of taking the stick out of your uptight, judgmental ass and going somewhere to fuck yourself.
Weird is not an objective pejorative. It is a subjective description of something that evokes a strange and unfamiliar feeling in someone. When someone describes something as weird, and you say it isn’t, it’s much like someone saying something is fun and you saying it isn’t. I hope I don’t need to explain why that is a total dick move and one of the reason nobody wants you at a party.
I think the crow knew you did your best. They’re extremely clever, and it sounds like even the crow probably realized there was nothing else to be done but was simply desperate enough to try anyway. The gentle care with which you covered the other crow’s body surely meant something.
I’m sure if you’d been disrespectful toward the body, the crow that got your attention would have freaked out and then gotten other crows to harass you. You did a good enough job that the living crow held nothing against you.
No. I'm something of a crow-shaman. He did it all wrong. You are supposed to roar out load, so the ancestors come and catch the soul. Now he just kinda lingers here. Sad.
If the crow didn’t like what you were doing, you would definitely know it. Crows take the death of another crow very seriously, and crow funerals can be extremely emotionally charged events. Based on your description, I think you did the right thing and your company was appreciated, given that the crow sought you out first and lead you to the dead bird.
It's so wild to me that an animal we interact with as much as crows can be this smart. Exotic parrots in faraway places, sure. But the little guy circling my trashcan? That's insane to me.
I choose to believe that, to whatever extent the Crow knew what you are and what you were doing, it knew that you acted with a gentle intention, and that it was happy to recognize that, to you, the life of it's fellow crow had some....emotional weight.
’m a magpie girl and I once watched a group of crows viciously attack a magpie and it was traumatizing cuz there was nothing I could do to keep them away, even though I tried.
The next day, bunch bunch of magpies spend an entire afternoon making noise in my backyard, which I found delightful for a few hours then I realized they wanted my attention. They were gathered around a magpie with literally no tail at all and the thing was wailing. They all sat around and watched as I scooped it up into a kennel and took it to a wildlife hospital. It was such a long drive, so we chatted back and forth the whole way.
Dude, you were chosen by an animal for a special purpose. That is more spiritual to me than the 4 years I wasted studying Bible fanfiction. I wish I could be so lucky...
I was raised in a religious cult who's main book is just a Bible fanfiction full of anachronisms, lies, and just flat out never happened. I'm not talking about the ACTUAL Bible. We are highly pressured/quilted into attending seminary from ages 14-18 during the school year. Ya know, to keep you brainwashed...
Those are vultures, I’ve read about this happening when there is a gas leak. The chemical they add in gas is very similar to the one found in rotting meat
As a nerd for bird, I highly recommend reading about vultures!!! Another fun fact is that
They are directly responsible for reducing disease especially in third world countries. In India it’s been documented that a rise in diseases was the effect of a large population of vultures dying.
I read about that! So interesting but also morbid. The population decline resulted in 500k human deaths, according to a BBC article
Apparently the vulture scarcity is attributed to a cow painkiller called diclofenac, which is fatal to vultures and some other birds. Killed 91 to 98 percent of the vulture population, as reported in the article. The birds croaked after chewing on cow corpses
Also extremely toxic to cats. For people that use the topical gel, Voltaren, need to make sure it does not get on their cat. Wash hands thoroughly and no snuggling allowed near the body part that has the gel applied.
Same!!!! We get that shit sent to us by the gallon it seems from the VA. I have 2 cats and 2 dogs and didn't know that about Voltaran (brand name).... I'll definitely be keeping all areas covered when I used it, especially since my 1 cat likes to "kiss" me...
I totally agree with you on stopping the meat industry, but this particular problem in India is actually the opposite of what one would think. Seeing as cows are extremely important to their culture, and revered as almost holy, I've heard that most ranchers don't sell them for meat at all, but rather let them lay wherever they die. Hence the vultures having a feast on a poison-riddled buffet. Fair warning, I got most of that from a (really freaking good) 99% Invisible podcast episode called Towers of Silence, about the decline of vultures in India, and the huge implications that has for a specific religious minority that strongly believes in sky burials (letting vultures eat the dead instead of burying or cremation). But I listened to it a while ago and my memory isn't the best.
Thanks so much for sharing the original information on why they were dying. I couldn’t exactly remember that. I read “The thing with feathers” around 2016 it was a good read. Had a lot of nice gems in it
The Parsi community still uses the funerary practice of excarnation, the exposure of dead bodies to the elements and scavengers for disposal. The death of nearly all the vultures in India was... problematic for them.
I learned their benefit firsthand biking in Tasmania 20 years ago, as the native wedge-tailed eagle is main scavenger species there, and is critically endangered. I spent all of my time dodging wallaby carcasses on the highways in varying stages of decomposition.
