YHK - yet another hacker news clone

It was quite a sight, especially when she was wearing dark clothing.

A few centuries before people would have had her burned for being a witch.

The bumblebees do something similar (I've oddly nursed three different bees with sugar water—all just happened to be in my field of vision crawling around on the ground but not flying). Now you get a bumble or two per day checking in with a quick hover and bob kind of movement before shooting off into the distance.

Does anyone know of any research into this or books identifying behavior like this?

I was so impressed, I wanted to replicate that. I went to a park around the corner with some nuts to befriend some crows. My plan was to just feed them for a while so they would trust me. But after a few days I had flock of crows following me everywhere through the city. That was a bit too much.

What Ravens Do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RGmh_C3Kyg

And this short piece by the same director while looking for the other:

This short film documents six weeks in the life of a family of ravens in the Verdugo Mountains near Los Angeles. I first noticed two baby ravens who were very small and just out of the nest. This movie covers this family as their parents prepare them to go off and live life on their own.

The Ravens of Verdugo Vance Crofoot 375 views Jul 30, 2021 LOS ANGELES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbW2LmWtQ7g

    Whenever he goes into the tower, the crow flies off and won’t come back until he has 
    left. So he tries a trick: two men go in, one comes out, and the other stays hidden. 
    The crow isn’t fooled and waits until the second man leaves too. The same happens with 
    three men and with four. Only with five men, four leaving and one staying, does the 
    crow lose track and return to the nest.

I have already mentioned that jackdaws remember for a long time the creature that once triggered their rattling reaction—that is, anyone who has once attacked a jackdaw. This posed a serious obstacle when it came to ringing the chicks hatched in my colony. If I took them out of the nest to fasten the aluminum Rossitten rings onto their legs, the old jackdaws inevitably noticed and raised an unbridled rattling concert. Well then, what was I to do so that the birds would not fear me forever because of the ringing, since this fear would have immeasurably hindered my work? The solution was exceedingly simple: a disguise! Well, what kind? That was simple too. Lying right at hand in a chest in the attic—and suiting my purposes very well, even though under normal circumstances we only use it on the sixth of December—was a splendid, all-fur Krampus costume, complete with a long-tongued, horned mask that covered the entire head, and a huge, fluffy, stiffly protruding devil's tail hanging from it.

What would you imagine, gentle reader, if on a fine June day you heard a wild rattling coming from a high, peaked roof, and upon looking up, saw the Devil himself—with horns, tail, and hooves, his long tongue hanging out obviously from the heat—climbing from chimney to chimney in the midst of a swarm of deafeningly rattling black birds? I think the overall impression would this time distract your attention from the fact that Satan was using a pair of flat-nose pliers to fasten Rossitten identification rings onto the legs of jackdaw chicks, and then carefully placing the little birds back into their nest. Even I only noticed after finishing the ringing that people had gathered in a dense crowd on the main street of the village, staring at me with the exact same stunned terror as the Whitsun excursionists had from behind the fence back then. Except that had I introduced myself, the whole exercise would have lost its point, which is why I merely gave them a friendly wag of my devil's tail and vanished through the attic window.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405773

There were no gifts but over the years we did witness this crow clearly trying to teach its very dependent growing child how to work the human. Ultimately it never succeeded, and we presume this crow eventually either passed on or moved on. But one of the gaggle of jealous magpies who observed the process did take up the role. Being more timid it didn’t simply stand and wait, but would appear, circle the feeding spot until it got my father’s attention, fly up to one specific branch and wait, but otherwise repeat the process it observed. That went on for a couple of years.

The process itself varied according to what food was thrown out, but the crow slowly developed a particularly clever strategy for carrying off whole stale bread crusts by dragging it to a water bowl, moistening then trimming and diagonally cutting a slot into the bread from one corner almost all the way to the other, such that it could hang either side of the beak in a balanced fashion; the magpie that took over learned this by observation and attempted it from day one.

