American Crows... (1 Viewer)

I live on the 2nd floor of a 300 unit apartment complex... behind WalMart. No big trees. Are American Crows a good thing to encourage to come to my 8x10 balcony? I see them everywhere. I’ve read they are incredibly smart and you can train them to come to dinner with a bell. I've set out peanuts, dog food and big bowl of water - day 1 and no takers...

ps - if this is the wrong place for this - please redirect me, thank you!

On behalf of staff and moderators a warm welcome to Birdforum. :t:

I have moved your thread to the appropriate subforum and subscribed you to the thread. This will enable you to keep tabs on it as you will receive emails notifying you of any replies.

OP, I'm curious how you made out with the corvids.

For some reason, I only noticed your post just now. If you're in an apartment as you describe, I don't see why you'd regret attracting crows. I'm quite a fan of them myself, and their cousins the ravens too. They're very wary following many years of persecution though, and it's hard to get as close to them as to some other species, specifically to get them to come to feeders (unless, I assume, you don't want them around, whereupon they no doubt pile in and take over). As with any bird, it'll probably take (or have taken) quite a while to get them to find and accept your feeding setup, so patience is the keyword. I've had my present feeder setup for about 2.5 years now and crows come in occasionally, to check shiny objects I think, but I don't really have anything to offer them and I know from other setups that they tend to scare off smaller birds.

If you didn't see it, take a look at an item I posted from the BBC on this very forum, 'the girl who gets gifts from the crows.' Crows are definitely intelligent and little understood animals.