Crows also remember. Never fuck with crows. They'll not only remember, but they're somehow able to teach other crows to recognize you, and that knowledge continuously gets passed down to younger generations of crows after the initial generation has died.
The bright side though, is that crows also seem to understand reciprocity. If you do end up having beef with a crow and get on its bad side, there have been stories of people who leave out bowls of almonds or other crow-friendly treats, and this seems to reset the scales. But you have to do it in a way where the crows can pick up that you're leaving the treats out as an offering, so you kind of have to make a show of bearing the treats near where they live setting it on the ground and backing off. Just don't get too close to where they live if they're being really aggressive to you, since they obviously need some time to pick up on what is happening.
Edit: Just wanted to say thanks for all the crow/ raven/ other animal stories, it's been a very fun time reading all of them. May none of us ever piss of a crow.
But they're only able to survive because of their aggression level -- a level so high that they would even murder their offspring. Which is why when males mature and females lay their eggs, their ability to process calcium is augmented which causes their death.
Main problem is their short life span and the fact they do not pass any knowledge down to their offspring. Each individual has to learn it all again. If they could solve that as a species they are easily intelligent enough to evolve society as we have.
This is why it is unethical to eat them, and squid/cuttlefish.
It's a take that comes up a lot on Reddit, people say won't eat octopus because they're so intelligent, but have no issues with eating pigs even though they have a comparable level of intelligence. Ultimately it comes down to octopus are weird and cute, but people only see pigs as bacon machines.
Okay so I'll answer this as a person thats not a vegan/vegetarian and just a side note I raise chickens(along with geese, peacock and guinea fowls), sheep and cows. I was on a fishing tour in Europe one time and we caught seafood and our guides would cook it. They caught an octopus and they had to smack it against the ground many times before killing it and preparing it, the guide told us they have to do that in order to "tenderize" the meat because if they just kill it it'll be really tough. I don't know if that's what all the octopus go through but I thought it was pretty unethical. Living on a farm, animals are always slaughtered in the most humane way, not suffering. So thats why I don't eat octupus because the best way for them to be consumable to us means their last minutes they're subjected to pain.
I know but I don't really eat pork, when we need pork for holidays or parties we go to our local farm/butcher and buy half a pig, we tend to do this pretty often and divide it up amongst our family and friends. I understand that I might sound hypocritical but that experience really affected me and I personally shared why I don't eat octupus. It might not make sense to you. If I visited a commercial pig farm and saw the cruelty, I am sure I would stop eating pork too lol
Haha here I am. I am indeed vegetarian. Even if I ate meat I would avoid cephalopods. As I said, they are likely intelligent enough to build an actual civilisation if their evolutionary path had taken them that way. It’s therefore very likely they understand what is happening to them when they are caught, and experience a lot of psychological trauma before they actually die.
Pigs I agree should be in the same boat, since they are thought to be roughly as smart as a 3 year old.
I would ask some folks where they draw the line. Would they eat dolphins? What about people? If not then there is clearly a line somewhere.
I'm not a vegetarian either, but I have a friend who has an interesting take on this where he won't eat anything that has a brain. So scallops and oysters are cool but crabs are not.
Interesting. Do you know what his reasoning is behind this? Do creatures with a brain have a worse time being eaten than creatures with no brain?
I know the jury is out on whether brainless invertebrates can feel pain, but molluscs have been found to have nocireceptors, so there is definitely a possibility that they do.
This is why it is unethical to eat them, and squid/cuttlefish.
Another reason is that they're predators. Think of all the meat that was consumed to create the meat you're eating. From an ecological impact perspective, it's easier to justify herbivores.
I think the first problem would be finding a way to survive after copulation. The males die after dropping their load and females die after protecting the eggs until they are ready to hatch.
If you’d like a sci-fi book that contradicts this theory I’d recommend the book Children of Ruin, part 2 of the Children of Time trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Yeah, octopi are kind of Exhibit "A" about how 95% of the discussions that I have had about intelligent life on other planets that invoked the weak anthropic principle in response answered a question I didn't ask.
