Later I was stunned to read that Crows remember your face and can communicate your face to other Crows[1]. Thats how they can detect you for several miles in radius.
[1] https://theconversation.com/never-cross-a-crow-it-will-remem...
Later I was stunned to read that Crows remember your face and can communicate your face to other Crows[1]. Thats how they can detect you for several miles in radius.
[1] https://theconversation.com/never-cross-a-crow-it-will-remem...
This kept up for days, including after a weekend when I wasn't at work, until it occurred to me to try a peace offering of potato chips from the vending machine - not the healthiest food for anyone, but the best it had to offer, and I had nothing else really to work with. After a few days of emptying a bag of chips on the grassy verge opposite the parking lot, and of conscientiously not approaching the nest again, the warning calls and surveillance flights ceased, and the crows never had a problem with me again.
I'd read previously about corvids' intelligence, but that they should have such an extensive and accurate theory of mind, for animals with whom they have so little in common, still surprised me. Hell, for all that we flatter ourselves we invented the concepts, I've known plenty of humans who grasped impropriety, apology, restitution, and forgiveness less well than those birds did.