Very relatable. I started leaving food for some local magpies about a year ago, and now they wake me up every morning at 6.
I once had a problem when suddenly some tits arrived and started stealing all the food. A huge magpie would take like one hazelnut and be on its way, while these small fuckers would eat like pigs, and then hide what was left. They'd take the nuts and shove them somewhere between the flowers on my balcony. Tough the magpies too have often burried nuts in the soil below the flowers, only to dig them out again.
And it was so cool to watch some sparrow coming and going a dozen times to pull out some weeds that have been growing (I left the pots with the flowers outside over winter, the flowers died and weeds started to grow), and then carry them to a hole in a wall where a brick is missing which presumably is the nest.
But it was so so cool when I got woken up a few days in succession to a silhouette of a majestic crow standing on my balcony (my bed looks directly through the balcony window facing north-east). Crows are so cool, and magpies are really beatutiful, though extremely skittish.
One thing I do miss about Reddit is r/crowbro where people who feed crows post pictures of the gifts crows leave for them. It was one bright spot in the sea of shit that is Reddit. Birds are utterly fascinating.
It's actually what motivated me to start hahaha. I wanted a gift from my corvid friends, but my corvid friends run the hell away if they even catch a glimpse of me in the corner of the room through a window. I guess because it's a small balcony instead of a large, open and safe space. Even though I gave up on the idea and now feed them for no other reason than to feed them, I wish they would at least be chill with my existence. I'm fairly certain they think nuts grow out of flower pots.
I have these three ravens who like to hang out in my backyard every morning and walk around looking for stuff. They're pretty chill and don't give me too hard if a time. I think they like the compost pile with bugs, and we leave some water out for them.
But holy shit when they throw a house party and on Saturday afternoon you realize you've got a dozen crows on your roof making a racket, does it ever get noisy!