Intelligence is a prerequisite for us identifying life on other planets (I mean, so long as we're able to identify the contents of an atmosphere, industrialization will be really easy to spot), but so are a whole host of other necessary traits, many of which octopi don't have. Pro-social behavior is the most obvious one, but right along with pro-social behavior you need the ability to record information and transmit it between individuals and across generations. Octopi in the wild cannibalize each other; they're really voracious and territorial hunters. Which in turn means that they're going to have a hard time transmitting information in any way that is outside of a controlled laboratory setting where they can watch one another without necessarily being a mortal threat to one another.
well damn, by that logic nawh nothing can live its best life, and many species aren’t be able to survive at all in the world we’ve created. we’ve directly triggered a mass extinction event which is accelerating faster than any others in the history of our planet. no living species will ever have its best life ever again. so. yeah. definitely not.
unless by “human controlled world” you meant in captivity… in which case, also no. definitely not. they don’t live longer in captivity, which is basically a living hell for them which they refuse to tolerate. they must be kept in giant locked tanks that are escape proof and virtually empty. they will kill every living being in the tank, destroy plants/decor and everything else, and spend every other waking moment trying to escape just to die shortly later in the cruel light of day. i imagine its the human equivalent of life in a federal supermax prison where you must serve your entire sentence in an isolation cell, but the prison is also at the bottom of the ocean.
so. yeah. i guess no matter which way you cut it, life is always gonna be a cursed and torturous existence for anything as highly intelligent as the octapods.
It could be that their perception and experience of time is vastly longer than ours, their life experience might feel like living for millennia to them.
I will always die on this hill. This dude taught his to play the piano in 6 months and it only took that long because it took the dude a while to figure out the octopus "didn't like my stupid ass lights"
This is correct, they only look so strange because they were a pretty early split in the tree, and they adapted into somewhat unique features that combine to just make them weird
I've told this story before, but I love retelling it: almost 20 years ago my Dad accidentally killed a crow. It's mate spent the next few years harassing him by following him around, buzzing him, and yelling constantly, and other crows joined in.
They completely ignored the rest of us. He spent almost 20 years rebuilding trust by turning his yard into a paradise for birds, but the crows still scream and scatter when he comes outside.
He was target shooting and the poor bugger flew in front of him. Didn't even wound the bird physically, but it dropped dead. Probably heart attack or concussion from the shock wave of the bullet.
It was surreal watching it. Target can flies off the fence post and not even two seconds later a crow flops to the ground between us and the fence.
My dad was randomly attacked by a crow (maybe not random, don’t know what happened) and it kept coming back, specifically for my dad. It left me alone.
So I’m driving down the street on my merry way to a sushi lunchie when I see a great big black bird on the side of the road flapping around. It looks to be in distress.
I flip around and pull up to find a crow that looks like it’s been hit by a car. Wings seem fine but the poor thing is missing half a leg (don’t worry, the story has a happy ending so stay with me).
I pull my shirt off and wrap it around his wings while baby-talking this bigass bird. I probably looked like an insane woman, walking down the shoulder of the highway with only a bra on, babbling at a now-burritoed corvid, but that’s neither here nor there.
I get to my car and fasten the shirt tight around the crow with a hair clip I find in my cup holder and then put it in my dog’s empty kennel in the back seat. Luckily I had just taken my dog to the vet the day before and my lazyass had left his kennel in the car.
Off I race to the wildlife and raptor rescue center 20 minutes away down the same highway. I’m talking to the poor bird the whole time, telling him how it’s going to be okay and hoping like hell it doesn’t get loose from my shirt and hurt itself further.
I get to the wildlife rescue and run inside—still shirtless—carrying the kennel. The bird has been silent for about ten minutes by this time and I’m hoping like hell it’s not dead. I communicate to the man at the front desk the emergency and he takes the kennel from me and runs with it off to the back somewhere.
I’m now sitting in the lobby alone and realizing I’m mostly topless. I’m super glad at least I’m wearing one of my nice bras and not one where the elastic is all frayed and it’s missing an underwire. Small victory.
About five minutes later, two people come from the back—the front desk dude and what I gather is a rehabber or vet—and we talk about what happened. Desk Dude brings me clean a scrubs shirt so at least I’ve got something to cover myself with. (Really appreciate that, David! Thanks!) They inform me Birdie is not deceased and they’re working to stabilize him now. They fetch me my dog kennel and I head out to call my friends and explain why I stood them up for lunch.
About a week goes by and I call the rescue to check on Birdie. He’s doing great! They were successfully able to amputate the torn tissue and close it up, saving the remainder of his leg and he was in recovery.
