It has been said that crows are one of the most intelligent birds in nature and from a recent observation of them in my yard, I will whole heartily agree.
Last week, I came home and found dozens and dozens of crows in my yard and neighborhood.
It’s not an uncommon thing for me to see a lot of crows around the house so I thought nothing of it.
But as I was getting out of the car, I heard what sounded like a cracking noise, over and over again so I stopped what I was doing to see if I could find its source.
I found it alright, and I was amazed at what I learned about crows at that very instance.
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From what I was hearing, the crows were foraging the neighborhood for nuts, mainly walnut and chestnuts as it were.
And since crows aren’t exactly built to be opening large, hard nuts with their beaks, these ingenious birds came up with another plan to get into the nuts bounty.
The crows would crack the large nuts by flying high up in the air and dropping the nuts on the asphalt road.
That’s what the sound I was hearing, walnuts and chestnuts hitting the roadway and cracking open.
As soon as the nut hit the pavement, crows would swoop in from all over to fight over the meal that lay before them.
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I had never seen this behavior before but it was certainly an eye-opener when I saw what was going on right in my own yard and street.
It definitely explains why all week long I was seeing empty hulls in the street and no walnut or chestnut tree in the area.
I now have a great appreciation for crows and how intelligent they are from what I learned in my own front yard.
It just goes to show you can learn about birds and do a little impromptu bird watching as well anywhere and at any time if you keep your eyes open and watch what nature has to offer.
In addition to the regular visits by dozens of crows, our yard also has an active coopers hawk nest that I am hoping gets used again this year.
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If so, that will be something I will look forward to blogging about in the future.
I apologize for the soft images on this post, it was a very cloudy day and there just wasn’t enough light for the camera to run as fast as I would have liked so the images came out a bit soft.
But since these crows have never before let me get even low-quality images, always flying off when I tried to capture a couple of images in the past, I will take what I can get for now.
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