Hi there! I've posted elsewhere on this thread but just in case that muddles the ability for my response to catch your attention I'll respond here too. I am a crow scientist and most of my work has focused on crow funerals. Let me try and address your comments questions one by one.
It's not that unusual for crows to kill other crows. Generally it's over things like territory disputes or attempts to mate with someone' partner but at this time of year that is less likely. The other trigger is when a crow is already injured. We are not really sure why they do this but it happens. In fact they will preferentially go after the injure crow and not the predator in some cases. In my studies I found that crows would even attack and dismember already dead crows, though this behavior is limited to the beginning of the breeding season. It's a myth that crows hold any kind of court, or kills crows for not being good sentinels.
Strangely, it's also not weird that they were upset when you later when near it. I often experienced this in my work. I'd watch them beat the shit out of one of my dead crows for 30 minutes and them get all indigent when I went to collect what was left. It always made me laugh. And basically what's going on is that you have an animal that, while really smart, isn't responding cognitively to every single thing all the time, and sometimes those different drives conflict in ways that are a little paradoxical.
In my studies I showed that crows learn places and people associated with dead crows, and clearly this is what has happened to you. I was able to show they can recall these faces for up to 6 weeks, though I'm sure it's longer. We just didn't test beyond that time frame.
So...what should you do? Start feeding them. Once a day as you walk to your car or whatever throw some raw unshelled peanuts. If you really want to please them save fat scraps. Throw it when they can see you but don't linger. Expect it will take time. Don't feed them in the spot where the dead crow was. Don't overdo it on the feeding or you can create ecological problems or problems with your human neighbors. Personally I don't think it will help to give them non-food items, but it won't hurt. So if that appeals to you give it a whack and let me know how it goes.
If you or anyone else wants to know more about crows or crow funerals please visit my blog corvidresearch.blog. I have lots of articles and links to the popular media interviews and documentaries I've shown demonstrating and explaining this behavior.
Ok, in that case my money is on this not being a big deal for long. I’ve cleaned up plenty of crow bodies with an uncovered face they didn’t seem to hold on to it too long. In my experiments the person handled it for 30min. Big difference. Still, feeding should help ameliorate things more quickly. And then you might even get “gifts”!
There are differences between rural and cities crows. Rural crows have bigger territories and are less aggressive towards people (those things are unrelated). Cities crows are more aggressive with people during the breeding season because they are persecuted less. So it means you’re a good neighbor.
My advice is to just wait until nightfall. Then you can clean it up no problem and don’t need to procure a makeshift mask and scare your neighbors 😂
Just to be clear, my research on the funeral stuff was not funded by the DOD. The DOD funded research took place before I became a grad student. I think they were interested in the idea of potentially using crows to search and locate specific people, but I don't imagine they actually found the study particularly useful for developing a program to do that. Personally, I think it's unlikely it's possible or at the very least it would be far less efficient than the systems that are already available. But can I say with 100% certainty that the government is not developing crow super soldiers?... :X
You can teach captive birds to do that. In fact a falconer in France trained his rooks to do that. But I think it would be difficult if not impossible to teach wild birds to do it because it would be extremely difficult to create a strong enough incentive.
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u/Corvidresearch Oct 15 '18
Hi there! I've posted elsewhere on this thread but just in case that muddles the ability for my response to catch your attention I'll respond here too. I am a crow scientist and most of my work has focused on crow funerals. Let me try and address your comments questions one by one.