My uncle did the same with a crow. Raised him from spring all through summer and fall. He came down to Florida after Christmas with "Jakie-fly-bird" and let him loose in Zolfo Springs. I walked into a conversation between my father and my uncle shortly after that. I thought they had both gone insane... > *Caw, Caw, Caw*, said my uncle. *Ka-Kaw, Ka-kaw*, answered my father. "But down here, they say, *AT-AT* when they see danger". Those fuckers were speaking bird. You can laugh if you want to, but my uncle was drinking a beer with me one night around the backyard fire when a cacophony of birds started yelling at each other in the trees in the back and he said, "There's a snake over there in the grass." Bullshit. I walked over to where he had pointed and there was indeed a 4' black snake hiding in the grass. ...them old fuckers could understand Bird. I can't even speak Spanish. edit: Jakie-fly-bird showed up at my uncle's house in NJ a few months later. "Homing" is not exclusive to pigeons. The other crows didn't accept Jakie for that whole season. Jakie showed up at the open window at my uncle's house that whole summer. The next year, there was a crow that set up a nest in the top of a tree right outside my uncle's open window. The baby crows that hatched were oddly not shy of human presence. Not friendly, but not shy.