Is That A Bird On Your Head, Or...?

Speaking of having a bird on your head, crows do it, too.  This is Nadine the crow years ago as a fledgling, getting all excited at feeding time.  Note her oversized blue eyes (they get darker with age), scruffy baby feathers and gape flanges.

He could walk all around with a crow on his head.  

But not for long, because FOOD.  Finally she'd notice the food being prepared and get all excited and start dancing around, flapping, gaping and yelling.  Yelling at the food dish, I might add.

When you feed baby crows, the excitment and noise is amazing.  They have a LOUD call, they flap, they gape.  The technique to feeding is to mimic the parents and get a glop of food on your finger and just ram it right down their gaping maw--if you just nicely place the food in their mouth they sit there, beak open, and allow the food to fall back out...and then give you a disappointed look.  Enthusiasm is key with crows, ya gotta participate, man.

Like this (this is not us, just shows a great example of baby crow feeding):
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlqOom_cYNI

Hence, Nadine attempting to swallow a finger while making those excited, garble-y 'baby crow swallowing' noises, loudly, which only made us laugh.

As far as Nadine was concerned this kind of ridiculous behavior was absolutely necessary, she loved it.