Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] crows and fruit

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Dianne Stephany" <iluvdanc@rochester.rr.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] crows and fruit
  • Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:51:34 -0400

Title: My VistaPrint Electronic Business Card
I find with my family of crows that it depends on how hungry they are what they eat or try to eat.
 
Last year during the drought they went after everything- unripe and ripe cherries, peaches, apples, pears, plums, raspberries and blackberries, even red currants, and here nothing eats the red currants except the Jap beetles.   This year they took a few peaches and some twenty ounce apples, but nothing else. 

I also think it depends on how huingry and how young they are. The young ones seem to try everything once to learn what is edible and not edible.  I had a "baby " - still being  fed by the parents- pluck a ripe cherry tomato off the plant and try to eat it, but dropped it as if it tasted bad.   The single males tend be the hungriest and take the fruit to make up for the lack of other things in the diet.  So, if you have a large flock, the flock can cover more area looking for food and they will share and store it away for lean times. The single males have more difficulty finding food (they often cover the same area that the flock has already been over) and will eat things like unripe, green and hard fruit because they are hungry.  
 
At least this has been my observations over 8 yrs of watching the birds, especially the crows.
 
Oh and Bluejays are especially damaging to fruit- they will drill it like a woodpecker drills wood- leaving a huge gaping deep wound in the fruit. I once blamed the crows  for it, but caught a bluejay in the act drilling an unripe apple.
 
Dianne Stephany, zone 5, Rochester NY. where the crow family had two babies this year- a boy and a girl, IMHO, by their different  sounds and behaviors.  One had a very distinctive but unusual caw for about a month. It was fun  hearing the family try to teach her the "proper" caw.
 
 


  • [NAFEX] crows and fruit, Dianne Stephany, 09/14/2008

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page