Content:
- Crows: The Big Bird Bullies of Cities, Small Towns, and Friendly Neighborhoods
- Dealing with Crows: Understanding the Crow’s Intellect and its Behavior
- What Does a Crow Actually Eat?
- 7 Best Methods to Get Rid of Crows Yourself
The common crow is a bird of legend, mystery, and spirituality. But to anyone who has a garden or has accidentally hit one of these birds, they may refer to them as nothing more than a giant dark-winged nuisance. Their need to caw and gather also makes them very bad neighbors for anyone hoping to sleep in on a Sunday morning or simply enjoy bird watching in their front yard.
Depending on where you look, crows have many different meanings attached to them. Some consider the bird to represent death due to its nature of scavenging habits and other odd behaviors. Others consider the bird to be lucky or a trickster of sorts.
Whether you believe the witchcraft stories of dark omens or look to the brighter side of these lovely birds, you will be bound to find a fact or two to help your crow repelling journey. After all, learning about your feathered foe is the first step in finding the best way to get rid of crows in your yard.
Crows: The Big Bird Bullies of Cities, Small Towns, and Friendly Neighborhoods
Crows are one of the smartest species of bird in the world. While this may sound like an interesting fact to any bird enthusiast, this isn’t so interesting to know when you want them away from your home. True to their perceived persona, crows can be very tricky. Their high-level intellect is why they are the hardest yard pest to deal with. This is why you will have to keep them on their toes!
Just how smart are these dreadful blackbirds? Well, they are smart enough to use stones and tools, are capable of mimicking human voices and sounds, can teach other crows how to determine friend from foe, and they have a method of communication with even crows outside their murder.
Murder? Yes, a murder. This is what one would call a group crows. Which in a way adds to the many stories surrounding crows and their penchant for devouring the dead. While this may seem scary, crows are actually very helpful in this regard. Crows, with all their omnivorous glory, help get rid of dead animals on roads and in forests.
By helping with the process of decomposition crows help prevent disease outbreaks in their own special way. This also cuts down on the horrid smells that come with roadkill or in general dead animals.
Despite their usefulness in nature, crows can be a real pain in the neck for farmers, gardeners, bird watchers, people with pets, and anyone with food in their hand. In a way, you can add the crow’s ability to adapt alongside humans into their intellectual repertoire. If you thought seagulls were bossy, wait till you see a group of hungry crows flapping and cawing around a bird feeder.
Crows are tenacious creatures when it comes to securing food. In fact, during winters crows will even hide food and store it to prevent food scarcity. The interesting thing about this is if a crow sees you when they try to hide food they will hide it in front of you and fly off. Once you leave the area the crow will then come back and hide the food somewhere else.
Talk about a real food-loving trickster!
Dealing with Crows: Understanding the Crow’s Intellect and its Behavior
Now that you’ve seen a little into the crow’s world, you can begin to understand their level of intellect, their distinct behaviors, and the many similarities they share with us humans. Crows are similar to humans in many ways, which is why some may consider the bird to be the humans of the bird world, especially with their impressive brain-to-body ratio.
Both humans and crows have a morning ritual of sorts, can determine a friend from foe as a survival instinct, depend on large groups for survival, have a sound method of communication through vocalizations, can problem solve, use a variety of tools, can live in a variety of terrains, and more.
Interestingly enough, crows have over 250 different warning call depending on the intruder. They have a different call for humans, cats, owls, and other predators. Other behaviors both crows and humans share are similar familial behaviors and not-so-nice behaviors such as cheating and mobbing.
Crows can express emotions such as discontentment with hunger, sadness, happiness, anger, and irritation towards invaders. Crows are even capable of mercy, they will kill one of their own if their fellow bird is sick or dying in agony.
Crows can even show appreciation by bringing little gifts for people who feed them. But should you dare to cross a crow in the worst of ways – watch out! Crows never forget a face, will tell other crows all about you, and even continue to hold the grudge for years to come.
We often underestimate just how many similarities we hold with these bothersome birds. But crows also have their differences. Crows have a morning ritual to determine the cause of death and warn others of potential threats or hazards in the area of their dead comrade. Crows are truly fearless birds, they are willing to go up against eagles, owls, and other predators.
What Does a Crow Actually Eat?
Crows are opportunistic eaters. As omnivores, crows will eat just about anything. From dead carcasses and garbage to insects in your yard to even the corn and other veggies, nuts, and fruit in your orchard or veggie patch.
Crows aren’t overly picky. While this is bad news for people trying to grow corn it may be helpful to a degree for farmers.
Crows are predators themselves and will eat frogs, lizards, mice, rats, insects, and other garden pests.
7 Best Methods to Get Rid of Crows Yourself
There are many ways to go about getting rid of crows on your own. Some ways you will either need to use in combinations or switch them up every so often. Since crows are smart birds they may not fall for every trap you set. So when it comes to the best ways to get rid of crows you want to learn what works against your particular neighborhood murder.
Since crows can carry diseases and parasites it is advised to handle them with long-sleeved clothes, gloves, and caution.
1.) Using an ultrasonic crow repellent in your yard, garden, and home
If you thought cawing murders were annoying to you, it turns out humans can be just as annoying to crows. Crows have sensitive hearing and dislike loud high-pitched noises. This disturbs them so much that they will purposely avoid going near the area where the ultrasonic crow repeller is.
All you need to do is buy a few of these simple devices and build a nice perimeter around your home with them. This will keep those pesky crows away and can easily be paired with other crow repelling methods.
2.) Build yourself the scariest scarecrow on the block
Time to get a little creative!
Crows really do dislike scarecrows. If you combine the scarecrow with a scary mask, the scent of their predators, and loud noises or recordings you are bound to terrify that annoying local murder in your garden.
No more corn thefts with this trusty old crow repelling method.
Scarecrows can be made with just about any old clothes, some grass clippings or hay, and a simple broomstick or pole to keep it sitting up and guarding your garden.
3.) Use fake versions of the crow’s natural enemies
Crows surprisingly are afraid of a few things. Despite their tenacity with having a face-off with an owl, they will also avoid them too. The same goes for snakes, bears, wolves, cougars, and other big predators that feed on crows. This is great since many stores often sell fake versions of these creatures.
All you need to do is buy a few and hang them around the local crow’s nest and roosting hot spots.
4.) Ramp up a few tunes on repeat and make some noise
Back to that whole, they don’t like loud noise thing. Got any heavy metal or really annoying music? Set up some recordings and watch the crows scatter at the sound of drums, screechy guitar solos, and scary voices. Unfortunately, while this method is great against crows, your neighbors might not be so enthused with your loud music choices.
5.) Do the required yard maintenance and clean up
Make sure all food and water sources are removed. This includes sealing your garbage cans or placing them in the garage, keeping your compost sealed, picking up dropped fruit and nuts, and making sure the crow’s other favorite types of prey are kept to a minimum. Also, if you intend to have a bird feeder make sure it is a crow-proof one since crows love free handouts on birdseed.
6.) Using the crows own distress signals and caws
Crows dislike music just as much as they dislike hearing the distress calls. Lay a couple of fake dead crows around your yard and ramp up the distress recordings. This will cause the crows to feel alarmed and immediately avoid the area out of fear of danger. Basically, out crowing the crow.
7.) Attract the crow’s enemies to your yard or garden
Crows do have enemies. On top of regular big predators like wolves, bears, and tigers, the crow also has mortal enemies among birds. Besides the hooting owls, sassy eagles, and squawking hawks, crows and purple martins also hate each other. So if purple martins are local to your area, you can set up a nice little purple martin birdhouse and give those black-feathered bullies the boot for good.