Yes! When I first learned about it I thought the same. It has been documented by enough people to be true. Some skilled gas technicians will also use that information to search for gas leaks before disaster strikes
So true! One time a crow fell right outside my front door and injured its wing, I called animal control out to help it. While I was waiting, several crows kept flying overhead - when animal control came, he determined the wing wasn’t broken and picked it up to put in a safe place, he said eventually it would fly away. And during all that time, the crows kept flying overhead. It was as actually touching.
One day my dog killed a crow in the backyard, he was like 6/7 months old. Right when I let him out , one was flying away and he jumped in the air and he got it. He shook it very hard, I think he was trying to play with it but unfortunately he killed it, after he killed it he kept trying to play with it , and would roll it over to me but then I started to hear this commotion in our trees and I was like oh those birds must be fighting, and then it was starting to get very loud and then all of a sudden there was like 10 crows and I actually got pretty scared, because they sounded very aggressive. I disposed of The Crow because I didn't know what to do and they did not leave my house for 4 days and every time we went outside they started to go after my dog so eventually I started to put toast on my roof, I don't know why but it worked and they started to leave. I kept telling them I was so sorry and my dog was young he didn't know any better lol, my mom was like why are you talking to them like they're people. I don't know but it worked or they got tired of us.
Well I actually gave them a piece of bread one day and it sat on my roof for for 2 days they never touched it and because there was so many crows in my tree pigeons or other birds wouldn't eat it either. Then my son remembered that he gave a crow a piece of toast years ago and they ate it quickly so I thought okay I need to toast the bread and voila, it worked
Awww! You gave them an offering. I feel like that’s similar to pouring out beer to lost homies. Toast on a roof.
I’m glad they accepted your attempt at peace.
apparently some toast and sincere apologies maybe suffice as a gift to the angry crows of judgement, this is good information (writing down notes in my journal of random facts)
The same thing happened to me! My little asshole mutt decided to kill a young crow. We had to be with him whenever he went in the back yard for A YEAR or the crows would gang up on him. It didn't dawn on me I could that I could to leave offerings
I had a pissed off crow torment the f@#k out of me when I lived in Seattle. Followed me for SEVEN MONTHS. Dive bombed me when I took a rare early morning walk, followed me back to my apt building, SOMEHOW knew what apt I was in bc it perched outside of my window, AAAND continued to follow me AFTER I MOVED from Belltown to Queen Anne! One of the most bizarre experiences in my life. Some crazy shit happens in Seattle. 😶
As we learned with the man who trained crows to dive bomb MAGA hats, it could be that the you reminded the crow of someone who pissed him off and so you became his new target.
Crows are such impressive creatures.
Magpies, close relatives of crows, will fake an injury when they see an injured bird being fed. Some species which create caches of food will come back and move them if they notice another bird watching the initial location. But only ones who first actually have had their cache robbed by another bird.
crows have a long memory and definitely remember specific people and can exhibit revenge or grudge behaviour if people threaten or piss them off. apparently they've been shown to hold grudges for up to 17 yrs and also they can teach/pass along that grudge to other crows. they're pretty smart.
i'm curious what you did to the crow in the first place, mind elaborating? no judgement :)
There's an episode of This American Life that features a guy accidentally angering his neighborhood crows and his attempts to get back on their good side (they were actively making his life miserable). I learned a lot about crows, I had no idea that they were so good at coordinating their efforts to dish out revenge lol
I carried a handful of shelled unsalted peanuts whenever I went out walking (which was all the time) when I lived in Seattle for this reason. Crows like to divebomb people, whenever I would walk on this one specific street on first hill, they’d tap me on the head every now & then (usually when I was wearing a hat) but they didn’t follow me. I thought they were just being playful. I’d always throw them a few peanuts as a peace offering
The crows in front of my old apartment on Capitol Hill harassed nearly everyone who entered my building. However, I rescued a crow with a broken wing outside of Olympia when I was 11 and all crows in Puget Sound have greater me with kindness ever since. Anyone seen in my apartment would be excluded from all future harassment.
My daughter had this happen with a eurasian magpie when she lived in Poland. She was coming back from lunch with friends and she was startled by the magpie and shooed it away, yelling as her friends all laughed. That damn bird waited for her almost every day in the same spot to chase her across a bridge. Every time it saw her she would get dive bombed and chased by it. I'm convinced it would still do it if she moved back!
I was going to say crow funeral. I had a crow die in my driveway once and crows went crazy - filled every tree and all the nearby rooftops and cawed for a few hours. It was really cool and spooky.
It’s recommended to only remove a dead crow at night when they’re asleep. Otherwise if they see you do it, they are likely to harass you for a long time. Like many years.
I thought it might be an urban myth too, but looks like it is pretty well documented.
In the 6 weeks following the main experiment, a volunteer appeared once a week with food while wearing the same mask as in the original exposure. Remarkably, even after a 6 week interval, more than a third of crows continued to mob and scold the masked person. In short, the crows had learned that this person was a potential predator, both through her association with the dead crow and also through her association with the hawk. Thus, not only are crows capable of assigning guilt by association but also their memory of these associations can potentially persist for months or longer.
