This Seattle Man Has Been Feeding Crows For Several Years And They Started Bringing Him Gifts

Most of us have probably noticed that crows are not only majestic and rather menacingly looking, but they’re also pretty smart – they can solve complex tasks and even hold grudges against people who wronged them! However, one man got to experience the good side of these smart creatures.

Stuart Dahlquist is a 56-year-old bird enthusiast from Seattle who has been feeding a family of crows for a few years. To his surprise, one day they brought him a unique gift, followed by another one the next day.

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Image credits: StuartDahlquist

In an interview with Bored Panda, Stuart said he always felt crows are amazing creatures. “Birds – all kinds – have been a real focal part of my life; I love watching them, listening to their calls, identifying them… Oh! And helping them if they need help,” said the bird enthusiast. “I’m not a real ‘birder’ with high powered binoculars or anything like that but they play an outsized role in my enjoyment of life.”

Stuart has been feeding this crow family for nearly 4 years – they made a nest in a fir tree in his front yard and he could hear the babies when the parents were feeding them. One day he saw that both crow babies had fallen from the nest and weren’t really able to fly: “We got them into a tree and the parents – pretty angry with us actually – took it from there and the little ones survived. We began feeding them soon after.”

There were originally four crows that Stuart was feeding but, sadly, one was killed by a raccoon a short while ago.

“Sometimes when I’m walking they’ll fly with me, landing on the wires and branches above as I amble along. When we get home they like to land on the fence and wait to be fed,” said Stuart. “Other times they simply “Caw! Caw!” at us… It’s pretty obvious when they want food.” He usually gives them high-quality dry cat food with no corn – according to Stuart, for some reason crows aren’t really fond of corn.

At one point one of the male crow’s leg got injured and didn’t heal properly, so he hops only on one foot, making him stand out from the others. “I often wish we could do something about it but there really isn’t a way. He gets around just fine otherwise,” said Stuart.

Image credits: StuartDahlquist

“When birds are very young, they will become very tame and I had a few wild birds as a kid; a robin, a magpie. Since I became an adult, crows have been my companions quite a lot, as well. I had one ‘The Judge’ (named after Cormac McCarthy’s character in Blood Meridian) for ten or eleven years,” shared Stuart. “He was really a wonderful pet and we’d likely still have him if it wasn’t for some raccoons killing him one night.” He regularly rescued crows while he still had The Judge – one of them was even rehired to a wild animal trainer and now appears in movies!

None of the birds Stuart rescued were taken from their parents: “They came to us as hurt, of having fallen from the nest and couldn’t be returned, or had been abandoned. Please don’t ever take a chick from its nest.”

This is Buddy – a rescue crow with a broken wing.