They play with my dog, I can feed some of them from my hand and they follow me around in the neighborhood.

Was really easy, I just kept throwing them shelled peanuts and slowly they got used to me. Cool birds.

https://areena.yle.fi/1-78104441

When Lawrence Anthony ("The Elephant Whisperer") died of a heart attack, two separate wild elephant herds began walking from different remote areas, covering roughly 12 miles over 12 hours, arriving outside his family home two days after his death, the herds stood near for two full days and nights like a vigil to mourn[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9gZceeIxnfo

What struck me was the varied personality of the birds. Some of them would come right to my hands like it was a Disney movie, others I would have to chase into a corner and carefully capture.

One day I was walking towards my firepit and a whole tree full of starlings was cackling at me getting louder and louder to scold me as I approached and I was pretty offended that they were telling me what to do on my own land. At one moment collectively they flew away in a great big flock with a few slow birds left behind who took off to follow the main bod about three seconds later.

"Society owes you nothing. The woman gave away her labor under a permissive license and the crow society just took what she offered under her own free will. What I really cannot stand is people giving something away and then demanding additional terms."

What’s evident is that humans have a long history of anthropo-denial, where we dismiss evidence of non human sentience and intelligence even when it’s starting us in the face.

Those lies have allowed us to engage in what ins fairly obviously unethical mass exploitation of non human animals, which hopefully we will start winding down, but we may also add billions of AIs to that list, if we show the same behavior of denying evidence of sentience in AI this time.

We had a window with a mirrored film to reduce the amount of sun into its room and the neighborhood crows were obsessed with it. They would fly into it, sit right outside the window and chatter loudly, and peck at the window.

Unfortunately this window was on my infant's nursery and the crow noises would constantly wake her up during nap time. My wife asked me to help and I tried a scarecrow, I tried shooing them away right after they woke up the baby, but neither helped. I finally took a pellet gun and shot one of them after another baby-waking incident. All the crows flew away and screeched angrily at me for ~5 minutes before leaving. I never saw them again.

I made it to the point where I could jingle my keys to let them know that I was putting food out and they would come down within a few minutes. They love cat kibble and blueberries, but will not eat apples or walnut pieces.

Besides the baby bird parts, I received:

    1. French fries
    2. BBQ ribs, just the bone and a little sauce
    3. Baked ziti noodles
    4. An adult dead bird.  It was opened up, and presumably most of the organs were removed.
    5. Chunks of bread / bun
    6. Chicken nuggets

It was a neat experience, and I still hear them cawing at me from time to time. You'd think that they would all sound the same, but they definitely have distinct "voices" once you get to know them.

Here is my crow friend: https://i.imgur.com/1A37se8.mp4

My wife helped an injured crow out of the road last year, but didn't realize it had already died. The crows knew this. She effectively interrupted a funeral.

For weeks later, the crows would yell at her, and one even dive-bombed and hit her in the head as she got into our car.

Crows are amazing creatures. Make sure you stay on their good side :)

It would be like a human thanking a crow by gifting it a DVD player

Then one day I saw the woman walk her 4 dogs and feed these crows. Then I started putting it together, she has smaller dogs, about the same size as mine.

So these crows, presumably, had seen me and my dog about 2km away from where she normally walks her dogs, and came over for food. My dog just thought they were something to chase.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126284

Photographer captures 'odd but exciting' crow behaviour known as anting

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27416217

My chickens will sit outside the window while I work. They get extremely excited when they see someone who they know will give them treats (they are great at recognising voices and faces). I've even taught my more intelligent one some tricks like to jump up onto my arm when I signal and to fly up onto my shoulders.

In some scenarios they're extremely instinctive, but in others they're very curious and will learn a surprising amount about their environment.

Crows are obviously wayyyy more intelligent than chickens, but it's crazy how smart birds are for such little things. I suspect they have some quite interesting thoughts going on in their little heads.