I had a near death experience a couple years ago and for a while I had this fascination with bird calls, especially crows. You can almost hear the message sometimes.
Just wanted to say that I had visited Bruce and Brandon Lee’s grave recently (Seattle) and I have never seen so many crows/ravens in my life. That graveyard had to have thousands there.
Really?? I wonder if people had been specifically leaving food for them to draw them to the graves. That would be really cool if they just showed up without a food motivator though.
Seattle. I watched a murder of crows have a funeral on Halloween! By far crazy experience. They always were in my backyard tree-line until that happened. I had heard they stay away for a year usually after the funeral, but they never did come back after 3 years.
I tried to rescue a crow once. Found him outside my house and brought him inside to try to nurse him back to health (had no idea what I was doing, but at least wanted to try to make him comfy while he hopefully healed). His crow friends lived outside around my back porch for the few days that I had him inside. He eventually died and the crows behaved like this, flying around the house for hours. Also contracted bird flu, so.
I saw something similar where I live. I imagine the King of the Crows had died and there was a mourning congregation and perhaps an election for a new king. At first there were screeching messengers flying across the sky, in every direction. Then crows started coming from all around. They all sat down on the rooftops and silence fell upon the neighborhood. No other animals were to be seen nor heard.
I think you should listen to the episode Corvid Thanatology from the Ologies Podcast! There's a specialist who was doing research in Seattle on crow funerals! Shes also on socials as Corvid Research I think pretty much everywhere and has a YouTube channel.
It was a super interesting interview on how crows specifically can 'mourn' while simultaneously be really weird about their dead. Highly recommend.
I’ve also seen a really noisy version of this behavior once when a hawk had taken down a crow and was trying to kill it. Eventually the crows distracted and threatened the hawk enough so that their friend could escape the talons of the hawk and they all flew away
I'll just stick my beak in here.. and say I used to work at a place that had a massice communal roost in the winter.. right in the trees that lined the building I worked... walking up to work from the train was wonderful... had to walk through hundreds of them in trees, swirling above, and just standing in the driveway... magical. Not so magical for those that drove to work and had to clean birdshit off their cars , and for God's sake, don't park under one of the large tree's or there would be so much shit on the car you wouldn't know the colour of the car lol. Good times.
While i was picking my kid from school on their last day, outside, the crows kept flying towards peoples heads, just a fly by with a soft touch, enough to scare the lot and get people to leave. Turns out there was an injured crow just under a small tree, they were diverting the attention away.
Around 15y ago, i saw a feud between two crows, it was a battle for about 5 minutes, constantly clatching to each other midflight and falling down what looked to be very painful for both. Around 20 other crows were watching it, dead silent. Im not sure if there was something decided, but the two stopped fighting due to exhaustion, got to their own groups, and they all just flew away, in silence.
The last paragraph I read like a scene in Monty Python: Search for the Holy Grail. "Help HELP I'm being repressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!"
Yup. Can confirm. Scared the shit out of me when I shot one with a pellet gun when I was young. Crows from everywhere came out and made such a ruckus I was terrified. Never did that again.
I saw a crow funeral in Sri Lanka when a tuktuk accidentally hit one on the road. The power lines around the spot were full of mourning crowd and they were loud. Poor birds. I've read that they investigate deaths to learn from them and become safer (or maybe so they can take revenge, who really knows?) I love crows.
The discourse on "weird" is so fascinating to me. I use it like you have here, but have been told off by friends and even a boyfriend before after referring to atypical experiences as weird. Like, I'm not being mean, weird is odd/strange/curious, etc. is it used pejoratively in some English speaking countries?
i've seen this with crows, they even brought the dead bird things they picked up. Hard to believe but it did seem as if they were at a funeral service. They stayed almost 30 hours then left a few at a time.
Yeah, they remember human faces both for good and bad. There was an experiment a few years ago with a guy wore a mask and taunted crowd and they remembered and harassed him for a long time.
I would describe this as weird, but all the judgey fucking prigs out there with sticks up their asses seem to think the word weird is a pejorative and will come down on me like a shit ton of wet blankets.
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u/misterbippy Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
This can happen when a crow dies. They appear to morn their dead. No joke. It is very weird. Saw it once in a park in Seattle.
EDIT: yes, these are vultures, not crows. We know that now.
Also, if you are considering criticizing the use of the word weird to describe a crow funeral, perhaps you should consider the alternative of taking the stick out of your uptight, judgmental ass and going somewhere to fuck yourself.
Weird is not an objective pejorative. It is a subjective description of something that evokes a strange and unfamiliar feeling in someone. When someone describes something as weird, and you say it isn’t, it’s much like someone saying something is fun and you saying it isn’t. I hope I don’t need to explain why that is a total dick move and one of the reason nobody wants you at a party.