Adaptation

How well does nature adapt to humans? This is the crow my humans have called Buzzcut. He has a habit of fluffing up his head feathers and making himself look like he has had a military haircut.

Buzzcut and I have signed a non-aggression pact. I'm not scared of him any more* and he doesn't fly away from me.  We each go about our morning inspections of the yard as if the other isn't there.  

Non-aggression doesn't extend to other felines in the neighbourhood, so we make unusual allies.  Buzzcut and his family were sitting in our gingko tree the other day shouting abuse and scolding a would-be feline invader of our yard.  Why would they do that?

Well, F feeds the crows on cheap cat biscuits and my left-over wet food.  Some other local felines apparently have a developed taste for cheap cat biscuits - which clearly irritates Buzzcut and Co (possibly even more than it does me).  There seems to be a proliferation of these sneaky thieving local felines encroaching on my territory (they roll in my catnip too), so I welcome all the help I can get in reading them the Riot Act

Seagulls are another category of looters that steal food intended for the crows, but the crows are on their own there as far as I am concerned. Our pact doesn't extend to military aid for repelling airbourne invasion.  Buzzcut and Mrs Buzzcut will harass gulls 'on the wing', but always give ground to them on terra firma. I would too.  However even there the crows have allies. The gulls swoop in and wolf down food at an indigestion inducing speed because they know they will be chased off by F racing out, arms flapping like a demented windmill.  (Mr B claps his hands at them which is about as effective at scaring them off as waving a bag of fish'n'chips.)

In the early days all avian life rose to the air, scared off by the demented windmill.  However it hasn't taken all that long for Buzzcut to work out that he is not the target of the flapping and yelling and merely steps aside and lets F get on with howling at seagulls (and wood pigeons). Then, competition cleared, Buzzcut can resume his breakfast untroubled by gulls for another while.

Such is the adaptation in Buzzcut that he arrives early most mornings now and either sits on the garden table (as above where he is studying the squirrel proof fatball feeder**) or on the top corner of the garage, from whence he can watch F at the kitchen sink, and remind her that it is breakfast time in the back yard.

*I argue I never was scared of him but my humans have their own interpretation of why I used to hide and chatter at the crows when they landed on the grass.

(**the fatball feeder had been decommissioned for cleaning and refurbishment. There are plenty of other feeders protected by an array of anti-squirrel paraphernalia.)

The crow/gull interactions in our yard space have been earlier reported here (2013) and here (2016) - so none of this is new, it is simply a relationship developing anew in a generation of crows born while we were in Greece.  (ooooh and here too (2017))  Actually a 'crow' search of my posts back to 2012 turns up quite a few observations on crows, their interactions with gulls and relationship with me.