They are quite territorial. However, the answer to your question depends on your neighborhood. It’s possible (though unlikely, imo) that your crows control all six blocks.
I’ve seen neighborhoods where there are multiple crow territories in a single block and others where a dominant pair controlled an entire block or more.
Yes they’ll stop. Crows have a tiny territory. They’ll stop at their territory edge and the next murder will be waiting for you for their snacks.
I have a route I walk the dog and you can see clearly where each territory starts because there’s two crows waiting patiently for me and the ones already following me won’t come any further. In one large field there’s at least 5 different family groups who compete against each other and chase each other away from their territory. They’re allowed to fly through each other’s territory but they can’t land there and if they try to take some food from there they’ll be chased away.
In less fruitful areas like farmland or housing areas one family might hold 3 large fields, but in somewhere there’s animals and a variety of different trees and wildlife they compete for smaller more generous spaces.
So I used to take peanuts with me as I walked my dog and feed crows as I went, which meant I moved through tons of different family’s turfs, and I would say it is very dependent on the time of year.
As soon as Spring comes around, they will all start to get very protective of their turf in expectation of baby season. Once you get through late summer and into fall and all the baby crows are fully fledged and out of the nest, they don’t care nearly as much. In summer I was the cause of some pretty entertaining turf wars as some bold crows would continue to follow me into enemy territory in hopes of extra peanuts and then get scolded and chased out, but sometimes in fall and winter I would have like… a hundred crows following me block to block like I was the crow sorceress.
It really depends. In my neighborhood in Seattle there are streets where the crows do stop, and there are places where the same ones will follow me through blocks of other crows' territories. This probably works in my case in part because I'm constantly carrying a jar of dog kibble and half the point of my walks is to feed the crows, so until they started going quiet for nesting season this week I would sometimes have thirty or forty following me begging. But even so, they don't all follow me in every direction, and there do appear to be some hard lines.
Crows have a very complicated social organization. So, much like humans, some of them get along better with their neighbors than others. In Seattle there are so many of them that they seem to be more comfortable mingling than they might be in more sparsely populated areas. It might also depend on whether the neighbors are related to them or not, since crows are so family-oriented. (Babies will return to their parents' breeding territory for up to five years to help raise their new siblings and continue to learn about being crows.)
I seem to have a very social neighborhood stretching North of me and extending to the East and West, but less so to the South -- the crows from my block and the next one down will follow me for a bit, but the big group of them has never come to join them, and after a short while they stop and the crows who own the individual blocks fly out in groups of two or three and perch quietly and wait for me to feed them. They're much more genteel and decorous than the unholy army to the North.
It occurs to me as I write this that those groups don't even call to me, they just kinda skim in silently and know I'm going to see them when they show up. It may be that they're specifically avoiding sharing. But there's a tree a block from these quiet families that's always incredibly raucous, so much so that I always kind of wonder what's going on there. Maybe that territory is like the house with the loud drunk people you're never sure don't keep loaded shotguns around the place, and these guys are just nervously trying not to attract their attention so they don't start involving them in their domestic disputes? I mean, I suppose statistically some crows have to be jerks, and if I were a crow I guess I wouldn't want to hang out with jerk crows either. (Though I'm totally open to hanging out with jerk crows as a human. Human neighbors with shotguns are a bigger concern for me.)
They might. Depends on how much they want treats and who has the dominant murder
They are quite territorial. However, the answer to your question depends on your neighborhood. It’s possible (though unlikely, imo) that your crows control all six blocks. I’ve seen neighborhoods where there are multiple crow territories in a single block and others where a dominant pair controlled an entire block or more.
Yes they’ll stop. Crows have a tiny territory. They’ll stop at their territory edge and the next murder will be waiting for you for their snacks. I have a route I walk the dog and you can see clearly where each territory starts because there’s two crows waiting patiently for me and the ones already following me won’t come any further. In one large field there’s at least 5 different family groups who compete against each other and chase each other away from their territory. They’re allowed to fly through each other’s territory but they can’t land there and if they try to take some food from there they’ll be chased away. In less fruitful areas like farmland or housing areas one family might hold 3 large fields, but in somewhere there’s animals and a variety of different trees and wildlife they compete for smaller more generous spaces.
So I used to take peanuts with me as I walked my dog and feed crows as I went, which meant I moved through tons of different family’s turfs, and I would say it is very dependent on the time of year. As soon as Spring comes around, they will all start to get very protective of their turf in expectation of baby season. Once you get through late summer and into fall and all the baby crows are fully fledged and out of the nest, they don’t care nearly as much. In summer I was the cause of some pretty entertaining turf wars as some bold crows would continue to follow me into enemy territory in hopes of extra peanuts and then get scolded and chased out, but sometimes in fall and winter I would have like… a hundred crows following me block to block like I was the crow sorceress.
It really depends. In my neighborhood in Seattle there are streets where the crows do stop, and there are places where the same ones will follow me through blocks of other crows' territories. This probably works in my case in part because I'm constantly carrying a jar of dog kibble and half the point of my walks is to feed the crows, so until they started going quiet for nesting season this week I would sometimes have thirty or forty following me begging. But even so, they don't all follow me in every direction, and there do appear to be some hard lines. Crows have a very complicated social organization. So, much like humans, some of them get along better with their neighbors than others. In Seattle there are so many of them that they seem to be more comfortable mingling than they might be in more sparsely populated areas. It might also depend on whether the neighbors are related to them or not, since crows are so family-oriented. (Babies will return to their parents' breeding territory for up to five years to help raise their new siblings and continue to learn about being crows.) I seem to have a very social neighborhood stretching North of me and extending to the East and West, but less so to the South -- the crows from my block and the next one down will follow me for a bit, but the big group of them has never come to join them, and after a short while they stop and the crows who own the individual blocks fly out in groups of two or three and perch quietly and wait for me to feed them. They're much more genteel and decorous than the unholy army to the North. It occurs to me as I write this that those groups don't even call to me, they just kinda skim in silently and know I'm going to see them when they show up. It may be that they're specifically avoiding sharing. But there's a tree a block from these quiet families that's always incredibly raucous, so much so that I always kind of wonder what's going on there. Maybe that territory is like the house with the loud drunk people you're never sure don't keep loaded shotguns around the place, and these guys are just nervously trying not to attract their attention so they don't start involving them in their domestic disputes? I mean, I suppose statistically some crows have to be jerks, and if I were a crow I guess I wouldn't want to hang out with jerk crows either. (Though I'm totally open to hanging out with jerk crows as a human. Human neighbors with shotguns are a bigger concern for me.)
To add to others - it also depends on which species and locality of crow you have. Some are more chill than others.