Could desperately use some advice/perspective on this situation.
I live on a housing estate that has lots of woods close-by. Consequently we’ve always had lots of birds around the area – pigeons, magpies, blackbirds, robins, crows. All the birds was one of the things I used to like about my house because I’m a bird person (which is partly why this problem becoming such a huge deal has been a shock for me).
Problems started approx. January. I noticed a crow sitting on my neighbour's fence a few doors down and cawing very loudly and repeatedly at their front window. This went on for a few days and then everything was quiet again for a few months.March I heard a crow making this same constant, loud cawing at the windows of a nursery building right across from my house, actually sitting on the windowsills and cawing directly at the windows.This went on on and off for several weeks. At the same time seagulls started nesting on top of this nursery building (they’re still there now with a few cute little fluffy baby seagulls) and I noticed that two crows would be constantly winding up the seagulls, dive-bombing them in between one of them cawing at the windows. At this point the crows weren’t a problem for us, it was just something I’d noticed because of the noise.
Then one morning right at the beginning of May a crow had been cawing at the windows of the nursery again all morning. I closed the blinds of my upstairs bedroom where I was working on my laptop at the desk and next thing I know this crow is at my window, sitting on the sill, cawing at the windows and tapping on them. That first day it only happened that once but the next day it appeared at 5am, woke me up with this fucking infernal cawing I’ve never heard the likes of and it continued at regular intervals throughout the day right up until 945 at night.
Cue two and a half weeks of what I can only describe as absolute, literal torture. Getting woken up every morning between 430am and 530am with it cawing at every upstairs window in the house and this then continuing throughout the day until 10pm at night. It got to the point where everytime I went into an upstairs room it would be on the windowsill, sometimes cawing and tapping and sometimes just sitting on the sill, it would see me and fly off only to return. It was fucking dreadful and after two and a half weeks I could barely function I was so sleep-deprived and so sick and anxious of the noise. So I got bird spikes and put them on the upstairs windows. This solved the problem though seemed to tick off the crow for a few days, he’d appear on the back fence and caw a few times and then fly off usually in the evenings.It stayed away from our house but I would often hear it in the area, all over the place, near and far, making that awful screeching cawing sound for hours on end. But as it stayed away from the house I thought problem-solved.
A couple of weeks after putting up the bird spikes, so maybe three weeks ago now, I went out to weed my back garden. While I was out there I heard several crows all cawing and making a racket fairly close but not near my house and I couldn't see them. After going back into the house a crow then appeared on my livingroom windowsill (so downstairs windows where there are no bird spikes on the sills because it had never been at these windows until then) and started cawing at the window. It only done this once and disappeared.
Since then, whenever I open my upstairs bedroom window (the window it first appeared to caw and tap at) I hear it cawing close-ish, maybe once or twice. Worse than that when I leave the house I sometimes (it’s only sometimes) hear what sounds like very young crows cawing on my roof and then the parent either lands on a nearby roof and starts cawing or I’ll hear a crow caw in the distance as if replying. It feels like it’s being directed at only me because I don’t hear it when my neighbours leave their houses. A couple of times when I’ve left the house to walk into town I’ve heard that same loud, angry cawing when I’ve gotten about five minutes’ walk away and been convinced I’m being followed by this crow. Sometimes when I go into rooms in my house I’ll hear this sudden loud cawing as if it’s actually watching my house.
I don’t think there’s any crow nests on my roof for context. I do think this crow has been hanging around in the street on and off for a while as a lot of my neighbours have overflowing bins. I do often see it at several neighbour’s bins.
I never physically chased this crow away from my windows when it was sitting on the sills cawing but it’s obviously seen my face because I couldn't possibly avoid it when it was always on the bloody windowsills of every room I went into.
I feel like the tipping point was when I weeded the garden that day but I don’t get why me weeding my garden was seen as being threatening?
I’m aware how totally stupid this sounds and that I’m probably blowing this out of proportion but it’s been two solid months now since this started and I literally think about this every moment of the day. As utterly ridiculous and over-dramatic as this sounds, all the joy has literally been sucked out of my life since this started. I’m constantly feeling my heart thumping thinking about how my house is ruined because all I read online about crows is that they have long memories and hold grudges for long periods.
I don’t think I’m normally someone who blows a problem out of proportion and I don’t think I’m prone to catastrophising but this is literally dominating my thoughts almost every moment of the day and I’m even having dreams about it at night. I’m thinking now about asking my GP for anti-anxiety medication for the first time in my life. I don’t want to talk to anyone in real life about this because I’m embarrassed about what a big deal this has become for me and how anxious it’s making me.
I spent years bouncing around in insecure accommodation, thinking I’d never have a house I could call my own, and now I do but it’s been ruined and I’ll never be able to leave the house without being anxious about being cawed at and people noticing I’m being harassed by crows, I’ll never be able to take rubbish out to the bin without being cawed at, can’t ever step foot in my back garden again, will have to listen to that angry caw when I go into a room in my house and it sees me through the windows.
Can anyone who’s knowledgeable about crows give me some advice and perspective on this because it’s gotten to be too big a deal in my head and I’ve lost all perspective.
I know it might be suggested I leave food out for this crow but I'm not keen to do this as it obviously knows my house and I don't want to give it a reason to keep hanging around.
Am I blowing this out of proportion?? Is this crow ever going to forget about me and my house? And most importantly, will this ever stop or has my much-longed-for home been ruined for good for me?
God, this post got way longer than I planned when I started it - sorry for the mega-long read.