A Queensland bird expert believes he may have witnessed the start of an evolutionary change in the nesting behaviours of crows after one pair's "terrible attempt" outside his office.
Professor Darryl Jones had been keeping an eye on one of the eight pairs of crows that have called Griffith University's Nathan campus home for the past few years and noticed one pair were slow in building their nest.
"Each year they have been making really half-hearted attempt at making a nest - there has been little outside structures outside the building, little ledges," he said.
"I assumed they were a young pair and didn't know what they were doing."
This year however, they managed to "crack it" and built their nest on top of the Sir Samuel Griffith Centre outside the bird expert's window, which Professor Jones said could be the start of the urbanisation of crows across Brisbane.
"As far as I know this is the first instance of a crow nesting on a building ever in Australia, it is unheard of," he said.
"I study this stuff and they chose my building to nest on and I have contacted all other crow people in Australia and none had ever heard of it before, it is unique as far as we know..
"I think those chicks will now grow up thinking that is normal place to nest, they are the next generation that will start nesting on buildings.
"We might have witnessed the start of a big evolutionary change in crows around Brisbane."
Professor Jones said the crows exhibited similar behaviour to magpies when their three chicks were in the nest, often swooping himself and other tall males across campus.
"They are doing exactly what magpies do, they see the threat of people being nearby and they try to keep them away, selected individuals that they think are a big problem," he said.
"We would get followed and victimised and they would wait for us to come out...I would often try and sneak in with bunches of kids getting of the bus."
Professor Jones said this could indicate crows, who were often very wary of people despite their presence in urban environments, are possibly losing their fear of humans.
"It's still really rare in Australia for crows to attack people but over the past couple of years, I am getting more and more reports of people being stopped by crows," he said.
"I think it is more likely that like any bird that tries to live with people,they are getting more and more used to us and losing their fear of humans.
"They may be becoming habituated towards people, less fearful much more likely to attack us because they are not fearful."
