An “Unkindness of Adolescents” are vandalising your cars

    Lane Cove locals would be aware of the mischievous actions of ravens; but are these behaviours mindless or is there some method to the madness?

    Car windscreen wipers are being vandalised in the streets of Lane Cove, some may assume this is the handiwork of bored adolescents, and those people could be technically correct.

    Young ravens are likely to blame for the mischievous behaviour due to the highly intelligent birds simply being bored, according to wildlife ecologist and bird expert Dr Grainne Cleary.

    “First of all, we’re dealing with one of the smartest birds in the world. So these birds have a brain to body ratio similar to our own… So you have a highly intelligent bird living in urban areas.” Dr Cleary told ITC.

    “If they’re juveniles, they could be doing it for entertainment, just because they’re investigating their surroundings. And it’s fun… Before they become sexually mature, they don’t have partners, they don’t have a territory, they don’t lay eggs, they don’t nest. So what else are they going to do with their time? They’ve eaten, they’ve had a good sleep, they’ve cleaned the feathers, they’re looking around, going what’s Jimmy over there doing? Let’s go over and see what he’s doing, and they investigate.

    “So again, you’ve got to think of, you know, a six, seven year old child, kind of playing in this environment. It explores it, and this is what we’re seeing.”

    Groups of ravens – or an unkindness as a group is funnily identified as – first began attacking windscreen wipers in Lane Cove on October 2022, as reported by ITC. The hotspots back then were on Cope Street and Penrose Street adjacent to Burns Bay Road – it seems three years later, not much has changed with cars lining these streets with their wipers in a vertical position.

    This tactic is mostly the doing of residents as putting the wipers in the air, as well as placing a towel along the dashboard has deterred the birds from conducting their ill-mannered behaviour.

    Other reasons behind the ‘attacks’ could be adult ravens collecting the rubber material for their nests with other birds then mimicking the action. Or on a more gruesome perspective, they could be attempting to break into the car, the same way they would a carcass to obtain food.

    “Because they are a predatory bird, when it is trying to break into a carcass, they’ll often start with the underbelly, which is the softest part of the dead animal, so that rubber could simulate the underside that they’re trying to penetrate to try to get into the car,” Dr Cleary explained.

    Dr Grainne Cleary posing with an Australian Galah.

    This theory lines up with an explanation from RSPCA who told ITC previously some rubbers emit chemicals that are also found in decaying carcasses, attracting birds thinking it’s a food source – but, this is of course just a theory.

    Unfortunately for humans, ravens are not discriminating by age group. There are reports of Lane Cove Public kids having their food stolen by birds who have learnt how to operate lunch box zippers. Even one of our In The Cove employees recently had her child ask for a padlock so he could secure his snacks!

    Ravens have kleptomaniac qualities, an innovative scavenging tactic spanning back to a time when they would follow wolves in Europe, taking their meals. And clearly this behaviour has continued to date, with reports of windshield wiper destruction spanning across the pond in the UK and US.

    “As I keep emphasising, they are very intelligent, and intelligent people get bored and idle hands do the devil’s work, and they’ve got arrows to burn!” Dr Booth said.

    But it’s not just ravens or even crows and magpies who emit these intelligent and mischievous traits. In Florida, vultures also attack cars, and the National Parks and Wildlife Service hands out free tarps to people visiting National Parks to stop the vultures from attacking their cars.

    Australia also has its fair share of native big brain birds with almost everyone aware of the sometimes infamous cockatoo where there are many videos circling online of the rebel with a mohawk drinking from bubblers and seemingly purposely dropping pot plants from balconies.

    In any case, no matter how annoying they can be, Dr Booth enforces we should rejoice in having the privilege to share our environment with a species not so different to us.

    “We should rejoice in this intelligence. We think we’re the smartest. There are studies that actually show ravens have consciousness; they have subjective consciousness. So, they’re a lot more like us than we give them credit for,” she said.

    “We don’t own the world, and we’ve developed this urban environment that’s very artificial, and we’ve had animals and birds that have come into it and said, well, look, you’ve taken our habitat, so we’ll adapt to yours.”

    However, if you are quite fed up with ravens becoming ‘peckish’ with your wipers, here are some deterring tactics you can try:

    • Place your wipers in a vertical position
    • Place a towel across the dashboard of your car
    • Place pool noodles or towels over your wipers
    • Place a cover over your car

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    The ITC Team from left to right Liz McPherson, Jacky Barker, Renee Maxwell and Yumi Wong Pan