r/crowbro • u/riever_g • 1d ago

Question What was this behavior?

I live in a neighborhood with a decent amount of crows, but I've never seen them interact in big groups before. Tonight at 2 a.m. I heard a crow cawing under my window (and I also want to note, it looked distressed – at least to me – pacing back and forth, looking around constantly). I'll admit I don't know much about their sleep-wake cycle but I always assumed they'd sleep at 2 a.m. However, 15+ crows arrived at the calls of the first one, flew around for a minute, and all settled down next to the first one on the trees/power lines. What was this behavior?

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u/BeyondWestern 1d ago

Only guessing. Sounds like something happened during the night to freak out your bro and he started an alarm call that brought an impromptu posse? Maybe he or a mate/member of the family got attacked by a predator?

Could be an owl grabbed one of them? Or could be that one of them was nursing an injury and couldn't make it up into the tree for the night and encountered a cat or racoon or something like that? I'd check around in the morning light to see if there's any feathers about or signs of a struggle, or if the crow that was walking around looking distressed is still walking around and not flying?

Let's be optimistic and say that he just had a bad dream and called his homies to comfort him. 😅

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u/riever_g 1d ago

He was sitting on a power line last night actually, not on the ground, so I don't think he was hurt and there were no other crows there until he started screaming his head off. I checked this morning and there was nothing on the ground under where he was, no feathers or anything, and he also wasn't there. We don't have raccoons or owls where I live but it could've been a hawk, I guess? Only I don't know why a hawk would hunt at 2 a.m. but well 😂 It was fascinating, I don't think I've ever seen that many crows at the same time, it was like a scene from an anime or something, an entire murder of crows circling in the air and all screaming. Anyways, thank you for the answer and I too hope that bro is okay and just had a nightmare or something