I haven’t always been the biggest fan of crows. While they are incredibly intelligent, they also do disgusting things like dunk dead animals parts in my bird baths.
Last year when a pair of hawks nested across the street, they terrorized the backyard birds for months. That’s when I also noticed that the crows had completely disappeared. Crows are great at sounding the alarm when predators are nearby, and they aren’t afraid to chase hawks or owls out of an area. I really missed having them around.
This spring a pair of crows is nesting on our block, and they and their extended family are back to patrolling for hawks and other predators again.
The other day I saw a crow land in our backyard for the first time in a very long time. He had his eye on the flat spreadable-suet feeder.
I wonder how he knew it would have suet in it? Has he seen one before? It’s the least-used feeder in the backyard, so I doubt he saw another bird use it.
At first he had to figure out where to put his feet so he could comfortably stick his beak between the slats to get to the peanut butter/suet treat.
It took a little dancing around, but he quickly figured out a system:
Once he got the hang of it, he really dove in:
I was thinking of taking down that feeder because it’s used so rarely. But now that I apparently have a soft spot in my heart for crows (what is happening to me!?), I’m going to leave it in place.