Crows are quite smart. Park on any city street and start throwing out popcorn or bread, the word gets around. Soon you will have lots of friends. I've noticed that the older crows and the disabled one's get preference to the treats.

Crows in Japan have demonstrated their intelligence by dropping nuts in crosswalks so that cars will crush them, and then the traffic lights will give them time to pick them up when traffic stops.

Check out this free PBS documentary featuring lots of footage from Seattle and a UW professor who studies them: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/…

I used to have one in my garden that would drop stale bread my neighbors left out, into our birdbath, from about 20ft flyby, to soften it up a little. It would come back 2 minutes later to eat the soggy bread! They'd also come to meet me at the bus after work and fly home down the street with me, because they knew I was the cat-kibble lady. Best treat for a crow, ever, is cat kibble, they love it.

I love crows! Fascinating birds, very, very smart. :)

Bird calls (like film reviews) are apparently a matter of taste.

I love the sounds crows make … even at their roughest, they're hardly (or at least rarely) a "throaty, soul-crushing, beak-blasting call", especially once you pay enough attention to start to tell a few types of calls apart. There's a big difference between an alert call, a fledgling pestering a parent or sibling for food, and the "Let's get that guy!" call to mob an eagle or hawk.

For truly throaty, it's hard to beat a raven. For soul-crushing, I'd recommend a dozen magpies going "GAK? GAK? GAK?" outside your bedroom for all the bright hours of an Alaskan summer day (and night).

@3 I have a neighbor who volunteers at a food bank and brings home bagels and donuts and all kinds of bread. The water troughs for my horses have a similar addition, although the horses sometimes eat the bread before the crows can get it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on…