Can anybody explain this behaviour?

Love to have animals around? Perhaps you're being plagued by them? All your tips here...

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Primrose
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I have a Rotary washing airier in our lawn, as well as a bird feeder structure made from a converted old rotary airier with the arms shortened and the nylon cable removed from which we hang various bird feeders.

To enable me to move these structures around for the laundry airer to catch the sun as it moves down the garden , and to stop the grassed area under the bird feeder being damaged by trampling bird feet and bird poo, we've sunk metal anchoring spikes in the lawn in alternative locations in which to insert the central,pole of these structures . To avoid the grass growing over these, I wedge upturned empty little Benecol plastic drink pots which I've sprayed green.

In recent weeks these little "plugs" have started disappearing. At first I thought it was strong wind blowing them around the garden but they never reappeared. Then yesterday I spotted one of our resident pair of crows vigorously attacking one of these pots as it became visible above the snow, knocking hell out of it for several minutes until it finally dislodged it from its anchorage. Then he grabbed it with his beak, wandered around the lawn with it for a few moments and the. flew off with it.

Now it's obvious what has happened to all my other pots. But why should he be doing this and more to the point, for what purpose can he be using all them. . It's obviously become a habit now and not an isolated accidental "plunder".

We laughed as we watched him do it strutting around the lawn with his prize sticking out of his beak before he flew off with it but actually it's getting rather annoying as I now have to collect more pots and spray them green.

So why's he doing it and how can I stop him?
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snooky
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Hi Primrose,
For some reason the crow doesn't like green pots.Paint them a different colour!!!
Regards snooky

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robo
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Paint them white when the snows gone go back to green
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Primrose
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Are birds colour blind ??
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Geoff
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Crows are renowned for their intelligence, it's probably taking them for recycling.
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Diane
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He's making an eco-brick nest - obviously an extremely enthusiastically environmentally aware avian :D
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Westi
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Maybe you could put out some other coloured containers & things for them to keep them stimulated & playful, maybe anchor one or two down to make them work harder for their fun. It might distract them from your painted bottles. I'm pretty sure they can see colour, our neighbour when I was a kid, had a parrot with an attraction to red & it would nick anything red & take it back to it's perch on their back porch. At least I knew where to find my lost toys & dolls!
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vivienz
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Time for a citizen science project! I'd go along with Westi's suggestion of a few different coloured ones and see if there is a preference. Very interesting.
Last summer we had some ants make their way into the office at work. They went up onto the desk and found a neglected mint humbug wrapped in cellophane, and thought it a tasty treat, getting into the wrapper in no time. Over the course of a couple of weeks, they ate away all the dark brown stripes, but once they had eated those, they didn't bother with the rest of it. What difference it makes to an ant, I have no idea, but they had a very clear preference for the stripes.
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