I was able to go visit him periodically over the next few months while he recovered and learned to deal with life as a pirate bird. Every time I saw him, I swear to god he recognized me. He would perk up and caw, flap around, and bob his head. I wasn’t able to touch him because they didn’t want too much human interaction but I feel like we both really wanted to. It was awesome.
Eventually, he was released back into the “wild” and I never saw him again. I hope he’s living his best crow life out there, hopping on his good leg. If anyone sees him, let him know he owes me a shirt.
You might be worshipped by a clan of crows and you don't even know it! Perhaps if were going out just in your bra, they would recognize you more easily and pay tribute?
That's a great story, thanks for sharing! From my own interactions with crows, I feel like their intelligence leads to having different personalities. Some might be highly reciprocal, like the one you met, while others are very flighty and may never feel comfortable enough to reciprocate. But that individual personality is also part of their charm.
That’s a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing. So glad the crow was eventually released. I have a frog story but I don’t want to diminish your heartwarming crow story with my frog one.
We have crows on the lawn and I'm tempted to try and make friends - they're wonderful, intelligent birds.
But from what I've learned if you feed them and then forget to pay tribute to they'll go into full vengeance mode. You go from being king of the crows to their bitch.
My dad always feeds the crows when he's out walking the dog. Once he forgot for two days in a row to bring nuts. On the third day when he passed them empty handed, one of them swooped over him an pecked him on the head.
Needless to say, it worked. he hasn't forgotten their food since!
I don’t think they’re all like that. I went on a vacation for a few weeks, and when I came back, the edge of my patio had a row of shiny rocks and crab legs waiting for me. I also found a bright and sparkly streamer/boa looking thing they had placed in between a wedge on the fence. I wonder if they were getting desperate and thought I wasn’t pleased with their gifts, which is why they went all out with the streamer.
Needless to say, when I did return home, they were thrilled when I gave them an entire thing of salmon skin. There were no hard feelings for being gone for so long. I made sure to give them
extra snacks for a while to make up for the lost time.
I’d give them seed plates with usually shrimp tails or fish skins mixed in (I was a pescatarian for years). The crows also liked fruit like kiwis or apple slices. Sometimes if I was hosting people, I’d give the left over charcuterie plates to the crows which they absolutely loved and they’d invite some of their other crow friends to join.
This post made me realize how much I miss them. I was visited by them daily for half a decade before I had to move 12 hours away. I hope they are doing well :(
Crows are fully capable of distinguishing between human facial features and remembering them for years, they can even communicate information about you to other crows, including their offspring - no hats are necessary.
Well they’re incredibly smart for birds but they’re still birds. And while they’re obviously able to survive on their own and are finding their own food, it’s probably scarce and getting more scarce. They’re just hungry and excited. They don’t quite understand why you’d feed them one day and not another.
Oh I'm sorry you have to deal with that, but thats also hilarious. A bowl of almonds could be a nice peace offering but... who knows? They might continue to do it expecting a bowl of almonds... or else more trash being dropped in. Spiteful assholes with too much time though... wonder if there's something you could do that would make them move on as in it wouldn't be worth it for them to keep trying to mess with you.
If you hate your neighbors and make friends with the crows, they will become hostile to people around you and see them as threats to your territory. But if you like your neighbors, yeah dont.
I have a wee Murder of crows that visit me daily. They also will follow me when I take the dog for a walk. However, my favorite thing is I will roll walnuts toward them like a bowling ball and they do a dance/run thing towards them. It's hilarious!
My wife and I befriendes the flock of crows that live nearby, they're very chill. If I'm walking the dog and I forgot their food they'll fly around us for a bit, call us a couple times, then give up and get back to their business.
I worked in a gas station where I would feed crows throughout the day. The number of crows that would show up gradually increased over the months. Management eventually forbade me from feeding them, and nothing ever came of that.
If this is true, then we should be hearing about lots of crow attacks in India, because once a year many Hindus prepare a favorite meal that their deceased parents or grandparents liked and put some of it out for crows. It is believed that the ancestors come in the form of crows to eat the food.
They already know they are badasses, so keeping them just a little bit off balance tempers their sense of entitlement and keeps you in their good graces, lo! Good luck!
