Backyard Hobbies

[rmstevens2]

I'm now a retired Old Fart. I'm not bored yet and have no desire whatsoever to get some kind of job (ugh!) to earn extra money.

One of my favorite things to do is feed the crows that visit my backyard and watch their antics. They are exceptionally skilled fliers and very graceful as they soar, bank, and glide into the backyard. On the ground, however, they resemble nothing so much as awkward human toddlers.

Crows love meat, dry dog food, and nuts. Currently, I regularly feed them Purina beef flavored Dog Chow, hot dogs, and peanuts. I'll feed them other, more expensive meats as the opportunity arises. For example, a few days ago, we bought some lamb chops and then somehow left them in my pickup truck so that by the time we figured out we had forgotten them, they were no longer safe for human consumption. So, I cut them up and fed them to my feathered children, the crows. They certainly appreciated them! 

When we grill out on the patio, if we have some meat left, like ribs or steak, we'll give some to the crows. They love it.

Here are a few photos my youngest daughter, Anna, recently took of a few of the crows. The one landing on the birdbath with his wings spread has peanuts in his beak. The crows like to soak some of their food in the birdbath before eating it. I rinse out the birdbath and provide fresh water for the crows every morning.

[JMcB]

I'm now a retired Old Fart. I'm not bored yet and have no desire whatsoever to get some kind of job (ugh!) to earn extra money.

One of my favorite things to do is feed the crows that visit my backyard and watch their antics. They are exceptionally skilled fliers and very graceful as they soar, bank, and glide into the backyard. On the ground, however, they resemble nothing so much as awkward human toddlers.

Crows love meat, dry dog food, and nuts. Currently, I regularly feed them Purina beef flavored Dog Chow, hot dogs, and peanuts. I'll feed them other, more expensive meats as the opportunity arises. For example, a few days ago, we bought some lamb chops and then somehow left them in my pickup truck so that by the time we figured out we had forgotten them, they were no longer safe for human consumption. So, I cut them up and fed them to my feathered children, the crows. They certainly appreciated them! 

When we grill out on the patio, if we have some meat left, like ribs or steak, we'll give some to the crows. They love it.

Here are a few photos my youngest daughter, Anna, recently took of a few of the crows. The one landing on the birdbath with his wings spread has peanuts in his beak. The crows like to soak some of their food in the birdbath before eating it. I rinse out the birdbath and provide fresh water for the crows every morning.

From what I’ve heard, the Crows will remember you fondly for this and will spread the word among their extended family that you’re a good guy.

[rmstevens2]

They once left me a unique piece of blue colored glass, which I still have. That's it so far, though. I'm hoping cash is next.

I'm hoping they'll begin trusting me enough to come down and eat while I'm out in the backyard. So far, they won't do that, but I also have a little dog who is almost always outside if I am. She may be discouraging them.

[JMcB]

They once left me a unique piece of blue colored glass, which I still have. That's it so far, though. I'm hoping cash is next.

I'm hoping they'll begin trusting me enough to come down and eat while I'm out in the backyard. So far, they won't do that, but I also have a little dog who is almost always outside if I am. She may be discouraging them.

I once saw a video of a woman who was doing pretty much the same thing as you are and they would bring her small man made objects they had found as gifts. As I recall one of them was a dime, so your time may come!

[rmstevens2]

They once left me a unique piece of blue colored glass, which I still have. That's it so far, though. I'm hoping cash is next.

I'm hoping they'll begin trusting me enough to come down and eat while I'm out in the backyard. So far, they won't do that, but I also have a little dog who is almost always outside if I am. She may be discouraging them.

I once saw a video of a woman who was doing pretty much the same thing as you are and they would bring her small man made objects they had found as gifts. As I recall one of them was a dime, so your time may come!

A dime would be a nice start!

I've been feeding them now for about a year. Whenever I stick my head outside, I can hear them start squawking to each other in the big Loblolly Pines next to the backyard.

[rmstevens2]

Wish i had something new to report, but things are pretty much the same each day. I go out and feed my crows and give them fresh water in the birdbath. They wait until I and my little dog go back inside the house before they come down into the backyard to eat and drink.

Now that the weather is nice and cool, I'm thinking I might sit outside close to where I feed the crows to see if they will tolerate me and come down to eat while I am there. There's no way I would do that back in August when the weather was hot as hell, but I might try it now.

I'm not the most patient person in the world, but we'll see.

[rmstevens2]

I've noticed that there is one brave crow who will come down and eat when I am sitting out back on the patio, while the others stay on the fence. Several of the crows will sit on the fence when I, my wife, and my daughter are sitting out back on the patio. As soon as we let our little dog out back, however, off they go. That's probably wise. If I were a crow, I wouldn't trust her either, not that she could ever catch any of them.

