Found you all while looking for bird scarers. I love the look and sound of crows,or ravens as we know them here in tas.They clean up the road kill and it is said that they rarely get hit by cars.Must be smart!Wasnt there a rhyme that went"one for sorrow two for joy three for a girl four
for a boy".I think that it was applied to birds in flight.I have a visiting one I call Joe Crow,he sits up in the tree at the back of my place. he seems to keep the dreaded blackbirds away.Black birds are my target nuisance bird.People dont seem to have cats as much anymore and the numbers of starlings and blackbirds are greater.I wouldbe interested in learning the rest of the rhyme if someone would be kind enough to send it . Best advice ,know your enemy.

Put up a sign in crow-language with posted visiting hours? Hey, you only said "legal and humane". You never said it had to be effective...*grin*

well what i did was when i heard them calling or chorteling i would go out into yard and yell n scream, wave arms frantically and throw things like clods of dirt;thongs;shoes stone can cause neighbour problems. now if your neighbours are understanding and the green cart with the folk in white jackets doesn't cart you off then the above worked very well for me.

of course if you end up in a motel with rubber rooms i am in no way responsible ok?

lol

rapid fire len on firefox

mail len

lens garden page

Hi Vincenti,
The only way of detering crows is to hang a dead carcass of a crow from the highest point near or on your property.
This also leads to another problem, where does one obtain a fresh crow carcass? You may have to enlist the help of an out of town friend, that may have a spare crow that he has not any further use. The only other way is with a 12 guage or a 410 guage, both of which you will need a licence and a good reason to use. You could always move but I think you will find that most other people have the same problem as you. The crow is the smartest bird, he has worked out that the humans have left all there excees rubbish and food scrapes, compost (that crows and other vermin love)out and even has a home delivery/ pick-up service (in my case today Thursday) that comes around each week and provides a smorgasboard of loverly leftovers for the crows. In our local area they just wait for the garbo and follow the trucks and free food and on the weeekends they raid all the other birds nests and eat the young or find a bit of fresh road kill, possums etc, The other option is to trap the crow and teach them to talk as they are fast learners and he could be a useful conversational piece around your home. An old friend of mine used his trusty 410 and winged a crow, so he felt sorry for him took him home and kept him as a pet for 15 years. The crow ended up learing how to talk and whistled up the dogs each morning and ended up being a help around the farm instead of a pest. Many people who visited could not beleive how smart this crow was, even me. Good luck. Peter r

The ways to dispose or chase crows is almost as varied as disposing cane toads. LOL
Yes,They are really smart Peter.
They have taught themselves how to eat cane toads by flipping them over on their back and eat from the undersides so that they don't get the poison, evolution in the making.
Our dam banks have lots of EX Cane toads round the rim.

BUT, there is nothing worse than listening to a crow karking [ is that the word or is it quarking] outside the window.

Marion

It's a tradition in Tassie to hang a dead one in a visible place. Most farmers have them hanging around - don't know if it works - we have more problems with seagulls. Folklore - crows are said to be messengers from the darker and hot regions to remind you of your sins and call you to account. Be good. Cosmic

We had a problem at a Primary school in Perth where I worked. We made sure all the bins had lids and were properly closed after recess and lunch, sent kids around on yard duty picking up scraps etc and within a fornight the crows became a rarity... No food source, they don't bother coming round.

Maybe check your local area see if there is anything around that they keep coming for (maybe they have access to a neighbours bin or something)?

Angelee

Well, I must be the odd one out, because I actually love the sound the crows make....yes, even early in the morning!! We have them here and they do a wonderful job cleaning up bits of food or dead birds, possums etc on the road. Am I just weird??
Cheers,
Dee.

The Perth crows have a particularly annoying caw. Our next-door-neighbour used to throw out scraps for the birds, and all that did was attract the crows. We solved the problem by moving ;-) Over here we have crows, but they have a very pleasant caw, so deejaus is not weird, and neither is vincentj!
Robyn

Robyn and Dee, maybe it also depends on how many crows that hang around. A few isn't too bad but when you get lots the sound can be very annoying.

Vincent, have you tried bird scarers like large rubber snakes and hawk kites? I don't know how well they would work on the intelligent crow though. What about a scarecrow with a toy rifle? I've often heard about crows disappearing when you walk out with a gun.

I don't have any cures either. A former neighbour used to come out doing a slow and loud hand-clap that used to disperse them briefly but the ones round here now are mainly up in the top of the trees so things like rubber snakes wouldn't deter them, only give my mother heart-failure.
I did see something funny this afternoon though a crow walking in stately manner along the grass verge (council had just mowed) with a little willy-wagtail attacking it. It was like a flea on an elephant, the crow took absolutely no notice.
I think I told this story before, we had a family of them hanging round the neighbourhood including one called "Hoppy" with a damaged leg. They used to bring pine cones down from the yard a couple of doors away and dunk them in the bird-baths. the water made the cones open for them to get at the seed or insects or whatever. Then they used to leave them in the garden bed- I never minded but once among the pile I found a silver plastic one they had found - obviously a christmas decoration.
Proper bird-scarers can probably get access to recorded tapes of eagles of similar that might frighten them off for a while.

i forgot to add in when i run around i also make a loud clap with my ahnds make it sound like a gun retort, they don't like that.

if you use scarers of any sort make sure you move them around pretty much daily or the crow will work it out. crows are fairly smart if that is the right term for a bird? so a static scarecrow type thing may not work well at all there would need to be some action in the scarer to make it appear more life like.

the trick in why it sworked for me was you had to keep a listen out for their different languages and as soon as you detect they are coming near go out and take the action, they know then that you are for real.

out here in rural it was easy to shoosh them away as they don't have that closer human contact.

len

Yep I reckon the loud hand clap is the best it gets rid of our noisy crows, also works on lots of other birds.
Waving a broom in the air in another one thats works it certainly keeps my hubby busy at times..MM.

it may be time to leave the crows alone - they apparently have learnt how to eat cane toads without being poisoned - they flip them over and eat the belly and guts and leave the poison glands alone.

good onem - we need more crows in Qld if they are going to eat cane toads ;-)

Just a note here from a birds eye view from a garden _worm , an observation on peoples crow sounds in the messages received here, these sounds vary from ...... caws, chorteling, calling ,karking, crow talk, and surprisingly crows reported whistling, huuum ....! Maybe we could add a "Arr" or a "Arrk" Or perhapps a whole new forum topic on this very subject.

Cockatoos are the big problem here in Rockhampton, they look at one with one eye I have tried many contraptions to ward of cockies but all have failed.

So which is smarter, a cockatoo or a crow ? ....... huum !

The yaping dog next door makes more noise than anything else .

bye from garden_worm

g'day garden_worm,

yeh i had that problem when we lived in rocky, i found they didn't like the jet of water from the garden hose directed at them took a little time but they went for good, again you must get to them as soon as you know they are there.

len

Deejaus I aggree,their sound is rather soothing,lets me know nature is alive and well.If they can kill toads as MM says,ripper,them I hate,give me a large Black Snake in the attic any day than toads,greencroc.

>we need more crows in Qld if they are going to eat cane toads

It's just a shame they don't distinguish between a cane toad and a lizard or other small bird.

Years ago, many years ago , we used to catch crows and get paid 2 shillings a head by the town council We earnewd good pocket money

Garden_worm

Over the past few days, I have been much consoled by the sight of our crows being dive-bombed by a vastly smaller Honeyeater. Hasn't caused the crows to move away, tho.

yes pam,

would be good if the crows could be satisfied with just the toads, saw a pair coax a young lorrikeet away from its parents once you can guess the results! they can do that they have this low talk voice seems to lull other birds into false security.

the shame is that the crow will not be our rescuer from the dreaded frog + everything eating cane toad they just don't eat enough of them and then usually ones that are already dead.

dunno when i went to school we where taught that the crow was introduced by the first settlers so they where considered ferel pets, now they say they are native because they have been here long enough to develop their own gene pool, so that same holds with the sacred egyption ibis now known as australian white ibis. so what's next house sparrows, starlings & ferel pigeons all declared protected species??

sounds like we are engineering a new range of wildlife.

len

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.

Now you know!!
Dee.

Dee......I thought we used to say that when we sneezed.

Cathy

Len, funny you should say that. I don't know why but it reminded me of a couple of stories I have heard about the South West of WA...

Apparently there are some large black cats loose in the forests down there. They think maybe they're Pumas. Of course it's mostly urban legend but my Brother in law who works on Vineyards in the area swears he heard them roaring a few nights in a row and farmers have reported they've found young cattle with their heads almost severed. Then there are the claw marks in the trees. Some of these stories go back 15 years I believe and I don't think anyone can explain where they came from.

I have heard a theory that they escaped from the circus when their trailer came open in a car accident... but I think it's just a theory...

Then there is the mystereous little tassie tiger like animal that has been seen almost a dozen times (including by me once) around Yalgorup National Park. Funny looking thing it is, the size and shape of a small/medium dog, wirey looking and with a cat like face. Kind of half way between a cat and a fox, with stripes of course! Weird little animal.

i wonder if they'll be classed as native species and protected also?? Interesting!

Ange

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.

never heard this one before, must be a rhyme from south of the QLD boarder

It's nest building time for crows here in Central Queensland
garden_worm

what we did was to feed the crows for a few weeks - they get used to coming into your yard and then we started letting nugget - our bird hunting staffy cross - out to chase them. They are very intelligent birds and also territorial - they haven't been around for 18 months or so.

I adore crows and ravens a like. I read once that crows in Japan have adapted to urbanisation well. At red lights, they fly down and place nuts under the wheel of a car. They then wait until the light turns green and the cars are gone, before flying down to pick up the kernal from the cracked nut! At my school, we have resident crows everywhere, and they do a good job of cleaning up our mess after recess and lunch. They're big birds and many a time, I've dozed off in biology watching the crows caw and carry-on on top of the next building!

Corey

We recently had a pack of crows move into the big gum tree behind us. They became so loud they drove me mad and you could never get a Saturday morning sleep in!

We eventually drove them off using a combination of owl ornaments (apparently crows hate owls) and played a CD called Crow Away which seems to emit a sound that is irritating to the crows.

Problem solved!

Here is a link that might be useful: Crow Away CD

Stone the Crows!!!

chas

The main factor in getting rid of crows is to annoy them enough that they can't be bothered to hang around. How does one annoy them? Throw gumnuts (honky nuts) at them as soon as you hear them, no matter what time of the day or night. Run out and start pelting them with the nuts. After a week the crows won't bother returning. It's hard work for a week but worth it in the end!

We had a serious crow issue until we found Crow be Gone CD & MP3. Without any doubt we were very pleased along with our neighbors to its effectiveness of removing all our crowing problems. It was so nice to have our song birds return to the area after the removal of the crows. They also include a money back guarantee. Now that's a business I can trust.