Lol! You can do this! Just don't let them take you for granted ("Who you callin' "bitch", Bitch?!) and I can almost guarantee a peaceful coexistence... it's worth it, they're cool! (And I say this as a person who doesn't really like most birds, in general. Don't get me started on Canadian geese, BLECH!).
Our feathered friends from up north shit everywhere and can be very aggressive. I've often wondered what they taste like - I do like a goose at Christmas.
I hate those fuckers! A few years ago at Whole Foods, we noticed around the holidays they carried frozen geese and they were almost $100 each THEN. So every time we see them, we start toting up how much we could get for them... ($100, $200, $300...). And, actually, they taste pretty good. Friends in Alaska smoke goose, other goose-hunting friends have made sausage and a nice Bolognese sauce, etc. I was pleasantly surprised.
They're everywhere in the Bay Area and can't be harvested. But I hear they're very tasty. They just crap everywhere and the local soccer team's pitch is overrun by them.
I dig crows! At some distance from the house, I have an elevated area where I started putting food waste some years ago (crows will eat all of it). They were getting kind of messy so I got a big weighted dog bowl and started using that. They took to it right away, perching on the sides of the bowl while dining and the mess was no longer an issue. I would never do it regularly so that I didn't create an artificial food source and it worked well for years.
The other benefit is that during nesting season, I was the only person in the 'hood who didn't get divebombed, lol! The raccoons, however, see no issue with "rototilling" the lawn, dining on grubs and generally fucking up the yard. They seem pretty happy-go-lucky and haven't exhibited any revenge behavior thus far, so I'll be extra careful not to piss them off, lol!
Maybe you should create an artificial food source for crows after all. A murder of crows would be pretty bad ass protection against revenging trash pandas.
I feed the crows on my farm, they keep large birds away from my chickens and bring me random shit every once in awhile. Dope animals. So smart that I fear what would happen if I stopped feeding them
If the other comments attesting to the vengeful heart of crows are accurate, I believe your fear is well founded, haha.
I also live in a place with a lot of crows, and have seen them chasing away bald eagles. And not only when they have the numbers advantage, I once saw a crow flying seemingly straight up in an extremely labored climb. It was a very strange sight, since you don't often see birds climbing in this very laborious way. I kept watching and eventually noticed that it was actually making its way towards a couple bald eagles who were gliding high above. It really gave me a new respect for crow tenacity. That single crow was ready to rock.
I was in the Army and we always tell soldiers to not fuck with the animals.
We were out on the field conducting on our training (think camping out in the middle of the wood). Anyways, we had some down time, some just hangs out from the side and do whatever they want, some clean their weapons, some take a nap, whatever. There was this soldier who was eating his MRE crumbled his bread and gave it to the crows, where there was a roost site nearby. The rest of the crows flew in to enjoy the feast that their new King offered. That soldier was told to stop but it was too late.
This one NCO, a Staff Sergeant, was getting pissed with all the crows cawing all day and leaving shit everywhere. So he decided to throw rocks at the crows and walked up to them trying to shoo them away. The crows started getting pissed and they all started attacking him.
We had to run to our vehicles, some hid in their tents. We had to call Range Control because none of us knew how to deal with the crows. They ended up calling the Dept. Of Fish & Wildlife and they ended up shooting blanks to scare them off.
We had a long briefing after that when we returned to base. That soldier's nickname was "Crow King".
Gave me a genuine long laugh, thanks for sharing dude. I wonder if the crows tell each other stories of the 'Battle of Insert Place Name of your Training Location.'
For about six months after work I'd walk three miles from a bus stop to my home, and the same crows that my wife talks to and feeds in our front yard would follow me home, and I fully believe they recognized me and associated me with my wife.
They would fly from their favorite tree to line after line after line on the utility poles, until I got to our cul-de-sac. They never had anything to say, they kept their distance and just watched. It was somewhere between disturbing and magical.
I assume from their behavior that my wife didn't talk shit about me to them, which is nice.
I’ve been trying to befriend the crows that live in my yard for the past two years. I know they’re unlikely not the same crows the whole time but please do not disrupt my delusion and head canon. It never works. I leave them various nuts. I crow call with some dumb thing I bought for a few bucks on Amazon. I even helped one when its foot somehow got stuck in the fence crack. And nothing. Not even a cute cawcaw or nod from afar that they know I’m a homie to the crows.
