African Pied Crows as Pets

Hi All,
My fascination with Corvids (crows, ravens, jays and their relatives) began in childhood, when I cared for injured American Crows and Blue Jays. In time, I was able to work with their exotic relatives at the Bronx Zoo, and was thrilled to observe the antics of Japan’s famous tool-using Carrion Crows (please see article below) in the wild. Possessed of keen intelligence, insatiable curiosity and voice-mimicking abilities, hand-raised crows have few equals as avian pets. Native Corvids are protected in the USA, but foreign species may be kept, and several are regularly bred by hobbyists. Among these is the spectacular African Pied Crow, Corvus alba, which makes as responsive a pet as can be imagined. Read article here Breeding and Keeping the Nonpareil Finch or Pin-Tailed Parrot FinchThat Bird Blog
Please also check out my posts on Twitter Crows as Pets: The African Pied Crow, a Most Intelligent BirdThat Bird Blog

Thanks, Frank
My Bio, with photos of animals I’ve been lucky enough to work with That Pet Place welcomes Zoologist/Herpetologist Frank Indiviglio to That Reptile Blog | That Reptile Blog
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Very cool read, I know they are exceptionally intelligent, but I don't think I could get past the small animal feeding thing.LOL

Fantastic article!

African crows and Ravens are amazing! A friend of mine had a brown necked raven/African pied crow hybrid from the Corvid ranch. such a AMAZING bird to get to know.

He free flew Isaac every day for 2-3 years(he's a professional falconer so he has to go fly various falcons and hawks daily anyway), one day when flying him out of town while on a job poor Isaak was mobbed by a big flock of wild ravens, he's been mobbed before by coopers hawks and such and always came back but this time he was lost forever I think it was the change in scenery that caused this. He is very missed, even after being gone for 3 years...

here's a few pics of him that I took







In this photo you can see the trace of the pied crow pattern

Zazoothehahns said:

Very cool read, I know they are exceptionally intelligent, but I don't think I could get past the small animal feeding thing.LOL

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It's not too bad frozen mice and quail are easily purchased.

Thanks very much for the observation and great photos...I haven't seen too many hybrids, very interesting,. best, Frank

the guy I got Parker from breeds and trains corvids

We dont have crows or ravens here in New Zealand bht we do have Australian magpies, both thethe black back and white back sub species. I have raised many orphans and they make amazing pets but unfortunately males become extremely territorial once they reach sexual maturity and can be down right dangerous. Ive qlso kept and trained rooks for film and television, they are absolutely gentle and extremely sweet alto they can be flighty at times even when hand raised. And thus ends nzs corvids haha all intriduced and all pests in the goverments eyes and have trapping and poisoning programmes dedicated to them.

Hayden1987 said:

We dont have crows or ravens here in New Zealand bht we do have Australian magpies, both thethe black back and white back sub species. I have raised many orphans and they make amazing pets but unfortunately males become extremely territorial once they reach sexual maturity and can be down right dangerous. Ive qlso kept and trained rooks for film and television, they are absolutely gentle and extremely sweet alto they can be flighty at times even when hand raised. And thus ends nzs corvids haha all intriduced and all pests in the goverments eyes and have trapping and poisoning programmes dedicated to them.

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Thanks...magpies are amazing, aren't they. I've seen the same as you mention with red-billed blue magpies as well...in a huge zoo exhibit, they kept monkeys, tapirs and hornbills at bay! I've not worked with rooks, must be quite a treat,,,

Best, frank

Yea rooks are fantastic can be a challenge to work with tho. Here is a job we did a few years ago with our team of rooks, this was filmed in queenstown here in nz , just thought you might be interested. YouTube

Sorry link didnt show up properly. Type tooheys dry apple cider birds vs humans if your interested in watching.
Regards, Hayden

Hayden1987 said:

Sorry link didnt show up properly. Type tooheys dry apple cider birds vs humans if your interested in watching.
Regards, Hayden

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Thank you, I'll give it a try shortly, Best regards, Frank

Right i finally figured out how to put the link on here properly, i hope lol [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiwrQibKwZ0&feature=youtube_gdata_player"]Tooheys Extra Dry Cider 5 Seeds Birds vs Humans - YouTube[/ame]

And this is me training my boy blue before we shoot..

Hayden1987 said:

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And this is me training my boy blue before we shoot..

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That commercial was pretty AWESOME! And I LOVE the picture of you and Blue.

Oh yea its a great pic, apart from the blinding lights lol i have someone yelling hey hayden smile.... i cant even see where they are

Hayden1987 said:

Oh yea its a great pic, apart from the blinding lights lol i have someone yelling hey hayden smile.... i cant even see where they are

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BAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! Ok...so you are squinting a wee bit. :54:

A bit??! Its shocking unfortunately time constraints meant no retakes haha

Hayden1987 said:

A bit??! Its shocking unfortunately time constraints meant no retakes haha

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You don't have ANY other pictures with Blue? Oh please say you do. With eyes wide open perhaps?

Oh man i had heaps, as well as videos but when i moved out of my ex's place she had a tantrum and destroyed almost everything...
The head trainers have copies but i need to get round to getting them

Australian magpies are more closely related to crows than they are to other magpies around the world. They were only called that because of the pied colouration. Technically, they belong to the bell-magpie family, which was created just for them. They're special creatures because they have a spectacularly beautiful ringing call and they're also highly intelligent. They'd make brilliant pets, only we're not allowed to keep native species as pets here in Australia.

Once, years ago, I was doing a field study a quite a way away from home. While collecting data, I came upon a young magpie being mobbed by its tribe. (Magpies have a 'magic number' of tribe members - when it's exceeded, they mob the excess young birds until they fly away to find a home elsewhere or die). Of course, I had to do something!

Quite illegally, I took the bird home, de-loused it and fed it until it was strong. I made a harness out of cotton sewing tape and taught the bird to fly in our horse paddock. During that time, the local tribe came to investigate and seemed to accept the youngster, so I released him. He flew off with them with no worries and, I assume, lived happily ever after. NB. I have to add that, in the beginning when he was a bit boisterous, the maggie bit me on my forearm. I've still got the four-inch scar to remember him by all these years later. LOL! As luck would have it, I had a skin cancer removed from the end of the magpie-scar a while back. The two scars together look like an exclamation mark on my skin.

Dear I'm incorrigible! Another magpie story. When my daughter was newborn, we lived in a lovely leafy suburb where the local magpie tribe was very well-looked-after by the residents (ie. they were fat) and used to being hand fed). The head honcho was a bloke we called 'Audacious' because he would come waddling importantly into our kitchen in order to steal food from the dog's bowl. I had to put a stop to that after the day he sidled up to the baby's bouncer and attempted to swallow the ten little 'worms' hanging off the ends of her feet!

Not long after, the Sons of Audacious came to visit. My husband and I were in utter fits of laughter because the mental birds had found they could grab the bottom of my lovely white sheets which were hanging on the clothesline and have a great old swing in the sun. They actually lined up and took turns, running, jumping and swinging off my washing! This was before the days of digital cameras and I was not able to capture the spectacle of six baby magpies swinging off my sheets. It remains a treasured memory, though!