Crows, Ravens & Jays

Information about Corvidae:

Crows, ravens, jays and magpies are members of the family of Corvidae, which are oscine passerine birds. They are found on nearly all continents except for Antarctica. Their ancestry can be traced back to Asia. All of these birds score very high on the intelligence scale, especially ravens and crows, who have been seen using tools to obtain food and solve other problems.

Crows have been observed taking hard to crack open nuts from the ground and dropping them onto a road with slow moving traffic. The crows then wait for the nuts be crushed open by passing vehicles, returning to eat them. Crows in Australia have learned to eat the highly toxic cane toads by flipping them over onto their backs and stabbing the tissue in the neck, bypassing the toxins in the toad’s glands at the top of the head.

American Crows are highly susceptible to West Nile virus although there appears to be little impact on their populations, which have expanded into nearly every possible environment in North America