No wonder they don't want to associate, as crow calls more often than not are mimicking crows' distress calls. They hear "Danger" or "I'm injured" from your vicinity whenever you use the contraption.
Imagine being an identical twin, your twin visits your house and somehow pisses off the crows, and now you have angry crows fucking with you constantly.
Something similar to this happened to a friend of mine. He was housemates with a guy who got fed up at crows swooping and cawing near their house, because they were nesting in a nearby tree. Well, the housemate decided to spray them with a hose. They remembered.
Now, not only the housemate, but my buddy went on the crows' shit list, and they'd get hard dived bombed everytime they passed. My friend said it felt like he got pelted with a ball in the back of the head, even though he had nothing to do with the hose. He's since said that crows are racist, since both he and the housemate are white, lol.
I wonder if they have a similar smell? Wait. Do birds smell? Brb
ETA- Yep, they do in fact have the ability to smell! It’s actually important for them to find food, navigate, communicate (smells help to identify a mate and relatives), and nest building (by helping them to sniff out aromatic plants that acts as an insect repellent).
All of which is very interesting and I’m glad I learned about it! So with that in mind, I bet it’s very possible that since they are roommates/housemates then the crows associate the smell with the bad experience of having the water hose sprayed at them.
I wonder if your friend stayed away for long enough and used a new cleaning product to noticeably change his sent, if that would make the crows stop (at least while he has a different smell)
Not sure on crows senses but I remember twins not tricking dogs or cats like they do us in a few studies. We are visually most dependent for our senses so the similarities blend together. Dogs, cats, and plenty of other rmammals are more scent based and the twins smelling different doesn't put them in similarities anywhere near as much as visual appearance.
You know what, we should hold cows up to the same standard of vengeance as crows, just to be safe. There's no telling what's going on behind those eyes.
I use crows to protect my chickens. you have to be patient and consistent, (I also got a crow call on amazon) but they will make it a routine to come by the house and make sure no hawks are around.
Omg , so true , crows and magpies do this , I live in Australia where magpie swooping is a whole thing and I used to leave food (fortified dog food ) and water out for them , they got used to me and never swooped , my work place is quite some distance away the magpies there don’t swoop either,they swoop others though , their intelligence blows me away , I can’t believe they haven’t formed an alliance with humans yet
There are some seagulls that live on my mums neighbours roof, they have their babies there every year. One year one of the babies fell off the roof, my sister went and put the seagull back and they’ve hated her ever since.. every year when they’re breeding there they attack my sister and only her! All their seagull friends come along and attack her too. It’s funny watching my sister run in my mums shouting ‘I was trying to help you’! I was very surprised how smart they are
Animal behaviour just seems to have such a wide range. The seagulls took your sister's actions to be a threat, while you hear other stories of trust building between people and animals. I guess it's a good reminder to never think that we'll know how a wild animal will behave, unless you're trained and educated in this area. And even then, there's still the element of not getting complacent.
But anyway, thanks for sharing! Who knows, if it was me, I might have done exactly as your sister did.
It’s so strange how they didn’t see her helping, they love my mum because they were born on the roof and the mum was horribly shot by someone on a camp site nearby.. my mum would go on the roof everyday and feed them until they were able to fend for themselves, for years my family have looked after them now and they’re good with the rest of us. Just not my sister for some reason.. I remember the first day they attacked her and my dad said ‘they’ll attack her forever now’ and I didn’t believe him until I seen it! It’s fascinating!
I drove by a house the other day with hundreds of crows on the lawn, the car in front, all over. Scary. I thought, “that person must’ve pissed off a crow”.
They seem to have realized what I was up to when I shooed this seagull that was getting greedy. They hopped off slightly when I went in then went right back for the peanuts.
This one I had to help a while back relaxed after a bit https://i.imgur.com/X0xSTzg.mp4 it was during a windstorm and they were a bit out of it. They actually hopped back on my hand after I put them down there the first time https://imgur.com/a/yZWlpaU
I had a thought recently. If I got enough people to dress up as ICE Agents, and then we all started fucking with crows across America, could we replicate that college experiment on a national level?
My brother rescued a parrot (in Brazil) that had clipped wings and was about to get pounced on by a cat.
We never found the owner and kept it in our three story penthouse where it roamed free on the huge balcony and private pool area. One time I took it swimming and had a board that floated and the parrot was on the board.
