A family of crows surprised the man who had been feeding them for four years by bringing him gifts.
Fifty-six-year-old bird lover Stuart Dahlquist was surprised after he received presents from the bird family for two consecutive days.
Speaking to Bored Panda, he said: “Crows are amazing creatures and I’ve always felt this way since I was a boy.
“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.
“I’m not a real ‘birder’ with high powered binoculars or anything like that but wildlife plays an outsized role in my enjoyment of life.”
Explaining how he started supplying food to the family, Stuart said: “They nest in a large douglas fir tree that’s in our front yard and we could hear the babies when the parents would feed them.
“One day I found both babies had fallen to the ground, almost able to fly but not quite. 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 these intelligent animals soon after.”
The crow family actually comprised of four members but unfortunately, the adult female of the group was killed by a raccoon just before they started giving presents.
Stuart revealed that after spending so much time with the Corvidae family, he can now easily guess whenever they are hungry and want food.
He said: “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.
“Other times they simply “Caw! Caw!” at us… It’s pretty obvious when they want food.”
The birder described that the crows are provided with high-quality cat food with nearly no filler as he claimed that ‘crows aren’t as keen on corn as people seem to think.’
Since Stuart has become aware of the personality and traits of each member of the family, he told the magazine: “The adult male is very distinctive.
“His right leg was injured at some point and didn’t heal properly so he hops on only one foot. I often wish we could do something about it but there really isn’t a way.
“He gets around just fine otherwise.”
Stuart has been fond of birds ever since he was a child. He said: “When birds are very young, they will become very tame and I had a few wild birds as a kid; a robin, a magpie.”
After his life-long experience with birds, the Seattle man claimed that crows are the smartest birds he has ever seen.
He said: “Since I became an adult, crows, the smartest birds I know, 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.
“He was really a wonderful pet and we’d likely still have him if it wasn’t for some raccoons killing him one night.”
The bird enthusiast continued: “While we had The Judge we also had quite a few rescue crows while he was with us (which we released).
“There was one rescue that came to us while still very young and he became quite tame. We rehired him to a wild animal trainer and as I understand it that crow’s intelligence has earned him quite a few movie roles.”
Stuart mentioned that the four birds he had been serving came to his house on their own and that they weren’t taken forcefully from their parents.
He said: “They came to us as hurt, of having fallen from the nest and couldn’t be returned, or had been abandoned.”
Appealing everyone to never pick a bird from its nest for the sake of just keeping it, he added: “Please don’t ever take a chick from its nest.”
Replaced!