Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire World's smartest animal - a bird? Seriously...

Crows know the effective range of rifles. When I was a kid they stayed out of range of my .177 air rifle, really had to work at wacking one. One day I got a Remington Nylon 66 semi-auto, bagged 14 crows the first day. After that it was about the same as with the air rifle.

And they can fly, also. That's what really bugs me!

I know they mate for life... I have shot one crow, and it's mate"cried & cawed" for the next half hour bringing several more crows within range...They are very social animals, and one's alarm/ distress call can bring in large groups of crows.(uesful if hunting). they can see color, so hunter's orange is a dead give away for hunters... Do not use orange, and they can not pick you out so well.

My grandfather once shot aflying crow out of the air & it hit the ground wounded. He simply said "watch this", and proceeded to pick up the bird, fold his wings behind it so that he could grasp both in his left hand, and held the shotgun in his right hand... he then "shook" the bird and got him stirred up so that it started frantically repeating a series of high pitched distress calls... within minutes, over a dozen crows were flying overhead.... We shot another 4 birds, before the fist one died.

I have seen Crows attack buzzards, hawks, falcons, and larger birds of prey larger than themselves like great horned Owls , yet run just the same from much smaller birds like Mocking birds & Blue jays...

I would not place their intellignece levels above [bleep], but agree their eyesight is exceptional, and their peanut sized brain is about the same size as a full grown alligator's... lb per lb, it serves them better.

I would lay odds that the smartest animal would be something like TLee's cat. I am sure it has an easy life.

The mirror experiment worked with Crows, Ravens and Magpies - not Parrots, Macaws or Cockatoos.

OK, that makes sense.

In addition to being able to recognize individuals, I saw something on them once showing them to hold grudges. The researchers did something to aggravate one or two of them, from then on whenever that individual appeared, the crows would display more threatening behavior.
Glad pigeons don't do that or my vehicles would never be the same....

Oh, and I've been told you have to clip their tongue if you want them to be able to 'talk', I guess it's too long for them to mimic the words and sounds. Not sure how reliable that is though.

I've been feeding the Stellar Jays whole peanuts today. They will bury them a little and then put a couple leaves on top of them..that's pretty smart if you ask me.