When I was quite young I lived in a low-end apartment complex, not quite "the projects" but home to lots of new immigrants working multiple jobs, lots of latchkey kids, that sort of thing.<p>From time to time birds would fly into the building and those that survived usually needed some place to recuperate a bit. I became well known in the neighborhood as "the bird boy" for my seemingly miraculous ability to nurse stunned birds back to health...several of the other kids in the neighborhood tried it as well, but they ended up killing all their birds.<p>For a while I had a pet robin, too young to fly. He had fallen from his nest and was abandoned after that. I took him in and fed and raised him till eventually turning him over to a local animal sanctuary. While I had him, for all that time, I had a friend on my shoulder or head pretty much wherever I went. He knew who my family was and who my friends were, and would stay away from people he didn't know. He knew where I kept his food and the process I had to go through the make it ready for him to eat.<p>I don't recall ever being pooped on by him, not even once. He'd hold it till I put him in his house, or up on a branch while out playing with my friends. He never bit me, or did anything aggressive towards me. But he'd misbehave with other people he didn't know.<p>One day, in a well meaning attempt to set him free, my mother dropped me off from school and then dropped my bird off in the woods. I came home and couldn't find him, my mother lied and said that he had flown away (which I knew was patently false). Finally, out of guilt, my mother fessed up and I ran out to the woods where she had dropped him off.<p>He had waited patiently all day for me and vigorously hopped towards me when he saw me coming, chirping his head off in angry protest. He was shivering and starving and getting him back home, warm and fed was the guiltiest I ever felt.<p>Not a crow, but definitely a cool experience with wild birds.
I had a pet crow when I was about 6 years old - he was a fledgeling who'd left his nest on the hottest day of the year and was dehydrated. My brother and I were squirting eachother with water and he cawed at us until we squirted him. He decided this was the best thing ever, and basically adopted us from then onwards.<p>He was the terror of the local cats and dogs, but left our two siamese alone because he knew they were part of the family. He'd regularly steal visitor's keys, and hide them in the bush alongside our house purely so he could watch my dad or mum have to hunt for them. He'd play in the sprinkler, and knew the sound of my dad's motorcycle - when he heard my dad coming home in the evenings he would fly down the street and perch on my dad's shoulder for the ride home.<p>Crows are awesome.
There's an old 4Chan thread where a user starts 'World War Crow' by favoring a certain group of crows over another.<p>Allegedly, after some time, the two groups of crows have an all out battle over which group gets french fries.<p><a href="http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-user-really-started-world-war" rel="nofollow">http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-...</a>
Crows are real smart. On an episode of Roderick on the Line, John Roderick recalled a story he read where a researcher was trying to round up crows for tests. He went into a parking lot and tossed a net, capturing some. The next day, he went to a different parking lot across town and the crows immediately flew away when he pulled in, because they recognized him. He went back to the same second parking lot in a different vehicle and was able to capture some, but then that vehicle didn't work. He started wearing masks and trying all sorts of tricks, but as far as he could tell, the crows were communicating through town.
There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior:<p>Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: <a href="https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/" rel="nofollow">https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/</a><p>see also: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840</a>
A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for.<p>Also, how do you explain this? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc</a>
On one of David Attenborough's recent shows, he said that crows can store up 30,000 pieces of food in various locations in the ground. They not only know where each piece of food is, but they know which ones are perishable and to get the food before it spoils. Pretty remarkable if you ask me.
I pissed off crows and they punished me for 2 weeks.<p>My uncivilized hooligan former neighbors had a young tree in their yard which they purposely allowed to grow for years right in the foundation of our brick wall. It started casting a shadow in our garden as well. There were no nests in the 20 foot young tree and the property was abandoned and now owned by the bank. So I ran over and cut it down. It was big enough to start cracking the foundation.<p>Big mistake, I should have worn a disguise. The crows who live in the tree above the one I cut took saw this as vandalism (well it technically was). For 2 weeks they would poop on my car non-stop. Only my car. They knew the PT Cruiser was mine, they shat all over that car. They specifically aimed for the door handle on the driver's side. I have never seen such vengeful birds and such nasty bird crap. It was discussing. They'd carpet bomb it all day, every day, for 2 weeks. I would have about 14 bird crap splatters on the car on any given day. They finally stopped after about 2 weeks.<p>I should have had a neighbor do it or worn a disguise.
Whenever someone asserts that mammalian-equivalent intelligence is incredibly unlikely to arise twice, I like to point towards very intelligent and social birds, like crows - who are capable of performing advanced mental feats <i>without a neocortex</i>.
Here's a more scientific look at the behavior:<p>John Marzluff & Tony Angell: Gifts of the Crow (2012)<p>Video: <a href="https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangellgiftsoft" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangell...</a><p>Book: <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John-Marzluff/9781439198742" rel="nofollow">http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John-Mar...</a>
Konrad Lorez, one of the founders of the field of animal behavior and a Nobel laurete, did a lot of his research on jackdaws, which are a close relative of the crow. His book King Solomon's Ring is a really enjoyable read into his insights about their intelligence and social life.
> <i>Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled up their bird-cam. There was the crow she suspected. "You can see it bringing it into the yard. Walks it to the birdbath and actually spends time rinsing this lens cap."</i><p>Why wouldn't they put this video in the BBC article?
You know what? After spending hours reading comments here, then watching videos and a talk about crows, it's decided. Screw drones. I don't want a quadcopter. I want to befriend a few crows and see if I can convince some to do cool stuff.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM</a>
Saw this video a while back and was really quite amazed the process adopted to crack walnuts. After watching that video I definitely had a higher level of "respect" for animals and their intellect.
David Suzuki did an interesting show about crows but of course due to annoying geoIP copyright can't find an American version to link.<p><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crows" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crow...</a><p>There's signs up at some Indian public markets forbidding vendors taking payment from monkeys as they watched humans exchange cash for fruit and became pickpockets. No gifts though except a huge tip when handing over piles of notes for one bunch of bananas.
Url should be simplified to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026</a>
I was disappointed that this article didn't include a definite scientific opinion on whether the crows saw this as an exchange for food, or if for some reason they bring objects to a feeding area.
Give and receive. This is some support for the idea that the law of reciprocity is ingrained fundamentally in us, even to lower form species like birds.
This is cool, but isn't <i>that</i> surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates.<p>I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while heading to the shower in the morning.
Hoaxes involving children and/or their magical gifts:
<a href="http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html" rel="nofollow">http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html</a>
I had a gift this morning, from a pigeon, onto my shoulder whilst waiting for the train to pull into the platform for work.<p>Supposed to be lucky - not sure for me or the pigeon though!