Quote:
Originally Posted by thumper
Magpies too - to a certain extent. If I enter a field or opening and there's a few magpies fussing around the willows in one corner - you can sure that's the corner I'm going to thoroughly glass first. They just seem to like company!
I know ravens follow wolf packs, waiting for a kill. I've also had single birds silently glide along only 20 ft above my big dog, when hiking open country after a recent snowfall. Maybe they think the dog will snuff something out from under the snow - like a chewed up deer/elk lagoon or something.
Personally, I'd never shoot a raven. Bad karma.
|
For sure magpies, from what I've seen they are actually far more intelligent than the more celebrated ravens. I have a bunch of crazy magpie stories but I'll just tell a couple.
We had a bunch of magpies showing up every morning and waking us up. My father in law swore that if you just shoot one and leave it where the others can see it then they will stay away, so I shot one and left it on my shed roof. Well for six days every morning about 50 magpies would come and land on my shed, look at the dead bird, and talk things over for about a hour and a half. My wife threw the bird in the ditch and they took their little wake over there, finally we just got rid of it... magpies have not been back since.
Every year while I'm butchering I'll throw a deer leg bone out in the yard and watch my dog try to fend off the magpies and ravens. Let me tell you, there is not a dog alive that a magpie cant trick away from his bone. With enough persistence it usually ends with the dog too tired to care chewing on one end of the bone, and the magpies happily eating at the other end. The most interesting thing was the pecking order, magpies are not scared at all of the dog so when the dog is out the magpies get the bone while the ravens watch. The magpies are scared of the ravens, the ravens are scared of the dog, so when the dog is gone the ravens get the bone while the magpies watch. Never been able to make sense of that weird little cycle.