Some birds aren’t that scared of people and will hang out near the house. Like this cute little maya or Eurasian Tree Sparrow.
And then there are crows. I confess that I used to sit around thinking of schemes to get rid of the crows. Crows have a bad reputation. They eat other birds. They steal eggs from nests. Other birds mob them and try to drive them away. They are associated with witches and bad omens.
They are also very intelligent birds. They are part of the corvid family. There are studies that show corvids using all kinds of tools, remembering the faces of researchers at a university and then attacking them when they saw them in the campus, and solving complicated problems such as dropping pebbles into a container of water so they can get a sip of water just like the Aesop’s fable!
Now that I’m not scared of them or trying to drive them away, I can just watch them.
There’s a murder of crows that hangs out at the horse house.
What would happen if Barkley entered the horse paddock? Would they attack Barkley?
Ha! Barkley didn’t even feel threatened.
They are no match for Barkley and just leave him to do his thing in the paddock.
I thought it was so nifty when I saw a crow drinking from the horses’ water trough. I ran back to the house so I could take a photo.
And then the other day I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was the crow really standing ON Takoy’s back?
Yes, he was! And Takoy wasn’t bothered at all!
The crow stayed there for a long time. What was going on? Was he going to groom Takoy? Get a bug from Takoy’s back like those Oxpeckers and Rhinoceros in Africa? Walk behind Takoy waiting for him to unearth bugs from the grass like a Cattle Egret and carabao? Grab some feed from Takoy’s bucket? I didn’t see anything like that, the crow just flew away. But who knows what I’ll see next time!
Tonji and Sylvia's Wildlife Refuge 