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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

Huh; you could write an article for one of the homesteading magazines with 
this idea.  People have been complaining of crows forever.  I read about a 
trap that a cattleman came up with to rid his cattles of horseflies; it was 
sort of simiar to your theory. ..........bobford


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--- On Sat, 11/29/08, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:


> 
> > >I have heard of placing pieces of black hose-pipe
> (to look like snakes);  is this what you had in mind? 
> 
> No, noting of the sort. Before adopting the thread method,I used to shoot  
> several crows during the winter and put them in the freezer.  Then at the  
> critical time I'd hang one up in the corn field (several if there was a big 
> field of several plots) and the crows avoid an area that smells of dead 
> crow.  It' s  maginally effective.
> 
> Someone described to me a crow trap based on the principle that a crow need 
> a certain amount of space above it to take off.  It's a sort of pup-tent 
> shaped affair 6' tall with an opening 1' wide and as along as the trap on 
> the top and covered with rusted poultry wire elsewhere.  The idea
is that the crow drops in to get the corn and can't get airborne to get out.
> 
> The crows would eat the corn right up to the edge of the trap, but NONE of 
> it in the trap.  No variation or disguising of the affair
> would tempt them to go in.  There is a built in savvy in a crow to avoid 
> places itcan't get out of.
> 
> So the idea is this.  The crow can't actually see theblack thread but due 
> to air passing over the thread, it's vibration, or just
> mysticism (and little odds which), the crow perceives it as a trap.  The 
> first year I put up stakes 3' high every 10' or so in the corn filed and 
> strung the string random among them.  It works but you can't hoe the young 
> corn.  After seasons of  experimentation, I find that corn rows 4' apart 
> need only one stake at each end of the row and one thread about 30" high 
> and the crows will in no wise go into the corn 
> field.  You can even put corn on the ground between rows and they won't go  
> there.
> 
> These past two years I've had to thin the corn rather than replant it.
> 
> 
> James