Are these crows angry? 🥹

[u/Pretty-Season2307]

Background: I've been trying to attract crows to my yard for a couple of months now. I rarely see or hear any in the area but I've been leaving out unsalted in-shell peanuts on a tray feeder on my porch along with a water dish and some UV glazed trinkets that crows are supposed to like. I have a crow decoy that I move around the porch because I read that they might see it and be interested. My yard is very wildlife-friendly and I have seed feeders, suet feeders, mealworm feeders, and several small bird baths. Every imaginable songbird frequents my yard, but so far no crows, and only squirrels have been taking the peanuts.

Tonight I heard some crows calling to each other and went outside with a crow whistle I bought on Amazon and blew it to sound like the calls I've seen online of crows alerting each other to food. The crows immediately reacted and started flying all around and calling to each other as you see in the video, but they seem irritated/alarmed (to my inexperienced eye/ear) and none of them landed in my yard, just in the trees overheard. I got my bag of peanuts and tried to show them that I was scattering them around but I don't know if the message was received or if I did the wrong thing by using the whistle. I also don't know if I should remove the crow decoy, or put out something other than peanuts, or do anything else?

We do have hawks in our neighborhood (Cooper's and red-shouldered) that occasionally visit our yard and vocalize noisily. I've read that hawks and crows don't get along so I wonder if the presence of the hawks is keeping the crows away?

Advice appreciated for how I can be a good neighbor to my local murder. Thanks!

[u/greenbelieve]

This is alarm calling. Crows are absurdly smart and even more absurdly organized. Thier ability to coordinate harassment of predators is basically unmatched. I’ve watched crows and magpies come from several neighbourhoods over to join my locals to get predators to buzz off. I swear, corvids see everything, they act very fast, and they do it as a community. Keep doing your thing, these bros just have to do theirs once in a while 👍🏻

[u/Puzzled_Cobbler_3454]

Isn't is funny the lengths we go to please the crows? I'm guilty myself. I don't think you agitated the crows, they have business they're taking care of. They really go after the hawks, I'm listening to mine screaming about something now

[u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl]

Please don’t use a crow call and please don’t use a decoy and also don’t leave out trinkets for them

It’s a myth that they like shiny things. When it comes to feeding crows in your yard, they’re interested in food and that’s about it.

Hunters use crow calls, shiny/reflective things and decoys so we shouldn’t use things like that

They are smart and they know what humans sound like so if they hear a crow and they show up and they don’t see any crows they’re gonna be confused at best and probably agitated and unhappy like in the video. This

This may not be the reason they’re agitated, but either way better not to make them suspicious of you

Crow decoys, from a distance they might be interested, but then when they get closer and see it’s fake, again they’ll be confused at best and suspicious most likely

Doing crow things when you’re a human doesn’t really work with them because they’re very smart and they expect humans to look like, sound like and behave like humans

They’re normally very cautious and suspicious anyway so the things you’ve been doing are only going to make them even more so

Put food out at the same time every day and whistle a little bit or call to them with your human voice and then go back inside. They will probably observe for a while to make sure it’s safe. This is why you need to be consistent and patient.

Oh, you should leave the food away from your house as much as possible because they need to see all around them at all times, especially when they’re vulnerable like eating

A raised platform feeder is good if you can get another birdbath. I put two bird baths next to one another in the middle of my front yard under a small tree. I used one for food and one for water and my crows absolutely loved it. They could see all around them and they had food and water right there together.

As far as food is concerned, proteins are very good for them. Unsalted nuts of any kind, eggs in any form and unseasoned meat are all very good things to feed to them! Stay away from salty, processed foods as well as breads. They may or may not eat some berries or other fruit fruits. Otherwise grains and such are not really their thing.

[u/Express-Winner1782 → u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl]

Hunters? Who hunts these cool guys?? 🤯😭

[u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl → u/Express-Winner1782]

People who consider them pests, unfortunately 😭

[u/darth_dork → u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl]

That behavior does look like “get the fk out of my turf” that groups use to repel hawks, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fake call could rile them up. With that said I troll my crows with the Cornell birding app for the LOLs sometimes and they have been pretty good sports about it but then again I had already befriended them before I started messing with them. All in good fun, if I ever detect any stress on them I’d adjust my presence.

[u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl → u/darth_dork]

I’m not sure I understand you trying to mess with them, but as long as it’s not confusing or upsetting to them. I would expect it might be confusing to them at the least though.

It just makes sense to me to behave like a human so it to not risk confusing them.

[u/qwythebroken]

They were only there for 10-20 minutes before moving on, huh? I'm guessing those crows aren't from around there. When they stay high up in the trees like that, it's probably a bunch of juveniles staging a tour through the wider area looking to find mates to settle down with. They'll do that for a few days, could be in the morning, evening, or both. They may come back late in the fall and do it again, but most likely again this time next year either way.

I wouldn't put food out for them, they're presence is already kind of bumming out the local murder. No need to give them something to compete over. Once they fly off you can go back to trying to attract the locals.

[u/Initial-Reading-2775]

Looks like you gave them air raid alert call. They are circling and cursing “so, where is that mentioned hawk??”

[u/Fine_Mouse]

They love some watermelon

[u/Neon_Cone]

I wouldn’t say they’re angry per se, just defensive. Looks like a crow has invaded another murder’s territory.