ey_tony
Well-known member
I've always known that crows are very intelligent birds and I've observed them on occasions taking hard/stale pieces of bread and dipping them in water to soften them but a few minutes ago I saw an even better example of their behaviour.
I watched a regular Carrion Crow land on the roof of the house opposite and in its beak it had a piece of what looked like stale bread. He was clearly wandering up and down the edge of the guttering looking for what I suspected were pockets of water which lay in the less than perfect guttering levels and eventually he appears to have found one to his liking in and his head bobbed down and when he came up the bread wasn't in his beak so he'd obviously dropped it in the water as I'd seen them do on other occasions but the curious part was that this time he them wandered along the guttering again and picked up a beak full of the very dark moss which grows in the gutters around here and went back to where he'd placed the bread and covered it with the moss.
Whether it was to hide it or help moisten the bread I don't know but it was certainly interesting behaviour.
It's amazing just what you see with regard to wildlife even without leaving your home. For the past three years up to last year we had a resident pair of crows and never had any trouble with Sparrow Hawks but this year the SHs have returned as there aren't any crows nesting locally. I know crows get a bad press but the result from the crows nesting locally was that the small population weren't being decimated by the wretched Sparrow Hawks as the crows would chase them off. We had song thrushes making a welcome return and there are broken snail shells everywhere you look so that is good news.
Unfortunately we also now have a Magpie nesting locally and my neighbour witnessed one of them killing a fledgling blackbird on his lawn the other week. It came around my hedge a few weeks ago looking for nests to raid and was near to where the blackbird with the strange head I mentioned earlier had it's nest...he was furious and so too other birds which mobbed it and I gave them a bit of support and frightened it away. I've chased it away a few times and now as soon as it sees me it's off!
I watched a regular Carrion Crow land on the roof of the house opposite and in its beak it had a piece of what looked like stale bread. He was clearly wandering up and down the edge of the guttering looking for what I suspected were pockets of water which lay in the less than perfect guttering levels and eventually he appears to have found one to his liking in and his head bobbed down and when he came up the bread wasn't in his beak so he'd obviously dropped it in the water as I'd seen them do on other occasions but the curious part was that this time he them wandered along the guttering again and picked up a beak full of the very dark moss which grows in the gutters around here and went back to where he'd placed the bread and covered it with the moss.
Whether it was to hide it or help moisten the bread I don't know but it was certainly interesting behaviour.
It's amazing just what you see with regard to wildlife even without leaving your home. For the past three years up to last year we had a resident pair of crows and never had any trouble with Sparrow Hawks but this year the SHs have returned as there aren't any crows nesting locally. I know crows get a bad press but the result from the crows nesting locally was that the small population weren't being decimated by the wretched Sparrow Hawks as the crows would chase them off. We had song thrushes making a welcome return and there are broken snail shells everywhere you look so that is good news.
Unfortunately we also now have a Magpie nesting locally and my neighbour witnessed one of them killing a fledgling blackbird on his lawn the other week. It came around my hedge a few weeks ago looking for nests to raid and was near to where the blackbird with the strange head I mentioned earlier had it's nest...he was furious and so too other birds which mobbed it and I gave them a bit of support and frightened it away. I've chased it away a few times and now as soon as it sees me it's off!
