Very polite crow clearly speaks to squirrel at bird feeder

This is a wild crow who has actually learned to speak. At least, he can say "hello". But he wasn't always wild. He was one of four crows who spent a summer being raised by a human family before they reintegrated with the wild crow family in their neighborhood. Their story is a wonderful and rare example of success in rehabilitating and releasing wild birds.Show more

The story begins with a nest of crows that had been born in early spring in a quiet, country neighborhood in Millbrook, Ontario. They had been living in the trees that belonged to a man named Rob. While cutting the grass, Rob noticed that the entire nest had fallen from one of the tall pines that bordered his property. He carefully placed the nest and the babies in a wire plant hanger basket and climbed a ladder to replace the nest as close as he could to where he believed it had been. After a few hours, he became convinced that the parents were not coming back and he called a neighbor, Kristy, who is a veterinarian. Rob spoke to her husband who called her at work and she suggested that the crows were far better off with their parents than anywhere else. She asked her husband to hide and watch for signs that the parents were coming back.

By the time it started to get dark, it was clear that the crows were now orphans and they were not going to survive the night. The crows were brought to Kristy and she and her family raised them with the hope of returning them to the wild.

Raising birds is very difficult and successful reintegration into the wild is rare. They often have very little understanding of predators or how to gather their own food. But crows are highly intelligent, comparable to chimpanzees, and they are also very social. Kristy and her family taught the crows to gather berries, worms, and other food so that they would become self sufficient. Something else that the crows were taught, although unintentionally, was to say "hello". They began greeting their human family with a clear "hello" each time they arrived for food. They had obviously learned to mimic what was said to them, but they seemed to understand that it was a greeting.

The crows began spending more and more time with wild crows in the neighborhood. They flew south after the first summer, but they returned in the spring. Now quite wild, they no longer needed to be hand fed, but they still said "hello" if they saw their human family in the back yard.

Eight years later, these crows occasionally come to the back yard bird feeder for peanuts. A camera that was stationed at the bird feeder caught this incredible interaction between one of the talking crows and a squirrel. The crow landed behind the camera and said hello to the squirrel. It moved to a branch beside the squirrel and very politely greeted it again, with a voice that sounds much like a parrot. Eventually the squirrel left and the crow was able to slip in and get his own snack.

It wasn't until Kristy and her husband checked the footage that they learned that their crows would actually try to communicate with the squirrels.

The entire story can be seen on "Rescued baby crows return each spring to say hello".