[mjaguk]

My latest hobby is recording birds on the Merlin app's Sound ID, on my phone. I've been doing it for about 5 months - an hour here or there, while I'm outside doing the gardening or whatever, I leave the phone on a chair to register all the birds it can hear. Sometimes I record them from inside the house, by leaving the phone next to an open window. It can do recordings in 10-minute chunks.

So far I have gathered a list of just over a hundred different birds. A few are errors in recognition of the sounds (probably around 10 of the 100 birds are very unlikely to have visited here), but generally it's brilliant at recognising all the different songs and calls of our wonderful bird life. I'm in a rural location, and I do feed the birds - although most of them don't visit the food I put out, but rely on worms, bugs and seeds, etc, in the fields around us.

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

[rmstevens2]

My latest hobby is recording birds on the Merlin app's Sound ID, on my phone. I've been doing it for about 5 months - an hour here or there, while I'm outside doing the gardening or whatever, I leave the phone on a chair to register all the birds it can hear. Sometimes I record them from inside the house, by leaving the phone next to an open window. It can do recordings in 10-minute chunks.

So far I have gathered a list of just over a hundred different birds. A few are errors in recognition of the sounds (probably around 10 of the 100 birds are very unlikely to have visited here), but generally it's brilliant at recognising all the different songs and calls of our wonderful bird life. I'm in a rural location, and I do feed the birds - although most of them don't visit the food I put out, but rely on worms, bugs and seeds, etc, in the fields around us.

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

Pretty cool. I've heard some pretty neat owl sounds in the evening outside my house.

Of course, every morning we get the raucous caws and squawks of the crows, but I like them. I always say hello to them when I am outside and hear them. I wonder if in some way they understand.

[rmstevens2]

Sitting here on my couch using my laptop. I can see out into my backyard. The crows are out there bouncing around, eating some of the food they left from earlier this morning, when I fed them.

I must be strange somehow, but I really get a kick out of watching them. I keep hoping they'll come to trust me enough to land in the backyard and eat while I am out there in close proximity, but that hasn't happened yet.

Maybe eventually - hopefully sometime before I die.

[rmstevens2]

My crows are starting to get braver, slowly but surely.

Some of them will land in the backyard and start eating while I am still out there, a couple of them will even patiently eat while I get the hose, hose out the bird bath and put fresh water in it.

Progress!

I look forward to even more.

[Anglesqueville]

I live in a fairly remote corner of the Pays de Caux, in the hinterland of Etretat, on approximately 1 hectare bordered by fields. At the bottom of my domain there is a group of beech trees, very old and therefore very large. At the top of the largest, a pair of crows took up residence years ago. They chased away the magpies that previously ruled the entire area, and built an impressive nest. Since then, every spring we watch for the return of "our" crows. Of course, they are not the same, perhaps descendants, in any case, this nest is always occupied. Our crows continue to make life difficult for these filthy pigeons, and there haven't been any magpies for a long time. A few days ago I was smoking a cigarette under my beech trees at dusk. Suddenly I had the feeling of being observed. I raised my head. A few meters above me, barely visible in the darkness, I finally made out the black, motionless shape of a crow. A few minutes later I saw another protagonist arrive. It was my cat, a four-year-old Norwegian, with great intelligence and assertive character. He sat at a respectful distance, perhaps surprised to find me there, and began to look at us in turn, that is to say at me, and at a point above my head, in the still sparsely leafy foliage of the beech tree. Meeting without words, perfect.

[rmstevens2]

There's one crow who visits our backyard who is the biggest of them all and bullies the others. After he chases a couple of them out of his way, he tolerates the rest and lets them eat. He puffs his feathers up and is really obviously the patriarch.

I call him Mr. Big Stuff after a song I remember from my teenage years.

[Albruic]

Backyard Hobbies? I can say I found a very fun one, though. 

Don't worry I am not making the crow population any smaller :-)

[alanarchae]

i havent done it in years but I was once big into astronomy /stargazing. Mostly in my late childhood:early teens. Did it with a next door neighbour pal my age. Usually in my folk’s garden as it was darker. Started with just star maps, planospheres,. naked eye and binoculars and later both got small astronomical telescopes one xmas. But to be honest they were rickety and a bit of a pain most of the time and not poweful enough to give really amazing views (though you could see stuff like Saturn’s rings vaguely).

To be honest the nicest way of stargazing is lying on a very reclined seat with a good pair of binoculars. It was mostly an aesthetic or sense of wonder thing rather than scientific. I could never understand people who did stuff like complile logs of sunspots (projections onto paper) or logged the magnitude of variable stars. You probably have to be a serious oddball to enjoy that. My parents house had a rear garden that was narrow but long so at the far end it was really dark due to an old tall wall, hedges etc. Unfortunately my present garden has rather mite light population so it’s not as suitable.

I never had the mathematical brain to realistically consider studying astronomy. So gazing at the cosmos is more of a aesthetic and almost kind of spiritual thing for me. A lot of my interests seem to be things that make you feel very small in time and space LOL