While car-camping in Michigan as a kid, my family would always pack food
in "crow bags" (mom-designed cloth bags with closures, instead of using
grocery bags) to keep the crows in the state parks from raiding our
lunches. I don't recall thinking of them as ingenious, crafty, or brave
as the crows out here seem to be - but the behaviour was definitely there.

Susan Collicott
Ballard, WA
camel at drizzle.com

> I'm curious about others' experiences with crow "raiding" behavior. I
> have camped in hundreds of places across North America, and there were
> only two places where crows boldly raided our food supply. One was the
> Hoh rain forest in Olympic National Park, where crows actively swooped
> down and grabbed food off our picnic table as soon as we turned our
> backs. The other was in the large state park on Orcas Island, where
> several crows boldly flew down and got into bags of groceries in the
> open trunk of our car as soon as we walked several yards away. This
> behavior seems similar to the "raiding" behavior of Steller's Jays
> coming to my feeders--a quick grab and fast flight away. Could this
> admittedly small sample reflect a behavioral difference between
> different crow species/subspecies/races/genetic clusters?
>
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>
> Lee Rentz
> Shelton WA
>