It’d be sweeter if I had a house and could arrange a spot to do it reliably.
My wife and I are buying a house, and one of the main things she’s planning is The Unkindness Sanctuary, since there are a ton of ravens in our area.
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Dasus@lemmy.world 1 day agoIt’d be sweeter if I had a house and could arrange a spot to do it reliably. Now its just me relying on them spotting me. But it’s kinda fun, as sometimes when I’m scooting/cycling to the store, Muninn will glide next to me a bit to remind me he’s there and to get him something as well.
I don’t always buy them meatballs and there’s been plenty of bans for bird feeding.
In my last apartment I accidentally taught a squirrel to plunder aparments, because I fed the crows from my windowsill.
Then I got fed up with finding squirrel poop in my kitchen so one time I caught him in a large see through moving box and put him in time out for a few hours. (I made sure there were s few twigs, water and some food in the box.) I don’t know whether he leaned his lesson, but the crows certainly learned and followed me despite the move. I only moved like 150 meters as the crow flies, hehe. So it was easy of them to still follow me while not needing to change where they nested.
I’m sort of coloured like a big black crow often, as well. Gray and black.
But sometimes it’s kinda hard to know whether I’m imagining them having followed me and just looking at some random crows. As sometimes they follow me even when I take the bus.
But I go to supermarkets which are like 2-4km again as the crow flies (pun’s getting old tho). So it’s reasonable they do follow me. Especially in winter when it’s hard for them to find food, not as much in the summer.
Also magpies and a blackbird, I think but less so. The magpies don’t follow as far, but there’s more of them and they’re more nimble, so if I feed the crows near my house, the magpies might disturb them. Which is why I feel like they follow me to the stores a bit further away.
Idk it’s not too empirical but I’m definitely karmically positive when it comes to crows.
My ultimate fantasy would be to train them well enough to perch on the sleeves. That would be rad, but I don’t believe it’s realistic.
Hugin and Munin Fly every day Over all the world; I worry for Hugin That he might not return, But I worry more for Munin
— From Grímnismál
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Dasus@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Fucking English collective nouns. :D
I actually had a raven once, I was so surprised. I was just being followed by Muninn, as normal, saw him, he glid a bit next to me while I was going to the store. Got them a bag full of balls, put it all out there on a field and stayed and watched.
I live in the outskirts of the city, so not too urban, but also not too unurban… There’s places within like 5km I know there’s ravens. But usually they’re not here.
Muninn saw me going to the store, glid aside me, I got them a bag… Oh wait I wrote that earlier.
Anyway that’s when I saw this
The scale isn’t evident from this photo, sorry. But ravens are huge compared to hooded crows which are like twice the size of magpies. Ravens are like 80cm from beak to tail. So many while I was in the army. Gorgeous corvids.
LePoisson@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
That’s really cool, you have your own little army of familiars following you around. Sounds like you need to be careful with the possible feeding bans. Hopefully you don’t catch any trouble.
All I’ve heard about magpies is they’re assholes though!
Dasus@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Well I’d say few friends then whole lot of trolls. Some other birds have begun taking notice, but I’m not going to feed the seagulls. (Although they’re not as dumb as they look and can live several decades.)
Basically there was a nesting pair or crows on top of a building I lived next to, and I lived on the sixth floor. So I began to mimic their head movements, to line myself with the position of their beak. Mirroring, you know.
Then it took a while and I got them to come get some opportunistic foods from the windowsill and now they just remember me. They had a nestling at one point, definitely. There were three, imo.
Magpies there’s loads can’t keep track. One fat one though, he was a proper fatty boom batty one spring when I’d been leaving out basically whole bags of meatballs, like 400g a bit shy of a pound. I was sort of proud, he/she looked pretty healthy, despite the harsh winter.
I have the images in my old phone I see if I’ll care enough to post some.
Idk if magpies are assholes, per se. Definitely eager, I would say. The crows are always having trouble with them. I have trouble not imagining it as WWII bombers (the crows) getting harassed by multiple smaller bogies (the magpies).