17 November 2020
When thousands of crows come to town for the winter what do they find to eat?
Every morning they wake up in the city and spread out during the day to find food near and far. Some travel 10-20 miles to glean from fields and landfills. Others raid dumpsters, prowl parking lots, or poke holes in garbage bags waiting for neighborhood collection.
Up to 65% of an urban crow’s diet is made up of human food and we sure make a lot of it available. Nothing is faster than fast food, especially fries.
Some crows like to dunk their fries.
video from @rattyvonratkins24 on YouTube
They are not daunted by paper bags. In this video by Quiscalus a flock of fish crows fights over a bag of fries until the herring gulls take over. I’ve seen this happen in Virginia Beach.
video from DanOBirds on YouTube
There’s even a 12-foot statue honoring their preference. Crow With Fries by Peter Reiquam was installed in Auburn, Washington on 31 May 2019. (See more at Reiquam’s website.)
Junk food raises crows’ cholesterol but doesn’t seem to have an adverse health effect, at least during the two years of this study.
Love those fries!
(screenshot from YouTube video, statue photo from Reddit, videos embedded from YouTube. Click on the captions to see the originals)
Another wonderful story. Thanks for raising our spirits again. Would love to see that sculpture! Its eyes light up!
Crows know what the double arches mean on a bag lol
Boy! It doesn’t take but a split second for those gulls to clean up, does it! This was great, Kate. Thanks. Have a wonderful day!
There were at least a hundred crows staging in Homewood Cemetery yesterday (11/16) in the late afternoon—it was awesome to watch their numbers grow as time went on. These birds were in the canopy of an oak tree—i was able to get a couple of photos of them eating acorns—so they had a healthier diet, at least yesterday!
I used to work with a guy that would share his lunch with the birds out in the parking lot. The crows were his favorite. He was so excited about them it rubbed off on me, & I started to feed them when I would take lunch an hour after him.
Fries were a favorite, that’s for sure. It was cool to see them eat them whole, one end sucked in their beak, right down their gullet.
I started seeing what was left over in the break room, & would take leftovers out to the crows. Donuts were a favorite, they could barely take off with a whole jelly filled. The craziest I ever saw them was when I had leftover sushi. They LOVED that!!
They wanted no parts of grapes, apples, oranges, carrots, or any other fruits & vegetables. They never took a bite of those.
My coworker quit, & I started spending most of my days out on the road, so the feeding stopped. I do put food out for them now & again, but never see my crow friends.
Scott, hilarious they didn’t like the healthy stuff. Good story, thanks for sharing. I love me a crow post Kate.