So I love crows, well really all corvids, but especially crows. Something about their intelligence just amazes me, they know to fly towards the sound of a gunshot because it means a dead animal may be on the other side. One time I watched a crow drag an unopened bag of chips into the road so a car could drive over it and pop it open. He placed it exactly where the driver side wheels were and waited until someone hit it. He then flew into the road and dragged back the bag where he enjoyed his feast.
Ever since I moved to Sac I made it a mission to befriend the crows here. I didn't really start until a couple months ago, when I started bringing bird seed on my walks. Whenever I see a crow, I call to them with my best caw, meet their eyes, and then drop seed for them in a safe and visible place. For the first couple weeks they would fly away almost instantly. Although this was frustrating I nevertheless understood, after all if a crow landed next to me, started saying "Hey Hey Hey" and left me food I would be confused as well. But then after a few weeks they waited around a bit longer, still waiting for me to get pretty far away before they would swoop down. It stayed like this for a few weeks, but then one day a crow landed on a stop sign not 6 feet away from me. He looked at me and watched my bag of seed expectantly. It was an amazing experience. After this I started bringing my roommate along with me. He didn't really believe me but he just wanted to go along for one of my walks. Then he saw how they would watch us, not like the other birds, they clearly knew what we had in our bags and what we were doing and all they needed to do was wait until they had their chance. I think having 2 people made us more approachable. Pretty quickly the number of chill crows increased exponentially.
You never realize how wild parts of a city can be. Even though its just small parks and trees their is a whole other world that most people don't see. We would start listening for the crows, they tended to be in groups during the evenings before they went to roost, so listening for their calls pointed us to where we could find some to feed. You don't really notice how talkative they are until you're listening for them. I've learned to be able to turn it on and off but for the first month it was hard to ignore the beckoning caws of a distant crow whenever I was outside.
About 2 weeks ago we had two amazing experiences. On one walk, as we made it to the bench where we normally turn around, we saw a crow in a tree a little bit further down. I walked over to it, cawed and threw some feed on the ground. Then from behind us another crow came flying by and landed in the same tree. He or she was incessantly barking right at me, until I responded, where he or she looked at me in silence for a second and then started barking again. Whenever I reached for my bag this talkative fellow would be quiet and would only start up again when I stopped throwing down seed. As we walked away both crows followed us for a bit, the talkative one still barking. a couple days later we turned down this side street. I heard a few flaps behind me and I saw a familiar dark figure watching me from the tree above. He then swooped down closer to a power line a few feet lower. He watched and waited patiently, not barking like the previous pair. We threw down seed and started walking away, but instead of flying down and eating he continued to follow us! He'd jump from power line to power line, watching us as we continued to throw down food for him. Then another swooped down. This other crow flew at the one that followed us and chased him down to the end of the block, then came flying back to take the seed.
We have gone back to this spot every time we go for our little crow-walks and each time two or three crows swoop down to greet us. One of them always follows us for a few blocks in silence.
Something about these crow-walks gives me something to look forward to each day. I love making friends with these beautiful creatures that nobody pays much attention to. I love that as we feed them more and more we see more of their personalities. There's one that rarely flies, opting to march around, taking his time strolling over to his pile of seed. They are such amazing animals.
