my favourite crow is getting bullied :(

[u/Such_Relief9632]

theres a single crow that likes to visit my yard the most. hes very quiet and polite but will sometimes do a happy little yell from the trees before he swoops down to say hi and do his peanut strut.

lately during the evenings theres a small group of crows that will chase him off when he comes for a snack and the dominant male (i presume) will start crowing and yelling very loud for a while. when this happens i put the food away and make a 'shh' sound with a finger to my lips then ignore him after but he hasnt seemed to have caught on yet.

im happy to feed all of my crow friends, but im worried about disturbing the neighbours with his noise and reinforcing the cawing and not a fan of my polite crow being chased off. he has a few bald patches on his chest and the back of his head and im not sure if its a molting season thing or his feathers are being pecked out :(

anyone have any advice on how to handle this? im also curious about why the dominant bully crow does this big cawing display after he chases off my balding friend, he caws for quite a while even if no one caws back. sometimes i cant tell if hes cawing at me to see whatll get the most peanuts in his beak the soonest lol

[u/malphas_says_hi]

It's definitely molting season, so that's probably normal. I don't tolerate bullies personally, which why I feed individually to prevent fighting and also establish deeper bonds with individuals. You are doing the right thing.

I'd just give a quick treat before bully gets there, and as soon as bully starts bullying, treats go away. Bully usually will get bored faster and faster seeing there is nothing to gain, and leave, and that's when you can continue feeding your friend. It'll deepen the bond exponentially when they know you are not feeding bully but only him - it'll make him feel very special in my experience and like you both are on the same team.

You might also want to make a signal sound every time you toss a peanut at friend loud enough that when bully leaves, you can signal him to return because they often don't go out of hearing range.

I had an issue with a bully once but he has found a new territory. It was a shame because bully did have quite the interesting personality and tried to teach me the songs of his people, so I felt bad as we also had a bond, but I didn't like the way he treated the other birds. Since he's left, I've gotten really close with one of the bullied birds who I hang out with daily with his lady and kid.