Surfing The Roof

Three readers alerted me to this video that’s sweeping the Internet.

In Russia, a hooded crow repeatedly surfs down a snowy roof, riding something that looks like a Frisbee.  When the video begins, there’s already a surf-track on the roof, evidence that he’s been doing this for a while.

Crows just want to have fun.  😉

(video from YouTube)

9 thoughts on “Surfing The Roof

  1. Good Morning, Kate. I saw this on Ellen yesterday and then again on the ABC nightly news. I asked Carol (Rochester falconcam) if one of them could find it and they did. They posted it on their website too. Such a smart crow…I could not stop smiling at this one.

  2. This is amazing. It’s the first I have seen this and I love it. And people think crows are just a nuisance. As you can see, they are quite intelligent. 🙂

  3. Having lived there, I can attest that Russian crows are quite startlingly intelligent creatures! Unfortunately they’ve become quite a problem in the Moscow Kremlin, where they’ve been damaging the gilded cupolas on the churches. They seem to be “attracted to the shiny” and scratch the gilding off with their claws as they scrabble around in great numbers. The Kremlin groundskeepers have resorted to falconry to try to control the crow population safely and efficiently. Given how much I love our local peregrines, I’m amazed at the sight of the falcons hunting and yet feel a bit sorry for the crows!

  4. Very interesting that the Kremlin has to use falcons. I don’t feel too sorry for the crows. They’re smart enough to know when to get out of the way. 🙂

  5. I’ve seen this video a few days ago…I do speak russian almost as good as my native language – lithuanian, since I’ve lived in former USSR for 30 years…
    Russians do have social site http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/#/profile/155539473033;jsessionid=98f71ca897f8768354c8feb0c4fd4abf1b5702ed0764a7ef.c6b2bc6a – equivalent of Classmates or Facebook, just way better.
    There, besides you can find former classmates and make new friend, are many groups of Interest.
    I just recently found and joined a few groups of bird lovers.
    What I’ve learned, some people in Russia do keep crows as a pets, and they post, how friendly and intelligent crows are. Most crows, they keep at home as a pets, are rescued, injured crows – they have found these outside…I’ve read some pretty good stories by owners of crows – how good they interact with other of their pets – cats, dogs…etc.

    Peregrine Falcon…In russian it’s called – ??????(Sapsan):

    http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BF%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD

    High speed train between Moscow and St.Petersburgh(former Leningrad) is named “??????” – Peregrine Falcon

  6. Gintaras, the sound track on the video made me wonder what the people were saying in the background as they watched the sliding crow. Probably nothing significant … but the only word I understood was “Nyet.”

  7. UPDATE, 23 Jan 2012: The original YouTube post became unavailable because of a copyright claim. On 16 Mar 2013 I found it again a at new link.

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