As the weather warms up, the crows come back in force. They distribute themselves around the perimeter of their territory, sending a single “caw” in a kind of relay. As far as I can tell, it seems to mean, “Hi, I’m a bird! Status update: Still a bird!”
This single “caw” is passed from sentry to sentry until something happens to disrupt it. That could be a cat, an owl, a snake, or the sudden appearance of a quantity of snacks.
One of these sentries is positioned in the big maple tree in the back yard. As far as I can tell, he has exactly one mission: Keep tabs on my comings and goings.
I know this because I hear his single cries throughout the day, echoed by the equally single cries of his family group. As soon as I show up on the back deck, that single “caw” turns into a rapid series of calls. If I start putting out the crow salad, the shouts get even faster and more high-pitched. By the time I turn around to go back inside, the apple trees and the roof are full of black shapes.
Sometimes, they don’t even wait for me to go all the way inside before they swoop in and start eating. If they’re particularly feisty, they’ll barely hop away when I go out to refill. This seems to be out of a sense of avian practicality, rather than fear — it really seems like they fly up to the roofs to wait in order to be out of the way, not because they’re genuinely wary of me anymore.
I’ve found a mix of food that doesn’t seem to appeal much to other bird species, so this family can feed safely without concerns about being hassled or coming into contact with pathogens from unrelated birds that might otherwise swarm the feeder.
I can’t be positive, but I’m also reasonably certain that this sentry is the same li’l nerd who came and stared in my bathroom window after my Handsome Assistant and I returned from being out of town for a few days.
I can’t overstate how helpful they’ve been to have around — they deal with nuisance animals, and I’ve gotten a ton of free garden plants from them (and one small bouncy ball). I love this band of weirdos so much. It always makes me so happy to see them.
Marble Crow 
I saw your story reprinted after Ibeth’s story of trying to protect their corn crop from crows. She was trying to be rid of them while you are trying to attract them! So many stories….
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Isn’t it weird how that happens? I was *ridiculously* stoked about seeing an opossum on our backyard trail camera (like, stayed-up-until-5-AM-watching-the-camera-feed stoked), but a bunch of my friends who keep poultry see them as dangerous pests. Honestly, I’m kind of glad that it works out that way — while these animals would ideally be able to go wherever they please, the next best-case scenario is that there are places where people try to make things safe and hospitable for them. I don’t have poultry, so everyone else’s opossums can come hang out in my brush piles, chase away rats, and eat the grubs and windfall fruit here instead. I don’t grow corn, so everyone else’s crows can come hang out, eat “crow salad,” and keep the bugs and rodents away from my other plants. Here, at least, it seems to work out.
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