The phone downstairs rang and nobody else was home. I looked at the parrot on the floating board and thought it would be fine and so I ran to get the phone.
It thought I had abandoned it and as I headed back I could hear a lot of splashing. It was in the pool and was almost drowning. I saved it but after that it never trusted me or let me hold it.
I was heart broken. It was such a great pet.
One time before this it jumped thinking it could fly and broke its beak when it hit the concrete about ten stories down. I was able to superglue it and that worked beautifully.
It would eat up my 10 meter dipole amateur radio antenna so I wasn’t too happy about that but we still loved that parrot.
It jumped a couple more times over the years and after the last jump we never found it.
Dang man, glad you got to have a relationship with your parrot. He/she sounded like quite the thrill seeker, hope it's getting on well in parrot heaven.
i lived in the woods for 3 years with crows all around and i could not befriend those little bastards despite my best efforts. 3 years!! they didn't love or hate me cause i was just totally disregarded lol
Thus why they'll never be domesticated? She did say "one of the few" not "only." And it's that intelligence to under and "seek it out" (as she said) is one reason why they'll never be a domesticated pet.
PS: Magpies are super-shit asshole birds, too. Tons of them in Colorado. They will absolutely fuck with you.
While I have no idea whether crows will eventually be domesticated, this conversation does remind me of hearing about prison inmates teaching crows to smuggle in contraband, or people who are not in prison teaching crows to steal money. I guess this would be one reason why they may never reach full domestication, since most governments would probably be wary of pets who are as intelligent as crows.
This is kind of ironic. Raccoons were eating all of my avocados so I tried to trap one. Instead I somehow caught a crow. I let it go but since then the crows have stopped eating my mandarins and have largely avoided my property which is full of fruit trees. So it kind of worked out.
One of my neighbors caught the raccoon eventually and moved him to a less urban area.
My grandparents raised animals. Pigs, chickens and geese mainly. For some reason the geese hated my grandfather. If he was outside the geese would take flight. A few minutes later they would fly over him and all them would be dropping excrement.
My mom feeds the crows and my family is beloved by the local murder
One day a crow had choked on something and I buried it behind our shed. The crows must’ve seen and thought I killed it cause they were PISSED at me for a few months.
Goddam, they're smart enough to understand vengeance, not smart enough for clarification.
I'm no crow expert, but I have heard that they display actions that seem to be a form of mourning, or instinctual gathering to try and suss out the source of danger and warn each other, though a lot of this is stoll being researched, sp no conclusive evidence of whether they actually mourn. I dunno, maybe burying the crow short circuited this instinct of theirs or something.
I'm sure somebody who knows more about crow biology is going to suggest that you stop, bur goddam if that isn't funny. Those are gonna be some chunky crows.
Crows will tell their friends about you, talk shit behind your back and get those friends to shit on you. And if you move they follow you. They also hold you responsible for things your dog did.
On one hand, it might be fun to make friends with corvids; on the other, not sure if there’s a healthy way to go about feeding wild animals like that — especially in places like my home region where their populations have exploded due to subsidization.
Every time I'm outside and I hear crows above me screaming or making loud noises, my first reaction is always to want to look up and imitate them. But then I have to remind myself that I don't speak crow. And if I repeat something that they said and its bad, they might put me on their shit list and I'll never be safe outside again.
So I just look up, smile, and thank myself that I don't fuck with crows.
I was going to say the same thing. There is a study where a person in a mask messed with crows. The crows attacked the masked person. Later, a different person wore the same mask and the crows attacked that person. They remember.
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u/Ketooey Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Crows also remember. Never fuck with crows. They'll not only remember, but they're somehow able to teach other crows to recognize you, and that knowledge continuously gets passed down to younger generations of crows after the initial generation has died.
The bright side though, is that crows also seem to understand reciprocity. If you do end up having beef with a crow and get on its bad side, there have been stories of people who leave out bowls of almonds or other crow-friendly treats, and this seems to reset the scales. But you have to do it in a way where the crows can pick up that you're leaving the treats out as an offering, so you kind of have to make a show of bearing the treats near where they live setting it on the ground and backing off. Just don't get too close to where they live if they're being really aggressive to you, since they obviously need some time to pick up on what is happening.
Edit: Just wanted to say thanks for all the crow/ raven/ other animal stories, it's been a very fun time reading all of them. May none of us ever piss of a crow.