Baby birds are fragile creatures, disease, bad weather, predators and even their own parents can kill these little animals.
If you’re raising baby birds, and there are crows in your area, you’d need to find ways to protect your baby birds. This is a guide on how to protect baby birds from crows
Solutions on how to protect baby birds from crows usually involve scaring crows away using dead crow decoys, using crow proof bird feeders and nesting boxes as well as harassing crows
Table of Contents
How to protect baby birds from crows
Crows are predators, they will jump at the opportunity to kill and eat eggs, baby birds, and even adult birds if they can manage it. These birds are quite fierce predators and have no problem going after your baby birds. Here is what to do to protect your baby birds:
Fishing line:
If baby birds are nesting in your garden, crows from all over the area will swoop down to prey on these animals.
Installing a fishing line or fishing cord in a grid-like pattern above your garden will keep crows out of your garden. Smaller birds will be able to enter through the grids but larger birds, like crows, will not.
Dead crows:
Crows are easily scared off, these birds will flock to areas where they see other crows hanging around but will keep away from areas where they see dead crows.
Leaving a crow decoy in your garden, and placing it upside down, will make crows think that there are dead crows in your area. This will scare these birds off.
Install crow proof nestboxes:
Baby birds are small, this is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in the sense that they can live in crow-proof nestboxes and can thus be protected from crows.
Crow-proof nestboxes are over 6 inches deep from the hole to the bottom of the box. Crows cannot reach in and grab baby birds from nest boxes that are this deep.
As an additional safety measure, removing the perch or ledge from the nestbox will keep crows from being able to stand on the ledge, watch, and wait for baby birds to come out.
Minimize lighting:
Crows cannot see well at night, if your home has a lot of outdoor lighting, crows will be attracted to the lights and find the baby birds on your property. Avoid this by reducing your outdoor lighting.
Harass them:
Harassing crows by shining light beams in their eyes will annoy them, if they are annoyed enough they will voluntarily leave your property.
Doing this on a regular basis will convince them that your property is not worth revisiting. They will leave long-term after continuous harassment.
Exclude crows:
Crows will be attracted to your garden if they see food, this is true for every bird.
Keep them away by only placing food in bird feeders that exclude large birds like crows. Bird feeders that exclude large birds have a wire mesh that crows can’t get into, smaller birds will still be able to feed through the mesh.
Hiding bird feeders from crows flying over ahead will also keep them from coming into your garden
Do crows kill and eat other birds?
Yes, crows do eat other birds, other birds that crows eat include towhee, sparrows, pigeons, and swallows.
In addition to eating other birds, crows also eat other animals in the form of roadkill. Crows are predators as well as scavengers, they are able to kill animals for meat but they are also happy to eat carrion and roadkill.
Roadkill that crows eat includes deer, skunks, pigs, rats, cats, chickens, dogs, deer, and possums. They see all meat as meat, or rather, as food, and it all plays a part in the bird’s diet.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are a variety of ways to protect baby birds from crows. These ways include using fishing lines to create a crow-proof grid over your garden, placing dead crow decoys in your garden, installing anti crow nesting boxes, minimizing light on your property at night, harassing crows as well as excluding these birds from feeding.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other baby bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Is My Baby Bird Shaking?, Do Birds Mourn The Loss Of Their Nest?, Do Bird Beaks Grow?, Do Mother Birds Leave Their Babies At Night?, Do Mother Birds Sit On Their Babies After They Hatch?
