In our yard in northeast Ithaca just now, I watched an untagged American Crow fly to a birdbath with an edge slice of whole-wheat bread. The crow slid the bread into the water, left it there for a few seconds, then reached back in and gently pulled on the slice. A soggy mouthful broke away, whereupon the crow walked to the middle of the yard, put the bread down, and carefully buried it under some lawn clippings. The crow ambled back to the bath and repeated thrice with the remaining bread, walking purposefully twice to different spots in our yard, and finally flying with the last and largest piece over our fence to our neighbor's lawn and again methodically burying the bread under the green hay.
Last spring I posted about one local crow who applied a dip-drain-dip procedure to pizza slices. That was like some Food Network dude twice-frying potatoes - pretty impressive. But today's demo seems like a big step up in sophistication, with more complex technique and possible control of not only moisture, but also temperature and maybe even seasoning. Rene Redzepi, anyone? If I determine how long the baking time is, I'll write it down and circulate the whole recipe for all the crows to read. Mark Chao -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --