We have a group of squirrels that sound as if they like to run races on our roof top. I empathize because I love the squirrels but it's a conditional love and I love my roof more.

We have parrots in So. CA. In the fall, they group up in large flocks of 100 or so and fly around the area, each and every one squawking as they go. Probably arguing about something.

Parrots would be so cool!

but in so ca? I suppose enough could have escaped over the years....not native for sure...saw a lot of things growing up in Hollywood. but parrots wasn't one of them, lol....

forgot to add we used to have crows all the time until one got killed by west nile virus (a mosquito bite) and they left to never return...weird for sure...

Susan, there are a couple of theories as to how the parrots got here. They sure can be loud, when in flocks.

Our crows disappeared for a while (West Nile?), but they are back now, fewer though. For a while we had a peacock in the neighborhood, but he disappeared too. Maybe coyote got him or he went back to wherever he came from.

Schoolhouse, everyone in the neighborhood must be enjoying your mailbox. So beautiful! I love decorating for fall but haven't done much this year.

Socks, our daughter moved to a house in west Los Angeles 8 years ago. Their first weekend there, she called to complain that they could not sleep in on a weekend morning because of the ruckus raised by a flock of parrots that flew to the large tree in their neighbor's yard every morning. I have seen wild pet birds in the harbor by our house--parrots, budgies, and others. It amazes me that they can adapt so well.

I've read that little Monk parakeets (aka: Quaker parrots) have naturalized in very surprising locations such as Connecticut, New York, and Chicago!

ugh, we never had a problem with crows until an elderly neighbour died. He had nut trees in his front yard and after he passed, no one was collecting up the nuts anymore and the crows discovered a good food source. So they stayed and started collecting the nuts and bringing them over to our house (I'm sure they were doing it to other neighbours too) and banging them on the roof, gutters, chimney etc to crack the shells open. really annoying.

Now, almost 2 years later they have discovered our back yard birdbath. The smaller birds are no longer using it lately, the crows keep bringing bits of bread and fries to dunk in the water, hanging around and squawking and talking among themselves. The other day they brought some parts of another bird, I think it may have been parts of a baby dove they were dunking in the birdbath. I'm so over it.

I used to like crows until a friend (who grew up on the family farm) told me that when lambs or sheep were down for whatever reason, the crows would peck out their eyes. I know it sounds like an urban legend or something, but she was dead serious and a real farm person so I totally believe it. I hate the annoying cawing they do as well as their other habits. crows be gone! I want my peace back and the little birds to be able to use the birdbath again, but they all seems to be scared to now.

whenever I see them in my fenced yard I go out and scare them off but they keep coming back. wish they would go away and not come back. I've also noticed none of the other birds seem to like them, I've seen different types of birds chasing them and I suspect it may be so the crows don't raid their nests and steal eggs or babies. After finding bird parts in the bird bath, I don't blame them.

I used to have a terrible crow problem. They pulled at and ate the gasket around my skylight and they pecked the skylight itself into all kinds of spider cracks. After I had a new roof and skylight put on, they went away for the most part. There's a flock or two of ravens who are also escaped pets that roam around SoCal. And freeway chickens. (Decades ago, some fell off a truck, and the flock keeps going.)

What's a freeway chicken? You mean wild chickens??? That's so funny.

Yes, Sheila. I can imagine your daughter's experience. If they group in a nearby tree, the racket is terrible. I guess the parrots find enough to eat all year along because of the climate in CA: usually there are some kind of fruit or berries available.

Yep. SoCal is a veritable smorgasbord for birds. :) It's not tropical, and probably too cold for parrots in the Winter, even in the warmest parts, but there are plenty of warm places they can shelter. Steam grates, overpasses, dense brush, etc.

Just Google "Freeway Chickens" and you'll find plenty of articles about them. They're feral (domesticated chickens living on their own) rather than wild, but you can often see them out there pecking and doing their chickie things.

I love the idea of parrots around the house. That would be so cool.I love crows and wish I could find an abandoned baby to raise. They are super smart and as intelligent as parrots ,if not more so, and make wonderful pets. One of our presidents kids had one flying around the white house. LOL about the freeway chickens . They are free and escaped the slaughter house

Crows invaded our neighborhood 15 years ago. We used to have lots of doves, and 20 or more would line up along the top rail of our back fence. They are all gone now thanks to the crows.

We seem to have a number of crows around here too, I don't like the way they raid the robins and blue jays nests - of both eggs and chicks. My neighbor was constantly cleaning her bird bath from the food they would leave in it. Someone close must be feeding them, I can't imagine why. I find rolls, whole slices of bread in the yard where they've dropped things, and once a few years ago I was sitting outside reading and heard a thud behind me....a pork chop. Seriously, an entire leftover cooked pork chop.

We had 4' skylights, sloping, at our former house and I may have told this before, but I watched a crow with a shiny brass screw at the top of the skylight one day, dropping the screw and watching it roll down. Then it would go to the bottom and pick it up, return to the top and drop it again. Over and over, the screw held its interest for a very long time.

The Dallas area has large flocks of Monk Parakeets. They are a pretty green color. They have made huge nest colonies in high power line towers. It's amazing to see the huge nests. If you Google Dallas Monk Parakeets there's lots of pictures.

Monk Parakeets of DFW

Monk Parakeets

A couple of years ago, on another forum, someone asked very seriously how to attract crows. I suggested that they take the lid off their garbage can. That's all.

ROTFL!!

We are seriously thinking of moving because our neighbor, uphill
cross the creek, feed the crows. The crows show up before day break on our roof
screaming to be fed. She feeds them a couple of loafs of while bread from he
upper deck that’s about 60 ft. from our bedroom window. There are 50 to 75 crows
that show up daily. After she feeds them all but 3 or 4 leave they stay to keep
watch. They scream at each other all day waiting for her to come out. When she
comes out again they signal the rest and they all come back then about dinner
time they all come back again for the leftovers and garbage she throws out for
them. They finally all leave just after dark.

It’s miserable no matter where we are in our house you can
hear them constantly screaming. We gave up using our patio the bird crap in
everywhere. Our cars get hit every time they are out of the garage. We can’t
keep our windows or the sides of the house clean and now with the water
restriction we can’t clean it up. I can’t let my GGS play outside its just to
dirty. The bird crap is bad enough but we get all the garbage dropped
everywhere. And to top it off the crows are pecking holes on the ridge of our very
expensive new roof. We have had it fixed
twice in the last 18 months.

We have tried to talk to them it didn’t help much. She did say
she would stop feeding the crows if we turned off our motion security light by
the creek that evidently shines in her bedroom window. We turned off the light
and she just fed the crows from the other side of her house so nothing changed.
Needless to say the light went back on after a couple of months. I wanted to
add more lights but DH wouldn’t do it.

We had the forest service guy out and were told that he couldn’t
do anything. We talked to an attorney and were told we could sue but it would
probably be thrown out because the only damages we really had was the roof
damage and our roofing guy didn’t charge us to fix it.

We are retired and I would love to sleep past 4:30 we know
we can’t sale because we would have to disclose the issue so we are thinking about
buying another house out of state and will be spending summers there and maybe winter
here when we can keep the windows closed and have a little peace and quiet.

Hi partsst,

Looks like your neighbours are nothing to crow about!

Too bad to have to suffer defecation desecration!

What would happen were you to get a kid's toy air rifle and use it to shoot near the birds, when they were on or near your house ... or even hit them, when facing away from you, so as not to put their eyes at risk, if you found that it would not harm them?

o j

I hate crows. They are loud and eat other birds. I had the cutest hatch of quail and crows ate them all. One of the few good things about the drought is the absence of crows and coyotes.

I can understand how annoying and troublesome these behaviors are (and your situation, partst, is particularly bad), but I like crows. They are very noisy, messy, and persistent, but they are amazingly intelligent, able to use not only tools but also metatools. They can recognize specific people out of context, and they can remember if the person is a friend or foe. They have an extensive language, and the calls vary regionally. The young stay with the parents, learning, for a long time. The older siblings often help care for the young. Highly social, crows exhibit other altruistic behaviors, warning each other about danger and notifying each other about food. Sound like any other bipedal species you know?

I like crows in my yard because they chase away the hawks that prey on the squirrels and rabbits.

If you're interested in crows or want advice about how to deal with crow problems, here is info from Dr. Kevin McGowan, a corvidologist at Cornell. Interestingly, he talks about crows eating nestlings, and he says that crows are not implicated in loss of songbird populations.

Crow FAQ

Around the fields in Louisiana to keep the birds away they use a sound cannon. It detects the movement of flocks and discharges a sound that scares them off. It is not alarmingly loud but does work. You might look into that as an option.

That is extremely rude behavior on her part. No way to treat your neighbors. Are there enough of you around her to get a petition together to get some legal action from the local law enforcement?

There's some roof options here

Bird deterrent

Sound cannon bird repellant

One thing that helped immeasurably with the convocation on my roof was getting my chimney treated with "tanglefoot", something the chimneysweep did. It coats the grid or whatever that is up there and never hardens. It doesn't harm the birds at all. They just don't like standing on it.

"but they are amazingly intelligent, able to use not only tools but also
metatools. They can recognize specific people out of context, and they
can remember if the person is a friend or foe."

yes they are intelligent and that is why they are such a problem IMO, they are incredibly adaptable, they are very observant and great scavengers and will eat almost anything and that's why they flourish around humans. They don't have to work hard for their food like other birds since they find easy food sources from scavenging and stick around. Being intelligent doesn't make them any less destructive or annoying though.I would much rather have the range of smaller birds I spent so long attracting to my garden than loud and obnoxious crows that drive the other birds away.

Joyfulguy,

All my DH has to do is go outside and point his finger and
they fly away for a few minutes but come right back. We live in a very small
town in the mountains I figure about a third of the people feed the crows, well
all the wild life, and the rest of us suffer from it. If we killed a crow she
would turn us in and according to the forest service guy they are protected
species. Why is beyond me!

I know how smart they are and believe me we know they don’t like
us at all. They don’t like anything that interferes with them getting fed. They
know when she is gone for the day or out of town they don’t come around at all.
She feeds everything the raccoons and skunks got so bad around the house that
we hired a guy to trap them. He took them up river and let them go and we put ammonia
soaked rags down in between the rocks along their side of the creek. The rocks
are the size of small cars so they had plenty of places to nest.

The only reason we have the motion light outside the bedroom
window is a couple of years ago a mountain lion was killing a deer down in the
creek and I thought it was coming in the window so at least now we can see what’s
going on if something is out there. But now that I know it annoys her I would
leave it on all night if DH would agree.

We have tried everything we even bought a CD guaranteed to
keep the crows away. It was really funny it sounded like we lived in the Amazon
forest and didn’t bother the crows at all. I really wouldn’t want to kill them I
just want them to leave. What's funny about this neighbor is she will stand on
her deck and screams for the dog down by the river a few streets away to shut up. She is just
crazy we tell everyone we live in the movie “The Birds” and just hope one day
she comes out empty handed and the attack her.

I told my daughter that when she gets a phone call to come
bail me out she will know I snapped and went out with a 12 gauge at daybreak
and was shooting my own roof. She didn’t understand until she spent a few days
here then she ask how much I figure she would need to get me out of jail I just
told her to leave me in for a couple of days and maybe I could get some sleep.