Killing black crows

Maybe try to get on their good side? :smiley:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/crowfaq.htm#pests

We’ve got crows hanging out in our yard. How can we get rid of these pests?

Good luck! Once crows have decided to come to your yard, it might be hard to convince them to leave. Plastic owl decoys will work, … for about 15 minutes. A dog could be more effective, especially if it was encouraged to chase them. If, however, something really special was attracting the crows to the yard (like readily available food), the crows probably would figure a way how to get it and avoid the dog. The idea is to make the yard an unattractive place for the crows. Cut down your trees if you have to. Chase them when possible and make it obvious that you are after THEM, not just going out in the yard for other reasons (it will make a difference, trust me, but see below for the associated risks of this technique). Killing the crows is not a recommended option. It can be done legally only in a few areas (out of the city, and with permits or a hunting license). But, if one family of crows found your yard desirable, chances are others will too. Crow society is filled with excess crows that are waiting for an opportunity to breed (the helpers staying home and helping the parents raise young). If you kill some territory holders off, you just create a breeding opportunity for the crows waiting in the wings.

A far better solution is to work on your own attitudes, not the crows’. Pests are like weeds: their status relies entirely on your point of view and state of mind. What is a weed to one person is a beautiful flower to another. It is my experience that if you let something bother you, it will. The more upset you get about it, the more it bothers you, and the more it bothers you the more upset you get, and the more upset you get the more it bothers you, and so on and so on, until you explode. Although some measures do exist to change crow behavior, it might be easier and more effective to attempt to change people’s attitudes about crows. (I actually have little hope of doing either.)

Crows are not evil, and they are not purposely trying to torment you. They are just being crows, trying to live their lives and feed their families. Actual property destruction is one thing that might require action, but just being annoying is something else again. Try to appreciate the crows for the fascinating creatures they are. If you get over that hurdle, the annoying habits become much less annoying. I have said that crows are much like my family or my dog: they do many things that annoy me, but I love them and am willing to overlook (most) of the annoying things because the relationship is primarily positive on the whole.

Crows do have one endearing characteristic that is apparently not shared by other birds. They will get to know people as individuals. While you can get chickadees to eat out of your hand, any old hand will do, and I suspect that the chickadees do not know you as an individual. Crows will! If you toss them peanuts (I recommend unsalted, in the shell) on a regular basis, they will wait and watch for you. Not just any person, but you. If you do this often enough, they will follow you down the street to get more. I have made a point of getting on the good side of a number of crow families around Ithaca. Some will follow my car down the street, and if I don’t notice them and toss them peanuts they will dash across the windshield to let me know they are there. Some of these crows recognize me far from their home territories, way out of context. (It did, however, take some of them a long time to learn to recognize my new car.) So indulge yourself and makes some personal friends with the crows. That is the preferred relationship, because they also are happy to turn this talent of recognition to the darker side, and treat you as an enemy. (Again, not just all people, but YOU.) Because I climb to crow nests to band young birds, many crows in Ithaca know me and hate me. Whenever they notice me in their territory they will come over and yell at me. They will follow me around and keep yelling for as long as I am there. Believe me, it’s better to be on their good side than their bad side

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Tangent alert:

“Bootless” is a favorite old word of mine, and my day was brightened by seeing it used.

Main Entry: boot·less
Pronunciation: \ˈbüt-ləs
Function: adjective
Etymology: 1boot
Date: 1559
: useless, unprofitable <a bootless attempt>

Good, double-entendre barn name for a horse without leg markings… :smiley:

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Crows are a boatload of fun! They steal everything they can get their beaks on…especially shiny things. Lost my keys once, found them on the barn roof. :lol: Now I leave out huge balls of tinfoil for them to steal and play with and fight over. They chatter endlessly…the 4 that live here on the cell tower can mimic the sound of stuff falling and pinging off the tower. It’s their favorite game…they bring rocks or acorns to the top of the tower and drop it, then try to race it down as it bounces from girder to girder. Then they fly around making the same sound. Sounds like a marble going down a metal staircase, LOL!

You can discourage them with fire crackers…toss some lit ones nearby. Sometimes this will work after a few times…and sometimes they just start making the noise back to you. :winkgrin:

But convincing them to leave…not the easiest thing. And illegal to kill them.

Bootless is now my new favorite word. Here I was thinking it was fruitless gone terribly astray. Nope, just fruitless chasin it some bootless.

We did a PPE a while back. My neighbor is a competition shooter- long range sniper type stuff. Noisy as Hell. boom boom boom. As the mare, who had been at my house less than a week, went through her gaits w/o an issue, never batting an eye, my dear vet said well Hell Kat she’s either broke to death or deaf as a post. Either way she’s all right.

