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spiraliciousSorry this has taken so long, but here is the requested story of the crows.
Under a cut because of length
To fully explain the situation, we have to go back to 2019. At that time, I had been house/pet sitting 40+ weeks a year for about a decade. In fact, the last full year of housesitting I did, I only had about 14ish days off, and none of them were consecutive. But, my last multi month housesitting job was scheduled to end June of 2020 and then, I would "retire." Delighted at the prospect of actually spending time at home, I spent most of the last have of 2019 planning what I would do and preparing.
One of those plans was making crow friends. I researched what they can and can't eat. How best to go about feeding them. Local laws around feeding crows. Really, anything you could think of. I truly was prepared.
But there were a few bumps in the road.
To start with, COVID bumped up the end date of my last housesitting job to almost mid-March, which screwed things up a little bit and showed some flaws in my preparations in general. Also, my mother was totally on board with the befriending the crows thing, which sounds like a good thing, but in reality it was kind of a mess. She gets up several hours earlier than I do. Every morning I'd set an alarm to make sure I'd feed the crows at a consistent time and every time I'd go to feed them, she'd tell me, "oh, I already fed them." This was frustrating not just because I'd never get to even see they crows (at that time, they were just taking the food and leaving until the next day), but also because my mother and I were having our own living adjustment growing pains. It was the first time we had lived together where we would be home together for an extended period of time since I was in preschool. And after a few weeks of this, there was a new wrinkle. My aunt needed a place to live and she came to live with us.
Eventually, things sort of settled. We developed a spot to put food earmarked for the crows and would put some out when the crows came and asked for it. During this more chaotic period, a crow started showing up to watch our house from the fence and if we put out food, it called the others to come to our yard to eat. If we managed to not see it after awhile, it would come up to our porch railing and throw things off until we came to investigate. There were only four crows then.
After a few months, my aunt decided that three of us in the house was too much and started hanging out in her car reading from basically breakfast until dinner time. She had snacks and would randomly throw out bits for the crows. This begins the period of our house was never crowless.
It was actually kind of magical. There were always one to three crows on our roof watching the neighborhood. They flew down to greet us when we came home. They'd fly after my mother's car for about a block before looping back when it left the house. This lasted a good three years, even after my aunt moved out and the food became less frequent and less interesting. We noticed all the babies that hatched were making it to adulthood each year. Our little murder had increased to a consistent seven birds. We watched them through their life cycles. I helped protect a stray fledgling from the neighbors cat while they found themselves a better hiding space. My mother very notably kept a seagull at bay so the crows could could grab and stash their food before it could get to it.
We are very sure the neighbors had plenty to say about us.
But as things do, they changed.
First, for safety reasons after a storm, the Trees around where they were nesting were disturbed. So they moved to a new area a couple blocks behind us. They still spent a great deal of the day at our house or watching it from a tree at the neighbors. Unfortunately, the tree at the neighbors was leaning in such a way, that one really good storm it was going to at least do some property damage, but also very likely take out part of somebody's house. The neighbors and the city fought about it for nearly two years before the tree was cut down.
We figured that was probably the end of crow visits, but the next spring, two or three would show up on a consistent basis.
We don't know what to expect this year. I keep my eyes out. We've been getting one semi consistently, but it's early yet.
Under a cut because of length
To fully explain the situation, we have to go back to 2019. At that time, I had been house/pet sitting 40+ weeks a year for about a decade. In fact, the last full year of housesitting I did, I only had about 14ish days off, and none of them were consecutive. But, my last multi month housesitting job was scheduled to end June of 2020 and then, I would "retire." Delighted at the prospect of actually spending time at home, I spent most of the last have of 2019 planning what I would do and preparing.
One of those plans was making crow friends. I researched what they can and can't eat. How best to go about feeding them. Local laws around feeding crows. Really, anything you could think of. I truly was prepared.
But there were a few bumps in the road.
To start with, COVID bumped up the end date of my last housesitting job to almost mid-March, which screwed things up a little bit and showed some flaws in my preparations in general. Also, my mother was totally on board with the befriending the crows thing, which sounds like a good thing, but in reality it was kind of a mess. She gets up several hours earlier than I do. Every morning I'd set an alarm to make sure I'd feed the crows at a consistent time and every time I'd go to feed them, she'd tell me, "oh, I already fed them." This was frustrating not just because I'd never get to even see they crows (at that time, they were just taking the food and leaving until the next day), but also because my mother and I were having our own living adjustment growing pains. It was the first time we had lived together where we would be home together for an extended period of time since I was in preschool. And after a few weeks of this, there was a new wrinkle. My aunt needed a place to live and she came to live with us.
Eventually, things sort of settled. We developed a spot to put food earmarked for the crows and would put some out when the crows came and asked for it. During this more chaotic period, a crow started showing up to watch our house from the fence and if we put out food, it called the others to come to our yard to eat. If we managed to not see it after awhile, it would come up to our porch railing and throw things off until we came to investigate. There were only four crows then.
After a few months, my aunt decided that three of us in the house was too much and started hanging out in her car reading from basically breakfast until dinner time. She had snacks and would randomly throw out bits for the crows. This begins the period of our house was never crowless.
It was actually kind of magical. There were always one to three crows on our roof watching the neighborhood. They flew down to greet us when we came home. They'd fly after my mother's car for about a block before looping back when it left the house. This lasted a good three years, even after my aunt moved out and the food became less frequent and less interesting. We noticed all the babies that hatched were making it to adulthood each year. Our little murder had increased to a consistent seven birds. We watched them through their life cycles. I helped protect a stray fledgling from the neighbors cat while they found themselves a better hiding space. My mother very notably kept a seagull at bay so the crows could could grab and stash their food before it could get to it.
We are very sure the neighbors had plenty to say about us.
But as things do, they changed.
First, for safety reasons after a storm, the Trees around where they were nesting were disturbed. So they moved to a new area a couple blocks behind us. They still spent a great deal of the day at our house or watching it from a tree at the neighbors. Unfortunately, the tree at the neighbors was leaning in such a way, that one really good storm it was going to at least do some property damage, but also very likely take out part of somebody's house. The neighbors and the city fought about it for nearly two years before the tree was cut down.
We figured that was probably the end of crow visits, but the next spring, two or three would show up on a consistent basis.
We don't know what to expect this year. I keep my eyes out. We've been getting one semi consistently, but it's early yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-04-26 07:55 am (UTC)