For the new followers today, here’s a, “I just discovered crows are awesome,” starter pack:

1) Crows can live a long time (14-17y), and are generally territorial. That means the crows you interact with outside your home/work may be the same individuals for over a decade.

That offers a real chance to watch/learn/bond with not just a wild animal, but specific individuals whose trust you can earn and then know intimately.

This is facilitated by fact 2) crows can learn and recognize individuals peoples’ faces. They do this in both good (people who feed them) and bad (people who harass/harm them) contexts.

3) Crows are fun to watch in part because they’re so playful. They like to wind surf (ravens have been know to literally windsurf using slabs of bark), play tug of war, play catch, tease other animals, and hang by their beaks or upside down. https://twitter.com/drghirlanda/status/1334885015268691969

4) Crows & ravens are not the same animal. Even among those names, there are many distinct species. Examples: common raven, American crow, thick-billed raven, carrion crow, & Australian raven.

Check here for a complete guide: https://corvidresearch.blog/tag/crow-calls/ 

Art by @RosemaryMosco

5) Crows eat a lot of garbage, but the other most important faction of their diet is invertebrates. That’s why they like to hang out in yards and parks. If you’re looking for food options to offer them, nuts and pet kibble are good. Stick to high protein, low processed foods.

6) Crows do a lot more than just caw. They make a huge variety of sounds and are very impressive mimics. The wow call is a common one that takes people by surprise. They do it in lots of contexts, IDK what it means.

7) As a group, crows and ravens are very extremely super smart. Like chimps, New Caledonian crows make tools. Unlike chimps, New Calie crows are good at improving those tools to the extant that in the wild they can make actual, functional hooks.

8) They don’t just excel in their understanding of the physical world though, they are also very socially adept. Common ravens for example, will not cooperate with another raven that’s cheated them or taken more than their fair share of a food reward in the past.

9) It’s an evolving mystery just how *aware* crows/ravens are but research suggests that answer is *very*. While they’re not very good at recognizing themselves in a mirror, they do express the foundation of empathy, and have subjective experiences. https://corvidresearch.blog/2020/12/21/do-you-see-what-i-see-subjective-consciousness-in-crows/

10) Finally, crows are really, very pretty, and in cases of pigmentation abnormalities, not always black.