[QUOTE=LKF;4889405]
I have a large number of black crows living on my farm. I’ve always hated them, but as of today, it’s now personal and I need advice on how to get rid of them.
Does anyone have a suggestion?[/QUOTE]

Black crows? Do they come in other colors?:lol:

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Ditto the electric fencing. Just run a strand on top of whatever fences you don’t want them sitting on.

You’ll have a hard time killing enough of them to matter.

“Bird Bombs” are effective at scaring them away as well as trespassers. We have an abandoned rock quarry with 2 acres of crystal clear water that trespassing has always been a problem. I can clear it out quickly with one lob of a bird bomb.

http://www.angelfire.com/nv/m79/

[QUOTE=tallyho392;4889542]
you also might wanna check to make sure it’s not illegal to kill a crow…here it is unlawful to have one for a pet unless it is unable to return to the wild due to injury, etc…

that being said, i too, think it is unnecessary to kill crows…just run a hot wire on the top fencerail, and they will not have it available as a roosting spot…i bet the horse would get used to the noise, anyway…
you want the neighbors to shoot horses because they are too noisy, or too smelly, or their kids are afraid of them?..kinda the same thing…
whatever happened to “live and let live”?[/QUOTE]

Hot wire on rail won’t work. They have no ground because they’re birds. I can loan you my collie…

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[QUOTE=LauraKY;4889912]
Hot wire on rail won’t work. They have no ground because they’re birds. …[/QUOTE]

Yeah duh. Anyone ever see birds sitting on electric power lines? :confused:

Anyhoo… we only have two or three around my place, and they’re still annoying as heck. All last night I could hear song birds singing now and then because the moon was so bright. I lay there with the window open, thinking “Thank God it isn’t a crow”. Nothing starts my day off on the wrong foot faster than a damned crow in the lilac bush 12 feet from my window complaining about something. And I’m not that good a shot with a bee bee gun early in the morning. So they just laugh at me. It sort of reminds me of the Mocking Bird thing in the movie Failure to Launch. :yes:

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I see crows mob hawks so if you have small dogs I would think the crows would be offering them some protection.
Also, IIRC crows were decimated years ago by WNV. That you have so many might mean a good thing - kind of a WNV barometer.

Not sure about other states, but in VA there is a season for hunting crows.

See here http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/hunting/regulations/smallgame.asp

Live and let live…sheesh!:rolleyes::no:

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Where I come from it’s considered terribly unlucky to kill them.

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[QUOTE=lesson junkie;4889861]
Black crows? Do they come in other colors?:lol:[/QUOTE]

My first thought too! Maybe sorta like purple cows? I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one. :lol :lol:

Signed… “the crow feeder”. :smiley: :smiley:

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[QUOTE=Huntertwo;4890068]
Live and let live…sheesh!:rolleyes::no:[/QUOTE]

What I’ve come to wonder… why, when we own 16 acres of woodlands and field, do the deer, crows, coons, chipmunks and other nuisance wildlife insist on parking their butts right outside my window? Can’t they stay on their part of the property and leave my part alone? Haven’t they read the Cooperative Extension pamphlets which outline which are native species and therefore “stuff deer eat” and which are not supposed to be on the deer menu? Can’t the crows go sit on one of the other thousand trees, and not the one right outside my window? Why do the chipmunks have to store their harvest in MY root cellar. Aren’t they supposed to build their own? I’m all for live and let live, but I don’t think they’re doing their part :wink: Why should I?

My local crows and I had a falling out when they decided it would be great fun to perch on top of the bay window in my bedroom and CAW CAW CAW exactly 30 minutes before my alarm clock went off. Every morning. For two weeks.

I confess, I had murderous thoughts.

Fortunately they gave that up so we now live in relative harmony unless I see them harassing song birds. Then I re-consider.

However, I have secretly always wanted a pet raven. How cool would that be? Not ethical, I know. A girl can dream though.

They probably feel the same way about you, and you should be grateful for the despook training they are giving your horse.
American Crows are protected internationally by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. http://www.fws.gov/laws/lawsdigest/migtrea.html

I have turkey buzzards as an audience on my ring fence.

I posted this link before, but it’s still cool. If I had crows, I’d train them. geeze, think about it, pick up poop, drop it in a bucket, get a peanut.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html

And older man I knew told me when he was a kid he and his friends went out to shoot crows one day, and they saw some on the ground in a cornfield, so they shot a few. The rest of the flock, instead of flying away in fright, flew up and attacked the crow that had been on sentry duty in the nearby tree, for failing to warn them of the approaching kids with guns!

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Uhm- guys- she said she wasn’t going to kill them.

I think they are neat and quite frankly I LOVE that they kill the starlings, or whatever the tiny baby birds that nest in the arena roof are called. Crows don’t do the damage that those little bastards do.

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